I left with the child, but he regretted it afterwards

I brought my mate, Kurt, back from the aftermath of a collapsed mountain ridge and sent the young she-wolf I had raised for six years to join the trainee ranks. That was when the male who had always been cold and restrained finally snapped.

He took our infant son into the desert’s forbidden no-man’s-land.

“Tell me where Zelda is,” he said, his voice low and feral, “or I’ll bury him alive.”

“There are five mounds of sand here. You have five chances.”

Kurt placed our tiny son into a shallow pit. The scorching sand seared his tender skin the moment it touched him. His cry was thin and piercing.

My heart felt like it had been plunged into boiling oil.

Before I could beg, Kurt began to push sand over our child.

The first mound fell.

My mind flashed back to little Kurt staring at me with hostility.

“You’re the orphan my mother took in? Don’t think living in my den makes you worthy to be my future mate.”

The second mound.

When I was eighteen and prepared to leave for Rivergate Territory to train as a healer, Kurt had pounded on my door, eyes red, gripping me tightly.

“I won’t let you go. I won’t let you leave me for Rivergate.”

The third mound.

On my twentieth name-day, Kurt had knelt before me, a trembling ring of bonefire circling us.

“Yvonne Whitmore, you mean more to me than life.”

The fourth.

During a distant trade expedition, he’d been caught in a landslide. When he came home after six long moons, Zelda was with him.

From then on, he slipped from our bed each night to go to hers.

At first, they truly only slept.

Until the day his body returned carrying the lingering scent of wild roses. Her scent. It clung to him for days.

That was when I knew everything had changed.

Our son’s cries weakened into ragged, choking whimpers.

I begged, “He is your son, too.”

Kurt’s face remained carved from stone. “Without Keith, what use do I have for a son?”

As my baby was nearly swallowed by the burning sand, I broke.

I told Kurt where she was hiding.

He didn’t say a word. He just ran. Straight toward Zelda.

He never looked back.

When I pulled my son from the blistering pit, his tiny body was limp, his voice only faint groans of pain.

I called for the healer scouts with shaking hands, then lifted my communication stone and dialed another rune-coded frequency.

“I’ll join the organization,” I said. “I’m leaving the pack with my child in a week.”

……

The male who once bought a hundred starstones for our newborn son, Ethan Kurt, on the night he came into this world…

He had said, “Each year on his naming day, I will gift him a star. Our son will live a hundred years.”

Yet now, for Zelda’s sake, he was willing to bury that same child—barely a hundred days old—alive.

I tried to explain, desperate. “She wanted to go. It was her dream.”

“No,” Kurt murmured, something soft and deranged flickering in his eyes. “Her dream… is that I sleep soundly.”

“So she will never leave me.”

Staring at his unhinged expression, I knew I had no choice but to yield once more.

After Kurt left, the healers rushed us from the desert’s cursed sands to the clan’s infirmary.

Ethan’s life was not in immediate danger, but patches of his tender skin were burned raw and had begun to fester.

I held him in the healing cot, his feverish body curled tight, whimpering even in sleep.

My message stone vibrated. A rune lit up.

Kurt: I arranged the best healer. Ethan will recover. I will bring Zelda back later. As long as you do not shame her, you will remain my mate.

My fingers trembled as I stared at the glowing words.

Becoming Kurt’s mate had been my dream since I was a young girl.

When the Kurt family adopted me, he hated me at first. Cold and distant, he barely spoke. But whenever I was bullied in training grounds, he appeared—fists and claws flying—taking wounds for me without hesitation.

When I turned eighteen, he begged me not to leave for Rivergate Territory. He cornered me against the wall and kissed me.

My face burned under his kiss. When I gasped for air, he whispered into my ear, “Yvonne, I loved you from the moment I saw you.”

“I just lacked the courage to admit it.”

On my twentieth birthday, he lit starfire along eighteen mountaintops, turning the entire sky into a spectacle meant only for me.

When he proposed, he gifted me an island in the Moonlit Sea, making me feel like the most cherished she-wolf in existence.

“Yvonne, you are more important than my life.”

Back then, I believed such happiness would last forever.

But it lasted only until the end of our mating moon.

Kurt left on a trading expedition and was caught in a deadly quake. He was trapped beneath collapsed stone for ninety-nine hours—starving, delirious, surrounded by death. In that darkness, it was Zelda’s rose-scented presence he clung to.

Her parents shielded a narrow space with their bodies, using the last of their water to keep the two of them alive—sacrificing themselves so their children could survive.

Before drawing their final breath, they entrusted Zelda to Kurt.

Six moons later, he brought her home.

I had never imagined that this so-called debt of gratitude would become my lifelong torment.

I kissed the corner of my son’s eye. “I am sorry, little one. Mother let you suffer.”

“But I will not let anyone hurt you again.”

I unblocked the rune frequency and sent a message.

“I will join your organization. But I have one condition. I am taking my child with me.”

The voice that responded was low, amused. “Your child… he is only a few moons old, yes?”

The speaker was known only as the Ferryman—leader of a secretive global order of shadow-walkers and codebreakers. Once you entered, your former identity vanished.

Exactly what I needed.

I said, “You have connections across the clans. I want to leave within a week. Can you make that happen?”

“Of course,” he replied, a soft chuckle in his tone. “In one week, the Ferryman will personally see you across the border.”