So the pack was cleared.

But that didn’t resolve anything.

It only splits the problem into two.

Now there were two separate cases: a missing human and an unidentified, severely injured woman. The peacekeepers had only involved themselves because of the potential connection to supernatural beings, something ordinary authorities weren’t meant to uncover. But with the werewolves no longer under suspicion, there was no need for them to remain directly involved.

From this point on, the investigation would fall back into human hands.

They noted it down as an unfortunate coincidence. Three separate incidents that happened to occur at the same time.

As for the injured woman pulled from the lake...

The only way to get the full truth was simple.

Wait until she woke up... And hear the story from her directly.

In the end, it meant they had come for nothing.

No leads. No trace of where Clarissa might have gone.

"Thank you for your time, Miss Maddison," one of the peacekeepers said, offering a polite bow. "We appreciate your cooperation."

The gesture wasn’t casual. Word had already spread that Maddison was to be the future Luna of the pack, and that title alone demanded a certain level of respect.

And she basked in it.

A pleased warmth settled in her chest as she returned their courtesy with a graceful smile, personally escorting them out of the packhouse and toward their car.

On the way, they passed a small gathering off to the side.

A makeshift ceremony.

A few pack members stood around, going through the motions of a funeral with muted voices, stiff expressions, and empty gestures. The body had already been cremated. There was nothing left to mourn.

After all, Ashley had no family now. And no one was waiting to grieve her, no one to demand proper rites. The few present moved through the motions without emotion, their actions mechanical, perfunctory, something to show, something to say if Nathan ever asked.

Nothing more.

The two peacekeepers paused for a moment, their attention drawn to the small gathering. From where they stood, bodies shifted and moved, blocking any clear view of the portrait set for the deceased.

For a second, they considered taking a closer look.

Then they didn’t.

Deaths among supernatural beings were unpredictable, sometimes nonexistent, sometimes rising sharply due to territorial skirmishes or rogue attacks. Compared to that, an accidental fall barely registered as unusual. And with the answers they had come for already in hand, there was little reason to linger.

Whatever curiosity flickered in their minds faded just as quickly.

Without another word, they turned, stepped into their car, and drove away.

Only once their car cleared the pack’s entrance did the second peacekeeper, the one handling the documentation, finally speak.

"We’ve already checked on the unidentified woman at the hospital," he said, voice steady. "She’s still unconscious, but I don’t think she belongs to that pack. We had one of our own people, who is a werewolf within the Peacekeeper Order, to verify it. He couldn’t detect any scent from her."

He paused, letting that settle.

"Which means she isn’t a werewolf."

His elbow came to rest against the window as he propped his chin on his palm, gaze drifting toward the dense trees lining the dirt road.

"So that leaves us with one conclusion," he murmured. "She’s human... just like the missing woman named Clarissa."

"Yeah... I came to the same conclusion," the one driving replied, his voice quieter, more measured. "Even an Omega carries a distinct scent, and it doesn’t just disappear. It’s been over twenty-four hours since she was pulled from the water. If she were a werewolf, her scent would’ve returned by now, no matter how long she’d been submerged in the lake."

He let out a breath, eyes flicking briefly to the rearview mirror before settling back on the road ahead.

"The fact that there’s nothing..." he continued, tightening his grip on the wheel, "means she’s human."

A short pause followed, then a faint, almost self-directed scoff.

"I overthought it," he admitted. "Entertained that one-percent chance, that someone could survive that fall from such steep cliff, and that Alpha Nathan’s pack somehow retrieved the wrong body."

He shook his head slightly.

"Doesn’t look like that’s the case."

"I told you, you’re overthinking it," the second peacekeeper said with a tired sigh. "You’ve watched too many detective series. Not everything is connected."

He leaned back slightly, gaze drifting as he continued, but his voice was more subdued this time.

"Sometimes it’s just bad timing. Three different women, three separate incidents, all happening around the same place." He exhaled slowly. "That lake is huge. Easy to lose people in. Easy to use, too."

His expression hardened a little.

"If anything, that unidentified woman might’ve been trafficked. The unclaimed lands are the perfect route since they are isolated and barely monitored. No witnesses. No interference. It’s the kind of place people use when they don’t want to be seen or when they want to do bad things."

Silence settled between them for a moment before he spoke again. "...And if that’s the case," he added, "then Clarissa might’ve run into the same people who trafficked that unidentified woman."

Human trafficking was, unfortunately, nothing new. Women disappeared every day, taken from different places, stripped of identity, moved like shadows across borders. It wasn’t unusual for victims to have no identification on them; sometimes it was taken, sometimes discarded.

Given what they had, this was the most plausible explanation.

In their minds, a rough sequence began to form: the unidentified woman had fought her way out, gotten injured, but was desperate enough to escape. And somewhere in that chaos... Clarissa might have crossed paths with the same traffickers.

And taken her place.

It wasn’t a comfortable theory, but it fit. With the fragments of information they had, it was the closest thing to an answer.

But what they didn’t realize, or what none of them could have known, was that their first suspicion had been right all along.

Sometimes, reality unfolded just as cruelly and dramatically as the stories people dismissed.

Maddison had never cared who they pulled from the lake. It didn’t matter to her whether the body was truly Ashley’s or not. As long as Nathan believed Ashley was dead, that was enough.

And if she wasn’t... Then the next time their paths crossed, Maddison would make sure of it herself that Ashley would die by her hands.

By the time the peacekeepers left the pack’s community grounds, the truth remained buried beneath the careful lies and convenient conclusions.

Only then did Nathan return.

Three days of relentless searching had finally taken their toll on his body. He didn’t walk back on his own, but instead, he was carried in by the warriors patrolling the borders, his body found collapsed on the ground as if he had simply dropped where he stood.

To anyone else, it looked like he had exhausted his body until he could no longer go on.

But it was more than that.

The weight of it all, the guilt, the grief, the chaos in his mind, had pushed him past his limit.

And in the end, his body gave out.

He blacked out.