---- once felt was long gone. Only a faint hatred remained. "T'll do anything to make it up to you!" Kaelen said desperately. ''I can give up my Alpha position, Ican do anything for you..." "Can you make those 99 humiliations never happen?" My voice was still ice-cold. "Can you heal all the wounds I suffered in your tribe?" There was a long silence on the other end, then Kaelen's pained voice. "I can't." "Then there's nothing more to say." I prepared to cut off the communication. "Leave my territory." "Wait!" Kaelen said urgently. "Lyra, do you remember this scarf? The gray one, you knitted it for me yourself. I've kept it all this time, never taken it off." I paused. That scarf. The knitting was clumsy, but it was warm. I remembered spending a whole ---- month knitting it for him when we first met. "Why are you still keeping that damn scarf?" I replied coldly, though my mind was filled with a bitter feeling for all that wasted effort. "It's my most precious possession," Kaelen's voice trembled. "It reminds me that you once truly loved me. I sleep with it every night, imagining the day you'll forgive me... Lyra, please, give me one chance..." "Get lost!" I cut off the communication, my voice like ice. But the communicator quickly lit up again. "your Highness, he's requesting to speak again," the head guard said, troubled. "Don't answer." The communicator continued to flash, all afternoon without stopping. ---- "your Highness, he's been requesting communication for three hours straight," the head guard reported. "Let him try," I said, not looking up from my work. "I won't take any more calls from him." As night fell, a message came from the border: " The Alpha says he will wait at the border until Her Highness forgives him." I frowned and ordered, "Tell him to get lost! If he doesn't go, I don't mind if you kill him."