The Alpha Who Buried My Mother Will Bury His Empire

Miss Hollowthorn, we've recovered a body in the borderlands. The scent-markers match your mother. We need you to come to the Healing Hall and identify her.

My smile, reflected in the mating-gown mirror, shattered with a single call through the crystal communicator.

The recovery den reeked of wolfsbane and something older, something that clung to the cold stone walls like a confession no one wanted to hear. When they pulled back the sheet, her body was barely recognizable. Her eyes, gone. Her organs, ripped out like she'd been nothing more than livestock to be harvested. Beneath my skin my wolf went utterly still, the way a creature goes still when it scents its own death.

I collapsed, a scream tearing from my throat as the world turned black.

When I came to, my intended mate, Dorian Ravenmoor, was sitting by my side in the dim of the Healer's Den. He gently wiped away my tears and pressed his lips to my forehead with the tenderness of a man who'd rehearsed the gesture. His scent reached me first, black pepper and cold ash, and something in me flinched at an undertone I couldn't name.

"They caught the rogue who did it," he whispered against my skin. "I made sure he paid for what he did to your mother."

He swore that, for the rest of his life, he'd love and protect me the way she used to.

But that night, jolted awake by another nightmare, my mother's hollowed face swimming behind my eyelids, I caught something beyond the bedroom. Through the crack in the door, golden lamplight spilled across Dorian's back as he held my half-sister, Mira Hollowthorn, in his arms.

She was sobbing into his chest, her whole body trembling like a wounded animal. Her scent drifted to me through the gap, overripe jasmine and sugared decay, and my wolf lifted its head, hackles prickling. Something in that scent did not smell right. It never had.

"If she ever finds out the truth she'll kill me."

Dorian cupped her face, gentle as ever, gentler than he'd ever been with me.

"Hey, it's not your fault. You didn't know those rogues were running a scam. You're a victim too."

The chill in my bones cut deeper than any wind off the high ridges. I could hardly breathe.

So this was it. My mother died because of Mira. And the man who swore to protect me was shielding her.

Dorian finally sent Mira home, the heavy oak door clicking shut behind her, and turned around, only to see me, collapsed on the cold stone floor like a broken doll.

His expression flickered, guilt, frustration, then hardened into something I didn't recognize.

"So you heard everything?"

His tone turned cold, like I was the problem. Like I was the inconvenience. A low growl I shouldn't have been able to suppress sat trapped in my throat, and I swallowed it down.

"Don't blame Mira. Your mother got greedy, okay? She kept pestering Mira to help her with that investment. She brought this on herself."

He tossed a blank moon-credit oath onto the table like it meant nothing. The parchment landed with a whisper that echoed like a slap.

"Write whatever number you want. But forget what you've heard. Let's pretend nothing happened for the meantime. The Mating Ceremony's in five days. We'll go through with it. Peacefully."

I stared at the man who once swore he'd love me for the rest of his life. Now, he felt like a stranger wearing a familiar face. Even his scent felt wrong against my skin, like a coat that no longer fit.

I wiped the tears from my cheeks with the back of my hand.

If my Mating Ceremony was doomed to become my mother's funeral, then five days from now I'd return the favor, with interest.

I said nothing. He grew impatient, yanking the silk knot loose at his throat and tossing it on the nightstand with barely concealed irritation.

"If you get it, then go to sleep."

But something snapped in me. The grief, the rage, it all poured out, raw and shaking, like blood from a wound that refused to close.

"Pretend? Are you fucking serious?!"

"You knew. You knew my mother was the only family I had. And you knew how much it meant to her to see me marked beneath the Moon in white. And Mira fucking destroyed it!"

Did he really not understand why my mother was desperate to make money?

The Ravenmoor Pack had looked down on us from the start. His parents, Alpha Magnus and Luna Vesper Ravenmoor, barely tolerated my presence at their table. To them, I was the daughter of a den-keeper, no matter that my mother had once saved their precious heir's life. And my mother, Moon Goddess, she tried so hard to make me worthy in their eyes. That's why she went to Mira, thinking maybe this time, things would be different. Maybe blood would finally mean something.

I could still hear the warrior's voice in my head: "Your mother tracked those people down to try and get her money back. She didn't know they were part of an Omega-trafficking ring. They carved her up and took everything they could sell."

I couldn't stop crying. Each word came out like a blade. "If it weren't for Mira and her mother, none of this would've happened. All I want is justice for my mother, and you want to keep me from that?"

"Enough, Selene!" Dorian barked, his face suddenly dark as a storm rolling in over the peaks. For an instant the air thickened with the press of his aura, and my wolf cowered low inside me even as I refused to. "Mira was conned too. She lost everything. And you? Instead of showing any compassion, you've been running around telling everyone she's your sire's bastard whelp. Do you even have a heart?"

"Compassion?" I let out a hollow, bitter laugh that scraped my throat raw. "What about my mother? She died in the most horrific way imaginable!"

"She died because she got greedy and made stupid choices," he scoffed, his lip curling with contempt. "Mira had nothing to do with it. Don't even think about laying a finger on her."

His voice was frost-edged now, sharp enough to draw blood. I shook from the inside out.

I gripped the front of my silk nightgown like it would hold my chest together, like it could keep my heart from spilling out onto the floor. The stone blurred under the torrent of my tears.

"Dorian," I whispered. "Have you forgotten? When you were taken, when that enemy pack snatched you off the trail, who risked everything to save you? Who fought off those rogues with her bare hands until your father's warriors arrived?"

"And what about the day she lay in that Healing Hall, broken and bleeding, and you knelt at her side and promised you'd never hurt me? That you'd take care of me for the rest of your life? That was a life-debt under the Moon, Dorian. And you swore it on your bloodline's honor."

His jaw clenched, his expression hardening into granite. "Don't throw ancient history in my face. I've given you and your mother everything for years. Food, shelter, a place in this den, respect you never earned. Whatever debt I had, I paid it off a long time ago."

Then, as if to twist the knife deeper, he let out a bitter laugh.

"This is about money, isn't it?"

He flicked the blank oath at me again. The edge sliced across my cheek, drawing a thin line of blood that dripped onto the pristine pale stone. The scent of it bloomed in the room, and I felt his wolf register it, register it and not care.

I bit down hard, fists clenched until my nails carved crescents into my palms. "I don't want your money. I want Mira held accountable for what she's done."

He chuckled, a smug little breath through his nose, the sound of a man who'd never been told no. "Go ahead. Let's see which advocate is foolish enough to take that case and stand against the Ravenmoor Pack before the Commission."

"Know your place." His eyes narrowed, cold and reptilian. "I won't have a hysterical lunatic as my Luna. This ends now."

His communicator chimed. He glanced at the crystal, and just like that, his face lit up like a pup on the first night of the Blood Moon.

"A gift? From you? That's so thoughtful. Honestly, those allies only pledged because of you."

"What? No escort? Don't worry, I'm coming for you right now. Just stay put, bella."

He didn't even look back at me as he walked out, his footsteps echoing down the corridor like a death knell.

I stared at the door as it closed behind him. My tears burned down my cheeks like acid.

Fine. If this is how it's going to be, so be it.

I just stood there, staring after the man I used to love, tears searing tracks down my face. Fine. If that's how he wanted to play it, then so be it.

I turned to pack my things, my hands steady despite the trembling in my chest. But then the communicator chimed again.

"Miss Hollowthorn," the Beta's Omega liaison said cheerfully, his voice dripping with false courtesy, "since you've withdrawn the grievance in your mother's case, we're closing the pack's investigation. Just letting you know."

The line went dead.

I hadn't withdrawn anything.

I froze. The words hung in the air like smoke after a kill. Dropped the charges? What in the Moon's name were they talking about?

I ran to the Elder's records-den as fast as my legs could carry me, my boots striking the rain-slicked stone like desperate heartbeats. But by the time I arrived, breathless and wild-eyed, the file, my mother's case, had already been torn to nothing. Confetti. That was all that remained of justice. Ribbons of white parchment scattered across the dark oakwood like funeral petals.

Everything blurred. I collapsed to my knees on the woven floor, my fingers clawing at the old Elder's sleeve, my voice fracturing into something raw and unrecognizable.

"You promised. You swore under the Moon you'd help me get justice for my mother!"

Edmund Greycloak, a wolf who had built his name representing the great bloodlines, looked away, unable to meet my eyes. The scent of old parchment and beeswax curdled with something sour. He exhaled slowly, the sound heavy with resignation.

"The one who withdrew the claim was your intended mate. Dorian Ravenmoor." He paused, letting the name settle between us like a blade. "None of us are in any position to stand against the Ravenpack heir. That bloodline's reach runs deeper than you know. I'm truly sorry, Miss Hollowthorn."

And just like that, with a small nod to his warriors, two of them took me by the arms and walked me out to the street. Their grips were firm but not cruel. They had done this before.

But I wasn't giving up.

There had to be someone in this Moon-forsaken territory who still had a spine. Someone who hadn't been bought, threatened, or broken by the Ravenpack's iron grip.

Hands shaking, I called every connected advocate I could find on my communicator, wolves who'd defended pack capos, who'd gotten blooded killers cleared, who supposedly feared nothing. One by one, they turned me away. The replies were all the same, delivered in hushed, apologetic tones.

"Sorry, Miss Hollowthorn. Dorian Ravenmoor made it very clear. Anyone who touches that case will find themselves on the wrong side of the pack by sunrise. We can't help you. Do you understand?"

I dropped to the ground outside the last den, my knees hitting cold stone. My palm landed on jagged rock, blood seeping from the cut and mixing with the grime of the alley, yet I barely felt a thing. The physical pain was nothing compared to the hollow ache consuming my chest. Somewhere beneath my ribs, my wolf had gone silent, curled in on herself the way she did only when something had been ripped away that we could never get back.

When I was sixteen, my sire threw Mom and me out of our den like we were nothing. The same day, Mira and her mother moved in, his mistress and her base-born daughter, finally claiming what they'd circled for years.

I still remember Mira, just thirteen, smirking from the top of the stairs as we carried our belongings past her. Her eyes glittered with triumph, and in that moment I learned the truth that had been hidden from me my whole childhood. My sire, Garrick Hollowthorn, had kept a second she-wolf for years. We were the true-bonded family, but we were also the ones to be cast off.

Mom and I ended up in the borderlands with nothing but the clothes on our backs and whatever dignity we could scrape together. One freezing night, huddled beneath a collapsed bridge for warmth, we stumbled into the middle of a snatching. A crew of wolves in dark leathers, trained ones, clearly, were dragging a young male toward a waiting carriage. Even in the dark, even half-frozen and starving, I caught the scent of high bloodline on him, and knew the face from every pack rumor that traveled the territories.

Dorian Ravenmoor. Heir to the Ravenpack. Being taken by a rival pack's rogues.

Mom didn't hesitate. She threw herself into the fight, snarling like a she-wolf possessed, screaming for me to run and howl for help. By the time the Ravenpack warriors arrived, she'd driven off three armed rogues with nothing but her bare hands, her teeth, and a broken shard of glass. She nearly died doing it. They cut her open again and again, but she wouldn't stop. Wouldn't let them take him.

Afterward, Dorian brought us inside the Ravenpack territory, against his parents' furious objections. Vesper Ravenmoor looked at us like we were stray rogues he'd dragged in from the wild, her scent of cold orchid and polished silver sharp with disdain. But her son, her precious heir, insisted. He said he owed us a life-debt under the Moon.

Mom turned down his offer to keep us as dependents of the pack. She had too much pride for charity. Instead she became a den-keeper in the Ravenpack estate, earning her place with honest work. I crossed into Dorian's private academy. Day after day, I watched that gentle, kind boy, the one who carried wildflowers to my mother's bedside while she healed, who sat reading to her in a low voice, grow into someone I couldn't help falling for.

He loved me back. On my twentieth Moon Blessing Day, before my mother and the whole household, he knelt and took my hand. His voice was steady, his eyes bright with sincerity, and his scent of black pepper and cold ash wrapped warm around me then.

"I swear under the Moon," he said, "I'll spend the rest of my life protecting you. You'll want for nothing. You'll fear nothing. This I promise."

But all that started changing a year ago.

He went out one night, some gathering at one of the pack's social halls, drinks with the warriors. When he came home, something was different. He started speaking of Mira differently.

"She's not who I thought she was," he said one night, pacing our chambers, working the knot from his collar. "She's working three jobs to pay for her schooling. Can you believe it? The daughter of a wolf like Garrick, scraping by like some lowborn omega off the borderlands."

"And listen to this." His eyes lit with something I didn't recognize. "Some connected male tried to proposition her, said he'd set her up as his kept she-wolf, drown her in gifts. She stood and slapped him across the face in front of the whole hall. What a fierce little thing."

Then he added, his tone shifting to something almost accusing, "I know you two never got along. But maybe it's because you never gave her a real chance. If you just spent some time with her, maybe you'd see how lovable she is."

My gut was screaming that something was wrong. Even my wolf paced beneath my skin, hackles up at a scent on him that didn't quite belong, something sweet and rotting under the black pepper, jasmine gone overripe. The sister who'd smirked at my ruin was playing a long game. But I pushed it aside. Told myself I was being paranoid. That old wounds were making me see enemies where there were none.

And then, not long after, one of the mated females in our circle told me Dorian had come into a rare moonstone band. Not just any band, an ancient piece that once belonged to a high-bloodline Luna of the old packs. A she-wolf had worn it at her crowning. It was worth more than most wolves earned in a lifetime.

So naturally I thought, maybe he bought it for my Blessing Day. A grand gesture, the kind he used to make when we first fell in love.

But on the day of my Moon Blessing, Mira posted to the spirit network. That exact band, worth a fortune, irreplaceable, mine by every right of love and loyalty, was wrapped around her slender wrist. In the image, a male's hand held hers, fingers laced together with intimate familiarity. I knew those hands. I'd held them a thousand times.

That night I waited until the last candle burned itself out, the wax pooling beside the untouched feast. Dorian never came home.

It was the first time he ever forgot my Blessing Day.

After that, he always had some reason for missing the dates that mattered, our bond-anniversary, the moons we marked together, the milestones that mark a life shared between two souls. There was always a council that ran late, trouble with the warriors, some emergency demanding him.

At the same time, Mira's spirit network kept updating with careful, calculated cruelty. His familiar shape in the background of her images. His unmarked fingers around a wine glass in halls I'd never been taken to. The line of his body behind fogged glass, the picture cropped just enough to keep its deniability.

Six moons ago we'd sworn our blood oath, the bond-pledge that would bind me to the Ravenpack forever. He said he wanted to give me the perfect Mating Ceremony. A rite worthy of the next Luna.

Now I know there won't be a ceremony at all.

I lifted the communicator and called his private line. My voice, when I spoke, was cold as the grave.

"You wanted my share of the Ravenpack hunting-grounds, didn't you? The claims you signed over to me?" I didn't wait for his answer. "I'm signing them back. All of them."

It was a "gift" he gave me the day he finally won me, those claims. A portion of the pack's lands, the kind of security that made a she-wolf untouchable. I told him it was too much, that I didn't need his holdings, only his heart. But he gripped my hand and insisted I mark the oath.

That gentle voice still echoes in my mind like a cruel memory, the ghost of who he used to be.

"Little one, if you want the stars or the Moon herself, I'll climb up and pull them down for you. What are a few hunting-grounds next to that?"

I know now, what we had was real. Once. But people change. Hearts grow cold. And love? Love is never immortal. It can be killed like anything else.

The boy who once held me as if I were his whole world, he's long gone. Swallowed by time and ambition and the poison my sister dripped into his ear night after night.

Just as the call ended, my communicator lit with a message from Dorian.

[Calmed down yet? I've arranged the burial ground and paid for the rites. Satisfied now? Stop testing my patience, Selene.]

Another followed almost instantly:

[Did you not see my message? Come to my den at the hall. Now. Mark the no-claim agreement for Mira. This matter needs to vanish.]

Something in me finally broke. The last thread holding together the she-wolf who'd loved him, who'd believed in him, who'd built her whole life around his promises, it snapped. Deep inside, my wolf threw back her head and let out a sound I'd never heard her make before, a low keening with no name.

I called him. My voice was shaking with rage, but beneath it was something harder. Something forged in the fire of betrayal.

"Why in the Moon's name should I mark that agreement for her? She killed my mother. She murdered her, Dorian. And if I say no, what then?" I laughed, the sound bitter and broken. "You going to press my bloody hand to the parchment yourself? Hold me down while your warriors force the mark?"

The silence on the other end was deafening.

He cut the mind-link. Cold. No hesitation.

The silence that followed was absolute, the kind that settles over a den when a death sentence has been passed.

Moments later, my crystal communicator pulsed against my palm. An image bloomed across its surface, edges sharp and damning.

A blood-oath of investment. My mother's name beside Mira's, bound together in ink and betrayal.

Carved deep in the center, the words screamed at me like a confession beaten out of a dying wolf:

All ventures carry risk. Every loss born of the bearer's own judgment is the bearer's own burden under the Moon.

My mother's mark sat at the bottom. Her clawprint pressed into the parchment like a vow she never understood she was making.

He'd been preparing for this. The Ravenpack's blood-scribe, that cold-eyed mouthpiece who had buried a hundred sins beneath mountains of sworn parchment, was ready to crush me as if I were nothing more than a rogue who'd wandered too close to the pack's borders.

Still, I went to the Ravenpack estate.

The lift inside their lawful front, a towering monument of glass and dark stone that housed their trading hold among the territories, carried me upward like a condemned she-wolf climbing to the stake.

The doors slid open on the fifteenth floor, and there she stood.

Mira.

She was draped in custom silks that clung to her like a second pelt. The pouch at her hip held more gold moons than most pack warriors earned in a year of border-killing. And there, glittering on her wrist like a trophy torn from a corpse, the Luna's bracelet.

My bracelet.

She looked like high-blood. Like someone born into the inner circle, not a base-born Omega who had clawed her way in through scent-games and bloodshed.

Her lips curled the instant our eyes met, a serpent's smile.

"Oh no, Selene..." she purred, her voice dripping with poisoned honey. Beneath the cloying jasmine and sugared decay of her, the faint trace of iron turned my stomach. "You look awful. Guess it's true what they say. When a she-wolf gets old, the bloom fades. No wonder Dorian lost interest."

She tilted her head, feigning concern with the skill of a wolf who'd learned to lie before she learned to run.

"Still haven't laid your mother to rest? Want me to help arrange the moonlit rites? I mean..." She pressed a manicured hand to her chest. "We are bloodline, after all."

My hands curled into fists at my sides. Rage, white-hot and blinding, boiled up from somewhere deep in my chest until it threatened to burn me alive from the inside out. Beneath my skin my wolf rose with it, hackles lifting, a snarl coiling low and silent in my throat.

"You knew it was a trap," I hissed through clenched teeth. "You knew. It was a con. A scheme that tricked my mother into surrendering every coin she had saved. Every moon-credit she'd earned on her knees, scrubbing the Ravenpack floors."

Mira's expression shifted into wounded innocence, but the corner of her painted lips twitched with barely hidden amusement.

"How could you accuse me like that?" she breathed, pressing her hand to her heart. "I was only trying to help. Your mother wanted to earn more for your mating dowry. She came to me, Selene. What was I supposed to do, turn away that sweet old wolf?"

My chest tightened as if iron bands were being wrapped around my ribs. Blood rushed to my head, pounding in my ears like a war drum at a Blood Moon gathering.

"Pup," Mira sneered, dropping the pretense like a mask she'd grown tired of wearing, "that old bitch loved you like you were the whole world, didn't she?"

She leaned in close, her scent thick and sickly sweet, her breath hot against my ear.

"One day," she whispered, "I trampled the Old Alpha's favorite blooms. On purpose. Crushed them right into the soil." Her voice was velvet wrapped around a blade. "The den-keeper said he'd dock her three moons' pay. Your mother begged. On her knees. Right there in the garden, with dirt under her claws and tears running down her face."

My vision blurred. The world narrowed to a single point. Mira's smiling face.

"I learned later she hadn't taken a single moon's rest in seasons," Mira went on, giggling like she was sharing a delicious secret. "Just to hoard coin. For you. For your mating to a male who was already sharing my furs."

She drew back, her eyes glittering with malice.

"And when I told her to crawl through the garden like a beaten dog?" Mira's smile widened. "She did it. Just like that. Hands and knees through the mud, while I watched."

My world crumbled.

All those times my mother had smiled and told me not to worry over a single thing while I prepared my mating to Dorian... all those times she'd insisted everything was fine, that the Ravenpack treated her well, that serving a powerful bloodline was an honor...

I never knew. I never knew what she had endured for my sake. Deep inside me, my wolf let out a low keening, a sound I'd never heard it make before, mourning a debt I had been too blind to see.

The lift doors slid open with a soft chime, and something inside me snapped clean in two.

I raised my hand, eyes blazing with three years of swallowed rage.

"Mira, you're a monster."

But before my palm could even graze her cheek, she flung herself backward out of the lift, crying out like a wounded animal as she clutched her unmarked face.

"Selene, I said I was sorry!" she sobbed, her voice carrying down the marble corridor with theatrical precision. "I even knelt to you, but you're still being so cruel. Do you truly want me dead that badly?!"

Pack members in fine coats, warriors and liaisons who knew better than to meddle in bloodline matters, turned to stare.

"If you want me dead so badly, then fine!" Mira staggered to her feet, swaying dramatically. "I'll die for your mother! I'll pay the life-debt under the Moon myself!"

She lurched toward the wall as if to crack her own skull against the stone.

"Mira!"

A figure rushed forward at the edge of my vision. Broad shoulders, and a scent I would have known anywhere, black pepper and cold ash, the familiar shape that had once meant safety and love.

Dorian.

He caught her in his arms, pulling her against his chest as if she were something precious. Something worth protecting.

Then he turned, and his shoulder slammed into me with the force of a male who'd learned violence at his sire's knee.

I wasn't braced for it.

My head whipped back, cracking against the lift's brass rail with a sickening thud that echoed through my skull.

The world tilted on its axis.

Warm blood, my blood, trickled down the back of my neck, soaking into the collar of my dress.

Dorian turned on me, his eyes bloodshot, the gold of his wolf flickering at the rims with rage. The same eyes that had once looked at me with tenderness. The same hands that had once cradled my face now curled into fists at his sides.

"Selene Hollowthorn," he spat my name like a curse, "how dare you? Apologize to Mira. Now."

It was as though she were his mate. His Luna. The she-wolf who would stand at his side when he took his sire's territory.

And me? Just some maddened thing. Some hysterical den-keeper's daughter who needed handling before she shamed the bloodline any further.

Mira sobbed against his chest, her fingers clutching the front of his coat, her body trembling with manufactured terror.

"I know she's only hurting," she whimpered, pressing her tear-streaked face into the hollow of his throat. "I already said I'd pay for it. I'd take every task they'd give me, even the ones no wolf else will touch. The filthy work. But she..." Her voice cracked beautifully. "She still struck me. And she cursed me. Said I should drop dead."

Dorian's arms tightened around her. His jaw clenched. His eyes, dark as the river where the pack sank what it wanted gone, fixed on me with undisguised fury.

"Have I not paid you enough?" he snapped, his voice carrying the weight of a male used to being obeyed, the edge of his Alpha-blood pressing the air down around me. "Look at yourself, Selene. You're just like your mother. Petty. Greedy. Always playing the victim, always begging for scraps."

He took a step toward me, and I could smell Mira's sickly sweetness clinging to his skin.

"You two deserved the punishment."

My breath caught in my throat as though a blade had been pressed to my windpipe. The corridor spun around me, but I stood rooted to the blood-slicked marble, too stunned to move.

"Petty and greedy?" I whispered, staring at the male I had loved, the male I'd been promised to since I was nineteen, as if I were seeing him for the first time. "Is that truly what you think of me? That seeking justice for my mother, a she-wolf who died in your bloodline's service, makes me some coin-hungry madwoman?"

Tears blurred my vision, turning the world to watercolor. But I refused to let them fall. I would not give them the satisfaction.

Something flickered in Dorian's expression when he saw me fighting to hold myself together. A shadow of the male he used to be. A ghost of whatever conscience still haunted him.

But the moment Mira whimpered against his chest, a soft, wounded sound built to twist the knife, his face hardened back into stone.

"I saw you try to strike her," he said flatly. "I don't care what excuse you give. I don't care what story you've convinced yourself is true."

He took another step forward, close enough that I could see the vein pulsing at his temple.

"This is the last time I'll say it. Apologize."

My heart clenched as if it were being crushed in a vice, squeezed until there was nothing left but pain and the bitter taste of betrayal.

I looked at him. At the male who had sworn to protect me. At the heir who would one day take an empire of territory built on blood and broken oaths.

At the stranger wearing my intended mate's face.

"And what if I don't?" I said coldly.

"She's not just some servant's daughter. She's the reason my mother is dead. And you expect me to bare my throat and beg her forgiveness?!" The words tore from my throat like shrapnel, and somewhere beneath my ribs my wolf threw herself against the bars of me, snarling.

Mira didn't even have time to part her painted lips. Dorian's eyes went glacial, the cold, flat stare of an Alpha who'd learned to kill his own feelings long before he'd learned to kill anything else.

"I warned you," he said, his voice like steel dragged across frozen stone. "Don't test my patience."

Then he turned to his warriors and gave the order with the casual cruelty of a wolf born into blood. "Go to the burial grove. Bring her mother's body back here."

Every word was a blade dipped in venom.

"She won't learn until she's broken." His lip curled with contempt as he looked at me, looked through me. "You think someone like you deserves to stand as the Luna of the Ravenpack?"

"Feed the corpse to the rogues." He meant every syllable.

His warriors moved without hesitation, their heavy footsteps echoing through the great stone den like a death march. These weren't wolves who questioned orders. These were warriors who'd buried bodies in unmarked earth and slept soundly after.

"No! No, please!" I lunged forward in blind panic, only to be seized by another enforcer. His grip crushed my arm with practiced brutality. I heard the crack before I felt it.

Agony exploded through me like wildfire consuming dry brush.

Tears blurred the high vaulted ceiling into smears of gold and shadow. I cried so hard I couldn't draw breath, couldn't think, couldn't do anything but beg.

"Dorian, please! Don't do this to my mother. She's. She's already gone. Isn't that enough?!"

Mira tilted her head with saccharine sweetness, the triumph she barely bothered to hide curving at the corners of her mouth. Her scent thickened, overripe jasmine and sugared decay, and my wolf gagged on it.

"Dorian the dead deserve their rest. Perhaps we should show mercy?"

He turned to her with a theatrical sigh, his hand finding the small of her back with easy possession. "You're too soft, little one. That's why she walks all over you."

Then his attention snapped back to his men, who had paused at the threshold. "Well? What are you waiting for? Must I draw you a map to the burial grove?" The bark of command rolled off the walls of the Ravenmoor den like the crack of a falling tree, and his Alpha aura pressed down through the room so hard the lowest-ranked warriors flattened where they stood.

His voice cut through me like shattered glass, scattering the last fragments of the love I'd clung to for ten desperate years.

He knew. He knew my mother was my only weakness, the single soft place in my armor. And he didn't hesitate to drive the knife straight through it.

I broke.

I bowed.

My spine bent, my head dropped, my pride bled out onto the cold stone floor at Mira's heels. My wolf, who had never once lowered her gaze for anyone, lay down inside me and went silent.

"Please," I whispered, tears falling in hot rivers down my cheeks. "Please just leave my mother in peace. Let her rest."

Each word was a razor in my throat. "I'm sorry. I was wrong."

Wrong for hoping for fairness in a world built on blood debts under the Moon.

Wrong for believing, foolishly, pathetically, that maybe, just maybe, he'd choose me over her.

As I bent forward in supplication, the blood-soaked collar of my dress pulled away from my skin, baring the wounds beneath.

Dorian's eyes flickered. For a split second something almost living surfaced in those dark depths, surprise, perhaps, or the ghost of the boy he'd once been.

"Is this enough for you?" I straightened with every last ounce of strength left in my shattered body, meeting his gaze with a disgust I could barely keep behind my teeth.

His jaw tightened. He gestured sharply to his Beta's aide. "Bring the oath."

Only when I pressed my bloody fingerprint onto the parchment, surrendering my claims in the pack's holdings, signing away my mother's legacy, did the tension finally ease from his brow.

"You're bleeding," he observed, as if noting the turn of the weather. "I'll send for a healer."

He released Mira and moved toward me, reaching out with the hand that had once cradled my face like I was something precious.

I slapped it away.

"Save your concern for your precious bedmate," I spat. "Better hurry. Wait any longer and those theatrical bruises might fade before anyone who matters sees them."

I turned to leave, my vision swimming, my legs threatening to buckle.

Mira's foot shot out with serpentine precision.

I tripped hard, crashing forward toward the unforgiving stone.

Dorian's instincts fired, the reflexes of a wolf trained since puphood to protect what was his. He reached out.

Then he stopped himself. His hand froze inches from my falling body.

He stepped back.

"Fine." His voice was ice. "Tend your wounds yourself."

I forced myself upright, swallowing the scream that clawed at my throat as pain lanced through every nerve.

He watched me from the doorway, Mira tucked possessively against his side. "I'll go with you to choose your gown tomorrow," he said, as if we were discussing nothing at all. "The Mating Ceremony won't plan itself."

The heavy carved doors swung shut on his impassive face.

My body swayed, the dizziness from blood loss rising in nauseating waves. The chandelier of antlers and crystal overhead fractured into a thousand spinning shards.

In the blur of agony, memory dragged me backward, back to a different time. Back to when we were young and the world hadn't yet taught us its cruelest lessons.

Dorian was just nineteen when his father began grooming him to take the pack. He'd worked through endless nights learning what it meant to lead, the borderland patrols, the alliance pacts, the things done in shadow, his eyes perpetually rimmed with exhaustion. One evening I burned my hand making broth for him over the den's hearth. Just a small blister, barely worth mentioning.

Yet somehow he found out. He walked out of a sit-down with three pack capos and ran the forest trail home like the devil himself was at his heels, taking the ridge in his wolf form and tearing through brush and root all the way back.

He caught my hand and cradled it like I was made of spun glass.

"I'm so sorry, little wolf. I should have protected you," he said, his voice rough with guilt. "I swear it on my mother's grave, by the Moon Goddess, as long as I'm breathing, I'll never let anything hurt you again."

Then he pulled me into his arms. Warm. Strong. Trembling just slightly with the force of his conviction. That embrace, and that vow under the Moon, had branded themselves into my memory like a scar.

But that boy was long dead.

He'd grown into a cold, calculating Alpha who looked at me like I was nothing. Like I was disposable. Like I was a loose thread waiting to be cut.

Now he was the one hurting me the most.

I stumbled toward the side entrance, the one the den-keepers used. The edges of my vision darkened, collapsing inward like a dying star.

But before I hit the ground, I fell into someone's arms.

A stranger's arms. Firm and unfamiliar, carrying a scent I didn't know, cedar and cold iron and the static charge that comes just before a thunderstorm. Something dangerous. And beneath the breaking-down dark of me, my wolf lifted her head for the first time in hours.

Before the blackness swallowed me whole, I heard a single whisper against the shell of my ear, a voice like smoke and shadow.

"Do you want revenge?"

The words curled around me like a devil's bargain, offered at the crossroads of desperation and death.

"In exchange for those claims you just signed away I'll help you find the proof of who really killed your mother."

Tears carved silent rivers down my face as I clung, half-conscious, to the stranger's shirt, the fine wool damp beneath my trembling fingers. His scent wrapped around me, cedar and cold iron and the static charge before a thunderstorm, steadying me even as the world went dark.

"Re venge" The word escaped my lips like a dying prayer, barely formed, yet heavy with the weight of a blood oath sworn under the Moon.

When I opened my eyes again, all I saw was white, too bright, too sterile. The sharp tang of healing herbs and scrubbed stone flooded my senses, a stark contrast to the darkness that had swallowed me whole. A Healing Hall. My wolf stirred beneath my skin, uneasy in a den that smelled of strangers.

I turned my head slowly, wincing at the dull ache that radiated through every fiber of my body, and reached for my crystal communicator. A message from Dorian waited on the screen, sent the night before.

[I've got pack business to handle tomorrow. Go try on the mating gown by yourself. Our ceremony is approaching, so pull yourself together. Stop with the dramatics and join the Ravenpack with some dignity.]

I stared at the message for a long moment, my face an unreadable mask, then dragged my finger across the screen and watched the words disappear into oblivion.

But just beneath it, something else caught my eye, a post from Mira's spirit-network page.

Dorian had taken her on the pack's private storm-hawk to chase the aurora in some frozen corner of the northern territories, far from prying eyes.

In the ethereal green haze of those dancing lights, their silhouettes stood close together, intimate as conspirators. Matching moonstone bands glinted on their fingers, fingers tightly intertwined like the roots of a poisonous vine.

The caption pierced through me like a stiletto blade:

[He told me I'm the only one for him. He promised to protect me from all the cruelty in this world. How could I ever let go of a mate like that?]

Below it, a cutesy account bearing paired cartoon avatars had commented:

[And no matter how far you try to run from me, I'll find you. I'll tie you to my side forever. So don't even try, silly girl.]

I didn't need to verify the source. I knew that tone, that possessive flair, that dark promise wrapped in honeyed words. That was Dorian.

I could tell from the typing style alone.

I remembered the day I asked him to use matching avatars with me. He had rolled his eyes, his handsome face twisting with contempt.

"What are you, a pup? Can't you see I'm handling pack affairs? Now leave!"

And yet I had once dreamed of standing beneath the northern lights with him, a stolen moment away from the shadows that governed our lives. I had planned the route down to the smallest detail. He said he was too busy. Every time, that was the excuse: too busy.

Now I finally understood the truth that had been staring me in the face all along. He could be romantic. He could be tender and devoted. He just never chose to be that way with me.

I set the communicator down on the stiff linens, trying to blink back the sting behind my eyes.

That's when I noticed the envelope sitting quietly on the bedside table, cream-colored and expensive.

Inside it was a passage ticket aboard the storm-hawk. Departure in two days.

And a small note, written in an elegant hand:

[You're welcome. Hope you like the gift. For your mating ceremony. L.]

So I was right. The wolf who had carried me through the darkness and delivered me to safety was none other than Lucan Ashborne, the ghost of a slaughtered bloodline who had returned from the dead to become Dorian's worst enemy.

I sent him a quiet thank-you, my fingers hovering over the keys longer than necessary, and checked myself out of the Healing Hall not long after.

Then the ceremony coordinator called. The gown my mother had ordered for me, commissioned from the finest seamstress in the borderland market, paid for with years of her modest savings, had been altered to fit. It was ready.

It was the last gift she left me before the Ravenpack let her die. I had to pick it up.

But when I stepped into the boutique, the chime above the door ringing softly, I froze.

There stood Mira, twirling in my gown.

"Selene you came." She spun in front of the gilded mirror with a saccharine smile, her voice dripping with venom disguised as honey. Her scent reached me first, overripe jasmine and sugared decay over a faint trace of iron, and my wolf bristled, low and silent, hackles rising beneath my skin.

"I just had to make sure it fits, you know. Trying to help you out."

She tugged the neckline lower with deliberate provocation, revealing fresh red marks scattered across her chest like a constellation of sin. Her tone turned mockingly bashful.

"Oh no, it's Dorian's fault, he's just too passionate. I told him to be gentle"

I stared at her performance, cold and unblinking as a statue carved from marble.

"You really did inherit your mother's talent for stealing other she-wolves' mates."

Her smile twitched, then curved into something crueler, the mask slipping to reveal the predator beneath.

"Oh? Didn't you hear?" She placed a hand over her stomach with theatrical tenderness. "I'm carrying Dorian's bloodline heir."

"And your blood oath?" She laughed, the sound like shattering crystal. "It's fake."

She flashed a crystal orb in her palm. A dim back room of some pack club. Mira draped across Dorian's lap like a trophy.

He was drinking, his lips brushing against her temple with casual affection.

"Do your best and bring the pup into this world. When it's born, I'll gift him the Ravenpack hunting grounds. Everything."

Mira asked in a coy voice: "But what about my sister?"

Dorian chuckled, the sound dark and dismissive. "I never truly bound myself to her. I've been slipping suppressants into her milk for moons. She can't conceive. When the time comes, I'll just claim we took in an orphaned pup."

It was like being struck by lightning. My head spun. My legs nearly buckled beneath me, and I had to grip the edge of a display case to stay upright. Deep inside, my wolf went utterly still, the kind of stillness that comes right before something breaks.

So that was it.

Whatever love had existed between us had died a long time ago. I was just too blind, too desperate to believe in the fairy tale, to notice the corpse rotting at my feet.

I sucked in a sharp breath, straightened my spine with the dignity my mother had taught me, and forced a smile onto my face.

"Well, congratulations. Becoming the next Luna of the Ravenpack is just around the corner."

"But that gown is mine. Take it off," I said, my voice dropping to ice.

I lunged forward to reclaim it, but before my fingers could even brush the fabric, one of her warriors, assigned by Dorian himself, drove his boot into my stomach.

The force knocked me flat against the polished floor. Pain exploded through my gut like a grenade. I could feel everything twisting, shifting, as though my insides had been rearranged by the brutal impact.

Mira picked up a pair of shears from the seamstress's table. Her tone was gleeful as she traced the blade over the delicate silk, savoring the moment.

"Dorian said no matter what I do, he'll clean up my mess. That's what it means to have the protection of the pack."

The sharp edge tore through hand-stitched lace. Slashed through soft silk that my mother had saved for years to afford. With each cut, she shredded the last gift my mother had ever given me, the only piece of her I had left. From somewhere far down inside me, my wolf let out a sound I'd never heard it make, a low, broken keening that had no name.

I just lay there on the cold floor, watching the pieces flutter down like snowflakes in a graveyard.

Even my hatred felt dull now, numbed by the crushing weight of everything I had lost.

Mira strutted out of the boutique, her heels clicking against the marble like a victory march, leaving nothing but wreckage in her wake.

I dragged myself back to the mountain den across the territories or rather, what used to feel like home.

Once I got there, I tore open every drawer and chest with trembling hands, yanked out every gift Dorian had ever given me, the jewelry that now felt like shackles, the fine furs that were nothing but gilded cages, the carved trinkets from those early days when I still believed his lies.

One by one, I threw them all in the trash.

Behind me, I heard footsteps approaching.

Familiar ones.

Dorian paused at the den's threshold, one hand resting on the carved blackwood frame. "What did you throw away?"

I didn't even look at him.

"Just some garbage I should've gotten rid of long ago."

He didn't seem to care. As if suddenly remembering something, he added casually, "I heard Mira accidentally damaged the ceremony gown. But don't worry. I've asked the den-weaver to rush a new one. It'll be ready in time for the Mating Ceremony."

He slung his coat over one shoulder, the lining catching the dim light. The cold ash and tarnished copper of his scent drifted past me, and something in my chest that should have warmed at it stayed dead and quiet.

"Remember, tomorrow night's the gathering at the estate. Don't be late. I've got pack business, so I'm not coming back to the den tonight."

He took his keys and left. Not once did he glance at the overflowing refuse bin behind me, filled with everything he'd ever given me.

The next night, 8:00 PM.

I arrived at the Ravenmoor Pack's grand lodge alone.

The moment I stepped into the moonlit gardens, I saw them.

Dorian and Mira.

Dressed in matching ceremonial finery, bathed in warm lantern light like the Alpha and Luna already crowned. The high bloodlines of the Five Packs milled about them, goblets of moonwine glinting like scattered ice in the evening air.

Vesper Ravenmoor's face twisted the moment she saw me. Her smile dropped like a cracked mask. She wore the silver collar-piece Mira had gifted her, a gaudy thing dripping with moonstones that screamed new blood trying to buy old prestige. Her eyes ran over me with undisguised disdain, cold orchid and bitter frost sharpening on the air, cataloging every flaw, every perceived slight against her precious bloodline.

"You're an hour late. No surprise. No manners at all, just like your mother the thief."

But Dorian told me the gathering started at eight.

I clenched my fists, my nails biting into my palms. Something deep beneath my skin pressed up, low and hurting, and I forced it back down.

A long time ago, I'd mentioned in passing that Mira's mother had been a kept she-wolf, one who'd spread herself for a mated male. The next day, Vesper Ravenmoor's missing jewels "miraculously" appeared beneath my mother's pillow.

Dorian knew my mother had been framed.

He never defended me. Not once.

But now I didn't grovel. I didn't drop my gaze or bow my head like a good little den-keeper's daughter should. I looked straight into Vesper Ravenmoor's cold eyes, then right at Mira's smug little face.

"I'm not here to be insulted," I said, my voice cutting through the garden's polite murmur like a blade through silk. Then I looked Mira dead in the eye. "My mother was not a thief. She didn't raise me to seduce males like some women raise their daughters."

The words had barely left my mouth when a vicious slap exploded across my cheek.

My ears rang. My body hit the ground hard, the manicured grass cold and damp beneath my palms.

The metallic taste of blood filled my mouth.

Dorian stood over me, expression cold and condescending, the face of a male raised to believe his word was law, his judgment absolute. His Alpha aura rolled off him, thickening the air, and every lower wolf in that garden felt the pressure of it and looked away.

"You spread rumors about her! Don't you know it makes her suffer? How long are you gonna keep this going? Do you want her to throw herself off the cliffs?"

I pushed myself up, my face burning with rage.

"She suffered? She?!" I barked out a laugh, bitter and broken, the sound of something inside me finally snapping. "She suffered from her own stupid choices! And you, you know exactly what she did. My mother is dead! I lost everything and you're just going to stand there and let her play the victim?!"

The whispers started, quiet at first, like a ripple across still water, then louder as the gathered wolves leaned in. In this world, gossip was currency, and I'd just handed them a fortune.

Dorian's jaw clenched tight, a muscle ticking beneath his skin.

"Leave," he growled under his breath, the sound low in his chest but carrying the full weight of a threat. "Go calm yourself down. You've embarrassed yourself enough in front of the guests."

The garden buzzed with high-blood chatter, the connected wolves of the Five Packs, all watching the spectacle with barely concealed delight.

Magnus and Vesper Ravenmoor quickly stepped in with goblets of moonwine, smiling stiffly like puppet masters smoothing over a minor disruption.

"Let's not ruin the evening. Come, everyone, drink up!"

Guests swarmed Dorian and Mira with congratulations.

"Cheers to the happy pair!"

"Congratulations to the future Alpha and Luna, such a perfect match!"

Dorian had always said he wanted our arrangement to be a "surprise."

He never told a soul about us.

And now?

He smiled like a gentleman, standing next to Mira like she'd always been the promised mate, like the life-debt his bloodline owed my mother under the Moon had never existed.

He didn't even try to explain.

She clung to his arm like she belonged there, her fingers curled possessively around his sleeve, her overripe jasmine and sugared decay winding through the cleaner scent of him.

Under the glittering lanterns, they looked like a picture-perfect couple, the heir apparent and his beautiful intended, a union that would strengthen the Ravenmoor name for generations.

While I stood there like a wet stain on white fur.

I let out a breathless, bitter laugh and turned to go, but a hand blocked my way.

Mira.

She smiled like she'd already won, like she'd been winning since the day she first spread herself for my intended mate.

"Leaving so soon?" she cooed, her voice dripping with false sweetness. "But I haven't told you how that old woman died."

My heart stopped.

The garden noise faded to a dull roar, replaced by the thundering of my own pulse. Somewhere beneath my ribs my wolf went utterly still, the way prey goes still when it scents the kill.

"What did you just say?"

She leaned in close, her scent cloying and thick, her voice low enough that only I could hear, a whisper meant for the damned.

"I told her if she wanted the money back, she'd have to film herself doing something special. You know, the kind males pay for." She grinned, her teeth white and sharp in the lantern light. "But she got all high and mighty. She refused and even had the nerve to insult me and my mom."

A twisted laugh escaped her painted lips.

"So I gave her what she deserved."

She sighed dramatically, as if recounting a minor inconvenience rather than a murder.

"Did you know? She barely made it through fifty males before she collapsed. Still had the nerve to clutch my leg and beg, beg me to return the money to her 'sweet daughter.'"

She made a clicking sound with her tongue, savoring the memory like aged moonwine.

"Pathetic, really."

Her words struck like a blade between the ribs.

For a moment, rage consumed me. A wildfire that burned through every nerve, every thought, every shred of restraint I'd ever possessed. No sound escaped my throat. Only fury, raw and blinding, coiling in my chest like a serpent preparing to strike. Beneath my skin my wolf surged upward, snarling, claws scraping for the surface.

Then I snapped.

I lunged at Mira.

Fists clenched. Nails sinking into flesh like talons.

I seized her hair, wrenched her down, clawed at her face, her throat, anywhere I could reach. The silk of her gown tore beneath my fingers like the lies she'd woven around my life, and her overripe-jasmine scent fouled in my nose, sugared decay over a thread of iron.

"You monster! Give me my mother back, you stronza!"

But before I could draw blood, before I could carve the truth into her treacherous skin, agony exploded through my spine. Then my ribs. The pack warriors were on me in an instant, their boots connecting with bone, their fists driving me to the cold stone of the great hall until I curled into myself like a broken thing. My wolf howled and went silent under the weight of them.

Gasps rippled through the gathering like wind through dead leaves.

Dorian shoved past the crowd, his face carved from granite.

He didn't spare me a glance.

He went straight to Mira, sobbing, trembling, performing the role of wounded dove with practiced perfection, and gathered her into his arms as though she were spun from glass.

When his eyes finally cut toward me, they held the warmth of a midwinter grave. His Alpha aura rolled out across the hall, thick and cold, and every lower wolf around us dropped their gaze on instinct. Mine I kept raised.

"You've gone too far." His voice was quiet. Lethal. "Kneel. Apologize to her. Now."

I stared at him through blood-matted hair, disbelief clawing at my throat.

He wasn't finished.

"Your mother was weak. She got cast aside and died chasing scraps. Now you're blaming Mira for your own blood's failures? Everyone here witnessed what you did." His lip curled with disgust. "Are you proud of yourself, Selene? Is this the respect you bring to our mating?"

The hall hummed with whispers, growing louder and uglier with each passing heartbeat, vultures circling carrion.

"I heard her mother once took jewels from Luna Vesper's own collection," one she-wolf murmured, her voice deliberately carrying across the stone. "Word is she died in some rogue snatch gone wrong. Turned up sold off to the Omega-traders like livestock. Honestly? Sounds like she had it coming. Disloyal blood runs true."

"And the daughter's cut from the same cloth," another voice added with venomous satisfaction. "Ungrateful little puttana. Den-bred to sink her claws into males above her station. Just like her whore of a mother."

I remained on my knees, the cold of the stone seeping through silk into bone. I wanted to scream, to tell them they were wrong. That my mother wasn't a thief. That Rosalind Hollowthorn had kept the Ravenpack den for twenty winters with more loyalty than any of them would ever understand. That I wasn't some scheming she-wolf trying to climb above my place.

But my throat was dust. My voice, stolen. Even my wolf had curled small inside me, mute.

Dorian's patience frayed like old rope.

"Apologize, Selene. I'll count to three." His words fell like hammer blows. "One... two"

Disappointment seared through every fiber of my being, a betrayal more complete than any blade could deliver.

I gave in.

My knees cracked against the unforgiving stone. I lifted my chin, then drove my forehead down in a bow so violent I tasted copper flooding my mouth.

"I'm sorry. I was wrong. I'm sorry, I'm sorry"

Blood mingled with tears, blurring the world into watercolors of crimson and gold.

I raised my head with a smile that felt like broken glass cutting my own face.

"Is that enough, Dorian? Did your precious comare receive sufficient tribute?"

He froze. Something flickered behind his eyes, a crack in the ice, a ghost of the boy who'd once laced his fingers through mine in his mother's moonlit garden. His pupils contracted as though he finally saw me. Saw the ruin he'd made of us both. For half a breath I caught the cedar-and-cold-iron edge of him shift, the storm-charge of a wolf pulled two ways at once.

He took half a step forward.

But Mira's fingers dug into his arm, her voice quivering with manufactured terror.

"Dorian, I'm frightened... look at her eyes. She's lost her mind..."

He hesitated. The crack sealed over, smooth as fresh ice on a winter pond.

He stepped back. Drew her closer against his chest.

His gaze slid away from mine like oil on water. When he spoke again, his voice was hollow. Mechanical. The voice of a male already washing his hands.

"Go home. Try not to bring any more disgrace to this pack."

I rose. Somehow. My legs trembled like a newborn pup's, but I refused to fall. Not here. Not before these jackals in their fine pelts and finer pretenses.

I turned to face him one final time.

The male I'd loved for a decade. The heir I'd been promised to since I was a girl. The future Alpha who couldn't recognize loyalty when it knelt bleeding at his feet.

Then I walked away.

The crowd parted before me, not from respect, but from revulsion. As though my grief were contagious. As though my mother's murder might somehow stain their precious bloodlines.

Let them look.

Let them remember this moment when the reckoning came.

The night bit with savage cold when I reached the pyre grounds at the edge of the territory. I stood in silence as my mother, Rosalind Hollowthorn, faithful den-keeper, devoted parent, the she-wolf who'd once dragged a Ravenpack heir from a rival pack's raiders and earned nothing but contempt for it, turned to ash.

The flames consumed her. Orange and gold and terrible.

When her remains scattered into the dark river that ran the border, so did the last tether binding my heart to this world. Deep inside me my wolf finally made a sound, a low keening I'd never heard it make before, and then it too went still.

Gone. Just like that.

At midnight, I slipped the promise-ring from my finger, the moonstone token of a blood pact that had never been honored. I set it gently inside the drawer of the bedroom I'd shared with Dorian's ghost for three hollow years.

No need for a formal severing of the bond. His devotion had never been real to begin with.

How convenient.

I wheeled my single suitcase to the front door of the Ravenmoor den, my footsteps echoing through halls that had never truly been my home. No mate-mark warmed at my neck. There had never been one to warm.

My communicator buzzed.

Dorian: [Did you get your wounds tended? Mira says she forgives you. Let's put this behind us and focus on tomorrow.]

Dorian: [I picked up a new gown for the ceremony. Hand-beaded lace. Gorgeous. I'll have it sent over.]

No reply.

A moment passed. The crystal buzzed again, more insistent.

Dorian: [Asleep already? Why aren't you answering? It's our Mating Ceremony tomorrow. The alliance between our packs becomes official. Be good, Selene. Don't embarrass me again.]

I blocked him. Every channel. Every account bound to his name. I pried the rune-shard from the communicator, snapped it cleanly in half between my fingers, and dropped the pieces down a storm drain as I walked toward the waiting car.

Just like him. Discarded. Forgotten.

A black sedan idled by the iron gates, its engine purring like a patient predator.

I slid into the leather interior.

"To the private airfield."

The territory lights raced past my window, smearing into ghosts against the rain-streaked glass. Ten years of memories, of stolen kisses in moonlit gardens, of whispered promises, of love that had rotted from the inside like a poisoned apple, dissolved into shadow.

I watched the Ravenmoor compound disappear in the side mirror.

"We will never meet again, Dorian." My voice was steady now. Cold as the river waters that held my mother's ashes. "And by sunrise, your mating gift will arrive. Right on time."

The car merged onto the highway, carrying me toward a new life.

Behind me, a bloodline prepared to burn.