Chapter 2

ISABELLA’S POV

By afternoon, I had almost convinced myself that everything would be all right.

I sat in the palace gardens, watching the warriors train beyond the hedges. The investigation had been underway for hours, and I kept returning to Zane's promise to discover how the stranger had ended up in our chambers. Once he knew the truth, surely he would understand that whatever had happened that morning was not what it appeared to be.

I wanted to believe we could still repair the damage between us. Zane had been my closest friend long before he became my Alpha, and I couldn't accept that one terrible morning could erase everything we had shared.

A guard approached and bowed.

“Luna, the Alpha summons you to the council chamber. He requests your presence.”

I followed him through the palace, hoping this was the moment when the uncertainty would finally end.

When the council chamber doors opened, I found Zane standing at the head of the table, surrounded by elders. Monica sat among them, her expression tense. Nobody greeted me, and the atmosphere was so strained that my steps slowed as I entered.

“Sit down, Isabella,” Zane ordered.

I took the nearest chair, then noticed the man standing between two guards.

It was the stranger from my chambers. His face was badly swollen, one eye almost closed, and dried blood marked his mouth. Whatever had happened during his interrogation, the guards had made certain he would not leave it unscathed.

I looked at Zane, waiting for an explanation.

“This man has given us an account of what happened last night,” he said. “Apparently, it was not the first time the two of you had been in contact.”

I turned toward the stranger, confused by the implication.

He lifted his head. “My name is Demian. I'm the Beta of the Bloodfang Rogues, and I've been working with the Luna for months.”

For a moment, I thought I had misunderstood him.

“The Luna?” I asked.

“You know who I'm talking about,” Demian replied.

“I don't understand what you're accusing me of.”

“Let him finish,” Zane snapped.

I looked back at Demian, waiting for him to explain.

“The Luna has been providing us with information about Ashen Pack,” he continued. “Patrol schedules, border defences, the places where your guards are weakest. We've been communicating for months.”

I stared at him. I had never heard the name Demian before that morning, yet he spoke as though I had been secretly working alongside him for half a year.

“That's not true,” I said.

Demian gave a bitter smile. “You can deny it, but the evidence is already here.”

Zane struck the table with his palm. “Do you understand what you're saying? You're telling this council that my wife helped the Bloodfang Rogues infiltrate my territory.”

“I'm telling you what happened, Alpha.”

“You'd better be certain of your story.”

The threat in Zane's voice made the guards tighten their grip on Demian's arms. My husband was furious, and the pain beneath his anger was unmistakable. He believed someone he had trusted might have used that trust against the pack.

One of the elders opened a bundle of documents.

“These were recovered from Demian's belongings.”

Zane unfolded the first letter. The paper was yellowed, its edges worn, and the ink had faded in places. When he passed it to the elders, I caught sight of the seal at the bottom.

My Luna seal.

The letter contained details about patrol routes and changes to the guards along the border, information that could expose weaknesses in our defences. Beneath the writing was my name, accompanied by the seal I used on official pack correspondence.

“These letters are dated over several months,” an elder explained. “Some contain information about our territory that was known only to a limited number of people. Others contain details recorded before the rogue attack two months ago.”

I studied the page, unable to reconcile the writing with the woman whose name appeared beneath it. The dates suggested that whoever had written these letters knew about our defences long before the attack, but I had never seen any of them.

“Someone has also confessed to carrying messages between the Luna and Demian,” another elder added. “The account corresponds with the dates on these letters.”

The room fell silent. I looked at Zane, hoping he would consider the possibility that the documents were not what they appeared to be, but his expression told me he had already reached a different conclusion.

“Not only were you fucking him, Isabella, you were also providing him with our pack's information?”

Zane's words carried through the chamber, leaving no doubt that he had begun to see the accusation as more than a personal betrayal.

“Zane, I don't know anything about those letters,” I said.

I looked at the documents again, searching for something that might help me understand how they had been made. Nothing on those pages explained how they had come into existence, and I had no answer that could make the evidence disappear.

Before I could speak, a guard placed another bundle on the table.

“These were found among the Luna's personal belongings,” he reported. “The contents correspond with the letters recovered from Demian.”

The elders examined the second bundle, comparing the pages. The same seal appeared on them, along with details matching the correspondence found in Demian's possession. The evidence now appeared to connect Demian, the letters, and my own chambers in a way I could not explain.

Across the table, Monica covered her mouth with one hand, her eyes fixed on the documents. She looked as appalled as the other council members, but I barely registered her reaction. My attention remained on Zane.

He was the only person in the room whose belief in me could have changed everything.

“Zane,” I said quietly, “you know me.”

His jaw tightened.

“I trusted you with my home, my name, and the lives of everyone under my protection.” His voice was rough with anger. “I never imagined I would find myself questioning whether my own wife had helped our enemies.”

“Two of our pack's cubs died in that attack, Isabella, and you may have helped make it possible.”

His words made the accusation far more serious than a betrayal of our marriage. Zane believed I might have supplied the information that helped the rogues reach our pack, putting the lives of everyone under his protection at risk.

I searched his face for some sign that our years together still mattered enough for him to question the evidence, but he looked away.

“I thought I knew you.”

The words left me with nothing to say. I had entered the chamber believing the investigation would give us a way back to each other. Instead, I was watching Zane decide that the woman he had married was capable of betraying everything he had sworn to protect.

“A woman accused of conspiring with our enemies cannot continue to wear the Luna crown while these allegations stand. And I will not allow anyone who may have betrayed this pack to remain my mate.”

He looked at me one last time, and I searched his face for the man who had promised to stand beside me regardless of what the world believed. All I found was a husband who had already begun to grieve the woman he thought he had married.

“Prepare the bond-breaking ritual,” he ordered. “At dawn, Isabella will be stripped of her Luna title and banished from Ashen Pack.”

The guards moved toward me.

I remained beside the table, staring at the letters that had turned my entire life against me, unable to understand how I could prove my innocence when every piece of evidence seemed designed to make the truth impossible to believe. The man I had expected to defend me had become the one passing judgment, and no matter how desperately I searched his face, I could no longer find the trust that had once made me feel safe beside him.