Chapter 1

The smoke made Lilia cough twice.

Looking anxious, Alpha Eric held her tightly against him and frowned at me.

"Dora, Lilia has promised me the pup will be given to you to raise. There's no need to be angry. She won't disturb our life."

The firelight made my eyes burn and redden.

I spoke without any feeling.

"Eric, I want to dissolve the mate bond."

Eric's pupils contracted all at once.

He let go of Lilia abruptly, took a long stride forward, and seized my wrist, his grip painfully tight and his voice full of impatience.

"Dora, are you out of your mind?! Lilia grew up with me. She shielded me from a vampire ambush, then was poisoned with wolfsbane while saving me. I owe her my life twice over.

"Why can't you see the bigger picture? Do you really have to hold a grudge against a pregnant Omega?"

Every word of it was a reproach to me and a defense of Lilia.

Seeing my dark expression, he shot the Beta and the Gamma a look.

They all knelt down in front of me together.

"Luna, you may not like this, but today we have to speak up for Lilia."

"She's a pure, spotless girl who lost her innocence because of the Alpha. It wouldn't be going too far to call her Luna!"

"Luna, you handle the logistics. You don't know how hard Lilia worked at the border, how she pulled the Alpha out of danger. Everything she's given to the Alpha and to this pack, we should all be grateful for."

"If you ask me, Lilia is the one fit to be Luna, and now she's the one being wronged..."

"That's enough!"

Eric turned and roared at them, then looked back at me and tried to soften his gaze.

"Dora, you will always be my mate, my only Luna!

"But I have to take responsibility for what's in Lilia's belly."

With that, he turned and stroked Lilia's cheek, his face full of concern for her.

Something bitter rose in my throat. I opened my mouth and no words came.

The others didn't know, but Eric knew perfectly well.

Eric and I had once fought side by side. At the border, during a battle against the vampires, I took a blade to the heart for him.

I was unconscious for three months that time, and when I woke I had lost the ability to fight at full strength.

He knelt at my hospital bed and swore that his loyalty belonged to me alone and that he would protect me all his life.

Now he knelt in front of me again, and it was to protect another woman.

Not only that. He had cut the mind-link between us.

It had been a week since I found out I was pregnant, and he hadn't sensed a thing.

I turned in silence and left.

Eric caught up quickly, took off his coat and laid it gently over my shoulders.

"It's cold out here. Don't catch a chill. Dora, you never do take care of yourself properly."

My hand went to my stomach without thinking, and I almost told him about the baby, and then he cut me off.

"Dora, Lilia gets cold easily. Give her the climate-controlled house in the city center. I'll send you to the border castle to rest."

The words stopped in my throat, and I forced them back down.

When I took that blade for Eric, I was left with a heart condition, weak and unable to bear the cold.

He had built that climate-controlled house for me to ease it.

And at the border the winter wind tore through everything, and my body simply couldn't take it.

Besides, that castle had stood abandoned for a long time.

He used to bring me the best of everything.

Now he wanted me to hand all of it to Lilia.

Was she the woman he loved enough to defy his own mate for?

His heart had left me long ago.

I lowered my eyes and answered quietly, "All right."

He kissed my cheek, delighted.

"Dora, you're always the one who understands."

He hurried back inside, lifted Lilia into his arms, and his fussing voice drifted to me on the wind.

I closed my cold fingers into a fist, shaking a little.