LOGIN**Mona POVThey brought me back into the hall when the recess ended.The atmosphere had changed. The earlier chaos had hardened into something colder and more deliberate. Wolves stood in tighter clusters. The elders had reseated themselves in a formal line. The Beta looked like a man who had aged a year in an hour. Alessandro stood alone in the open space before them, shoulders square, the bond between us pulled so tight I could feel the strain in my teeth.Mom was not in her previous seat. She stood to the side with two ranking females, face unreadable, eyes fixed on nothing.Gray rose.“The council has deliberated,” he said. The hall quieted at once. “The evidence is admitted. The admissions are recorded. The Luna has formally requested dissolution of the mate bond. The pack has been given the truth the Alpha previously withheld.”He turned fully to Alessandro.“Under pack law, an Alpha who forms a competing mate bond while still bound, who conceals that bond from his pack and his
Mona POVThey separated us before the recess ended.Two senior warriors escorted me out of the main hall through a side corridor while the pack’s voices still roared behind the closed doors. Alessandro tried to follow. The Beta and two others blocked him—not with force, but with the formal weight of the council’s order. Through the bond I felt the moment he chose not to break through them. The cost of that choice hit me like a second pulse.They put me in a small antechamber used for waiting witnesses. Bare walls. One window too high to reach. A single door that locked from the outside. I sat on the wooden bench and pressed both hands against my chest, focusing on the bond so I wouldn’t come apart. Alessandro’s presence was a hard, bright line of fury and calculation in the back of my mind. He was still in the hall. Still fighting in words what he could not yet fight with teeth.I didn’t expect Mom to be the one who opened the door.She stepped inside alone and closed it behind her. F
Mona POVThe hall did not quiet easily.Voices crashed over each other—outrage, disbelief, the sharp edge of wolves who had just watched their Alpha confirm the worst interpretation of the images on the screen. Someone near the back shouted a word I had only ever heard used for the lowest kind of betrayal. Another demanded an immediate challenge. The Beta was calling for order and being only partly heard.Through it all Alessandro stood still.His hand remained at the small of my back, steady and open, not gripping, not hiding. The bond between us was pulled tight as a wire, carrying his absolute focus and the cold acceptance of what he had just done. There was no retreat in him. No attempt to soften the admission or walk it back.Gray finally struck the formal staff against the floor hard enough to crack through the noise.“Order.”The worst of the shouting dropped into a thick, seething murmur. Hundreds of eyes moved between Alessandro, me, and Mom, who was still standing in the fro
Mona POVAlessandro collected me at sundown.He did not come inside. He waited at the front door, expression carved down to pure control, and held out his hand. The bond between us was tight and thrumming, carrying his focus and the underlying fury he was not allowing to surface. I took his hand. Neither of us spoke on the drive to the pack house.The parking area was full.That was the first sign this was no longer a closed council matter. Cars and trucks lined the gravel. Wolves moved toward the main hall in tense, quiet groups. This was not the senior circle alone. This was an emergency full session—ranking members, senior warriors, family heads, and enough of the wider pack that the air itself felt heavier with attention.Alessandro’s hand tightened around mine once before we stepped out of the car.“Stay beside me,” he said under his breath. “Do not answer anything until I tell you to. If the bond spikes, breathe through it. They will be watching for weakness.”I nodded.The main
Mona POVThe call came just before ten.I was still in the guest room with the doors locked and the phone on only for Alessandro, exactly as he had ordered, when the bond surged with a spike of cold fury that was not mine. A moment later his name lit the screen.“Lucas couldn’t contain it,” Alessandro said without greeting. His voice was clipped, controlled, and carrying the edge of a man whose options had just narrowed. “One of the three elders forwarded the images before the seal order landed. Gray called an emergency full council. It convenes in an hour.”My stomach dropped. “All of them?”“All senior elders, ranking officers, and the Luna. The partial set is already being treated as sufficient grounds for formal review.” A hard breath. “Dargrel’s noon deadline is irrelevant now. The evidence is inside the structure. The council will see it.”The restored bond carried the weight of what he wasn’t saying. A full council was not a private conversation. It was the mechanism the pack u
Mona POVThe first photo arrived on my phone at 6:14 a.m.I was still in the guest room, the restored bond humming steadily under my sternum, when the screen lit up with a message from a blocked number. For a second I almost didn’t open it. Then the preview loaded, and the breath left my body.The image was dark, grainy, taken from a distance through trees—but not dark enough. Alessandro’s black wolf was unmistakable. So was the smaller gray-and-white form half-shifted beneath him in the mossy hollow. The angle caught enough of my human face in the transition to leave no real doubt.A second image followed. Then a third.One from the school courtyard—Alessandro’s hand on my arm, the look on his face as he pulled me away from Dargrel. One from the parking lot days earlier, his body caging mine against the SUV. None of them were explicit enough to be pornographic. All of them were damning enough to end him.The message beneath the final photo was short.**Blocked:** Partial release to t







