Chapter 3 Liar

Sera's POV

Staring at the photo on my screen, a sharp pain tore through my heart.

In five years we had made love countless times, but Cassian had never once been willing to mark me.

I had loved Cassian since I was eight years old.

That year I slipped out of the house to play and found an abandoned cabin in the woods near the border. There was a boy locked inside. He wouldn't tell me why he'd been shut in there. He only said he hadn't eaten in days.

I started sneaking him food every day, and I talked with him.

Then one day the cabin caught fire.

By the time I got there the flames had already burned through half the roof. A fallen beam had pinned his leg, and he lay on the floor unable to move. Everyone was shouting that it was too dangerous, not to go in. I climbed through the window. As I dragged him out, a burning splinter struck my left shoulder.

The moment someone pulled us apart, his face was streaming with tears and he gripped my hand and wouldn't let go. The fire that hadn't yet died behind us was reflected in his grey eyes, and his voice shook, but every word was clear and certain. "When I grow up and become Alpha, I'll come back and marry you."

I took the moon pendant my mother had given me, broke off half, and pressed it into his palm, hoping he wouldn't forget me.

I didn't see Cassian again for ten years. I knew those grey eyes the instant I saw them. And what sent me soaring was that on the day I came into my wolf, Vivia screamed in my head that he was our fated mate.

I thought it was a gift from the Moon Goddess. But he coldly refused to marry me.

I told myself he was afraid of marriage because of his parents' broken one, so I naively drew up that five-year contract. I gave him five years, and I gave myself five years too.

Now the five years were up, and he had marked Hailey without a moment's hesitation.

The little boy who'd held me so tightly in the heart of the fire, the boy who said he'd marry me, rose up in my mind.

Liar.

I locked the suitcase and took a cab straight to Nightfire Group headquarters.

The head of HR took my resignation and her eyes went wide with shock. "Ms. Sera, isn't this awfully sudden? Wouldn't you like to think it over."

Everyone had watched me throw myself at Cassian heart and soul for five years. Someone had joked once that even if the company went under, I'd be the last one out the door.

"No need," I said. "Process it today."

For Cassian's sake, I had given up the pharmaceutical research I was best at for five years, buried the identity of the genius researcher "Sea," and made myself his on-call personal secretary without complaint.

He had never once acknowledged me publicly as his Luna, and I had even gone on lying to myself that if I just kept giving quietly, one day he would see my worth.

Looking back, I was laughable. I'd been a fool.

Partway through the resignation handover, I had just gotten back to my desk when the office doors opened. Cassian walked in with Hailey.

"Everyone, stop what you're doing." Cassian swept his eyes around the room without even noticing me, and announced it flatly. "From today, Hailey is taking over as chief secretary. She'll be in charge of all administrative matters here."

Cassian finished, and before he turned for his office, he settled Hailey into the chief secretary's leather chair. "Hailey's hurt her foot," he said to the room. "I want every one of you to look after her and work with her."

Watching how gently he treated her, I thought back to my own first days here. How I'd worn myself thin trying to please him, how I'd dragged myself in with a burning fever, and he tore into me in front of the whole secretarial department, just because the pounding in my head had made me get a single figure wrong.

So he did know how to care. Just not for me. I stood there, frozen, every pair of eyes in the room pressing down on me. I had never felt more humiliated.

The moment he was gone, Hailey dropped the helpless act. She spotted me at once.

"Sera, what a coincidence. You heard what the Alpha said just now, didn't you? Go pour me a coffee. Three sugars, water at seventy-five degrees." Hailey waved me off like a servant.

She looked down at me from the chief secretary's chair. "And clear out all the discarded files in the shredder, then set up a private restroom just for me. The toilet you'll scrub by hand, yourself, and fit the seat with a pink cover. That's your job, as a subordinate."

I stood at the desk and met her eyes without giving an inch. "Hailey, I'm Cassian's secretary, not yours. If you need someone to pour your coffee and empty your shredder, have Cassian hire you one of your own."

"Then I'll fire you." Hailey shoved up out of the chair, her voice climbing. "One word from me and you're gone today."

I didn't give her so much as a glance. "Everyone on this floor answers to Cassian, not to you. Go ahead. See if you can fire me."

Hailey's face went stiff. She knew it was true, and that there was nothing she could do about it.

"Oh! What on earth is going on here?"

A startled cry came from the doorway. Cassian's mother, the former Luna Selina, walked in carrying an elegant box of pastries.

Her gaze swept to me, and her face turned cold. "Sera, raising your voice to the chief secretary in front of the entire company. where are your manners? "

Selina went straight to Hailey, beaming, holding out the box. "These are blueberry tarts I made myself. I brought them specially for our Luna to try."

She pitched those two words, "our Luna," loud enough on purpose for every employee in the office outside to hear.

In an instant the whole floor came alive, the chatter of the staff drifting in without the slightest restraint.

"My god, so the Luna the Alpha never went public with is Miss Hailey?"

"Hasn't Sera been at the Alpha's side this whole time? Turns out she really is just an ordinary secretary!"

I turned my head and saw Cassian, who had come out of his office at some point and now stood a little way down the corridor.

His hands were in the pockets of his suit trousers, his dark grey eyes fixed on us. Selina's "our Luna," I was sure he had heard it. But he offered neither a denial nor a correction. He simply turned, unruffled, and went back into his office.

"Thank you, Selina." Hailey shot me a smug glance and reached for the pastry box.

In the instant she leaned forward, a silver moon-shaped necklace slid out from the collar of her silk blouse and into the open air.

I froze. It was the necklace my mother had given me as a child. It had once been a matching pair. Years ago I'd given one half to Cassian, and my own half had vanished five years back.

How did Hailey have one exactly like it?

"Where did you get that necklace?" I spun around, closing the distance to Hailey in long strides, my voice dropping low. "It's mine."