Broken bond

I stepped out of the heavy pack house doors into the cool night air, the gravel crunching under my heels. I didn't look back at the life I had built. I only looked toward the dark tree line that marked the edge of the Sandwell territory.

I hadn't made it ten feet before a hand clamped around my wrist like a vice.

A jolt of electricity, violent and searing, ripped through my body. It wasn't the sweet, warm hum the storybooks promised. It felt like a brand of hot iron. My wolf, who had been silent in her grief, suddenly let out a piercing howl in my mind.

MATE.

Maxwell gasped, his grip tightening as the same shock traveled through him. His eyes shifted to a blown-out gold, his wolf surfacing for a fleeting second.

The Alpha, the Beta, and the Gamma heirs spilled out onto the porch, frozen as they witnessed the visible arc of power between us. The truth was written in the air: the Moon Goddess hadn’t made a mistake. I was his.

“No,” Maxwell whispered, the word laced with venom. He looked back at the porch, where Amelie stood pale and trembling. He had just told the pack she was his "True Mate." If he accepted me now, he’d be exposed as a liar in front of everyone.

He looked at me, his lip curling in disgust. “I, Maxwell Sandwell, Alpha-heir of the Sandwell Pack, reject you, Aella White, as my mate and future Luna.”

The rejection hit me like a physical blow to the chest. I staggered, my lungs seizing as the bond began to fray and snap.

“Do it, Aella,” he sneered, loud enough for the gathering crowd to hear. “Unless you’re too desperate to let go of the power you tried to steal.”

I straightened my spine, ignoring the blood starting to trickle from my nose—the price of a fractured soul. “I, Aella White, accept your rejection, Maxwell Sandwell. May the Goddess have mercy on your pack, for I certainly won’t.”

“Aella!”

A thunderous voice broke the silence. My father, Brandon White, skidded to a halt at the edge of the clearing, his warrior’s armor dusty from patrol. He stared at me, then at Maxwell, his face a mask of horror. He had arrived just in time to feel the shockwave of a shattered mating bond.

“What is the meaning of this?” my father roared, stepping between me and the Alpha-heir.

“Your daughter is a traitor, Brandon,” Alpha Richard said, stepping off the porch with his arms crossed. “She was caught embezzling pack funds and forging treaties to bypass Maxwell’s authority. She’s been exiled for the safety of Sandwell.”

“Embezzling?” My father looked at me, his brow furrowing. He looked at Maxwell, then at Amelie, who was currently sobbing into her mother’s shoulder. “Aella wouldn't... she built this place.”

“She built a lie!” Maxwell shouted. “She’s been gaslighting Amelie for years, threatening her to keep quiet while she tried to buy my affection. She’s sick, Brandon.”

I looked at my father. I waited for him to roar in my defense. I waited for the Lead Warrior to see the lie in Maxwell’s sweating face. But he hesitated. He looked at Amelie—the "sweet" niece he’d always treated like a second daughter, the one he’d given my room to without a second thought.

“Aella,” he sighed, and that sound hurt more than the rejection. “If you did this... if you truly hurt your family...”

“Family?” I let out a dry, jagged laugh. “You’ve always been more of a father to Amelie than to me, Dad. Even when she had both of her parents, you were too busy wiping her fake tears to notice the blood on my hands from doing this pack’s work. You want to believe them? Fine. Believe them.”

“Wait!”

Two figures broke through the crowd. Pamela and her mother, Beatriz, the pack’s head healer, came running toward us. Beatriz was carrying a medical bag and a heavy suitcase.

“Alpha Richard!” Beatriz shouted, her voice shaking with rage. “If Aella is a traitor, then so am I. I’ve seen the ledgers. I’ve seen who actually pays for the medicine in the infirmary, and it isn't the Sandwell treasury.”

“Mom?” Pamela gasped, grabbing my hand. She looked at the Alpha with a defiance I’d never seen. “I’m not staying in a pack that throws away its heart for a pair of liars. If Aella goes, we go.”

“You’d leave your positions for a criminal?” Alpha Richard hissed.

“We’re leaving for the truth,” Beatriz snapped. She turned to me, her eyes softening. “Let’s go, honey. They don’t deserve the ground you walk on.”

I looked at my father one last time. He stood frozen, caught between the Alpha he served and the daughter he didn't know how to love.

“Goodbye, Brandon,” I said. I didn't call him Father.

We turned our backs on the Sandwell Pack. As we crossed the border, I pulled out my phone. I had one more thing to do. I deleted the "Sandwell Prosperity" encrypted server from existence.

In thirty seconds, their logistics would collapse. In five years, they would be a memory. And I? I was finally free.