Chapter 10: Marcus's Awakening

The moonlight filtered through the canopy as I crouched on a high branch, watching the clearing below with careful silence. The ancient oak beneath me groaned softly under my weight, its bark rough against my palms as I shifted to get a better view. Marcus stood in the center of the clearing, pacing like a caged animal. His usually pristine posture, the commanding stance that had once made my heart race was gone, replaced by ragged shoulders and a distant look in his eyes that spoke of sleepless nights and fractured thoughts. Something in him was unraveling like a tapestry pulled thread by thread, and I needed to see it for myself.

The irony wasn't lost on me. Here I was, perched like a predator in the very trees where he'd once taught me to hunt, watching the hunter become the hunted by his own conscience.

For nights now, I had felt the bond pull, no longer the steel rope that had once bound us soul to soul, but a whisper in the back of my mind, persistent as a heartbeat. Even after he had rejected me with words that still echoed in my nightmares, some invisible thread remained, tethered by blood and fate and something deeper than either of us had understood. I should have severed it entirely, cut it clean like a blade through silk. But a part of me, the part that had once loved him without reservation, wanted to understand why it was still there, why it pulsed with life when it should have withered and died. And now, watching him beneath the moon that had once witnessed our promises, I began to see the cracks spreading through his carefully constructed armor.

He groaned and sank to his knees, hands fisting in his dark hair until his knuckles went white. I saw the sweat glisten on his brow even from my perch twenty feet above, caught the tremor in his shoulders that spoke of a man fighting a battle he couldn't win. His wolf was agitated more than agitated, it was in torment. I could feel it in the air like electricity before a storm of tension, fury, confusion, and beneath it all, a howling grief that made my own wolf pace restlessly in my chest. It pulsed off him like heat waves rising from sun-baked stone.

The wind carried his scent to me, and I was surprised to find it changed. Where once it had been cedar and dominance, now it was bitter with desperation and tinged with something I'd never associated with Marcus: fear.

I heard him mutter, voice too low for human ears but perfectly clear to my enhanced senses, "Luna... why now? Why can't I let you go?"

My name on his lips felt like poison and honey mixed burning and sweet in equal measure. I should have left then. Should have melted back into the shadows and returned to my new life, my new purpose. But something in me, some masochistic need, demanded I witness what was coming. I wanted to see him suffer as I had suffered. I wanted to watch the great Alpha Marcus break.

Marcus was dreaming of me. I could sense it in the way his eyes darted beneath closed lids when he finally collapsed against a fallen log. He sees flashes, memories projected against the canvas of sleep, my laughter echoing through the pack house halls, my touch soothing his wolf after a difficult day, the way I used to calm his beast with a single glance. Those images weren't just memories now. They were instruments of torture, playing on repeat in his mind like a broken record he couldn't turn off.

I smiled grimly. Good. Let the past haunt him the way his rejection haunted me.

From behind the trees, Victoria emerged like a wraith in designer clothes. Her scent hit me like a rotten breeze artificial perfume trying to mask the sour undertone of jealousy and ambition that always clung to her. I tensed instinctively, claws itching to extend, my wolf snarling silently at the sight of the woman who had orchestrated my downfall.

"You're distracted again," she said sharply, arms crossed over her chest. Even in the moonlight, I could see the irritation tightening her features. "The pack is starting to notice."

Marcus didn't respond immediately, didn't even look up from where he knelt. When he finally spoke, his voice was hollow. "Let them notice."

"Still dreaming about her?" Victoria's voice was clipped with barely contained irritation, each word sharp enough to cut. "Still wallowing in guilt over a dead woman?"

The casual way she spoke of my death, the death she believed in completely made my blood boil.

"She's dead," Marcus said, but there was no conviction in the words. They fell flat, empty. "It shouldn't matter anymore."

But it did matter. I could see it in every line of his body, hear it in the careful way he didn't say my name. Victoria had won the battle for his hand, but the war for his heart was still raging.

Victoria walked closer and placed her manicured hand on his shoulder with possessive familiarity. "Then stop acting like it does. You have responsibilities. To me. To our future."

He shrugged her off with more force than necessary, and I bit back a laugh. Even in his broken state, his wolf rejected her touch. Some bonds ran deeper than politics and manipulation.

I smirked to myself, satisfaction warming my chest. The perfect couple was fracturing before my eyes, their fairy tale romance revealed as the shallow convenience it had always been.

"You told me this would pass," he growled, finally rising to his feet and turning to face her. In the moonlight, his eyes glowed faintly gold, his wolf closer to the surface than I'd seen in months. "You promised the guilt would fade, that I'd forget. But it's getting worse. Every night, I feel her. I hear her. Sometimes I wake up thinking she's near, that I can smell her perfume in the halls."

Victoria's jaw clenched, her composure cracking slightly. "That's impossible. You rejected her. The bond is broken. Whatever you think you're feeling is just"

"No," he interrupted, voice gaining strength. "Something's still there. Something real."

Good, I thought viciously. Let it haunt you. Let it tear you apart from the inside.

I slipped down from the tree with predatory grace, moving silently through the shadows like the phantom Victoria believed me to be. I wouldn't let them see me yet. The time for revelation would come, but first, I needed to know how deep the madness went, how far Marcus had fallen from his pedestal.

Victoria's expression darkened, her mask of supportive mate slipping to reveal the calculating woman beneath. "You need to get a grip, Marcus. You're Alpha. Your pack is watching you fall apart. They need strength, not this... this pathetic display."

He laughed then, a bitter sound that scraped against the night air like claws on stone. "My pack is already lost. Half of them question my every decision, the other half openly defy me. And I'm starting to think it was never mine to begin with."

The admission hung between them like a blade. Victoria's face went pale in the moonlight.

He turned away from her and walked toward the edge of the clearing, his movements restless, haunted. That's when he froze, every muscle in his body going rigid. His nostrils flared as he lifted his face to the wind.

I held my breath, pressing myself deeper into the shadows of an ancient pine.

He sniffed the air with increasing desperation, his gaze sweeping the treeline like a searchlight. "She's close," he whispered, and the words carried a note of desperate hope that made my chest tighten unexpectedly.

Victoria stiffened, her own senses reaching out. "Don't be ridiculous. She's been dead for months. You're imagining"

"No," he said, his eyes now glowing bright gold as his wolf surged forward. "I can feel her. Right now. She's watching us."

The conviction in his voice sent a chill down my spine. The bond that tethered us was stronger than I'd realized, more persistent than either rejection or supposed death could break.

I backed away, retreating deeper into the woods with practiced silence. It wasn't time yet for the grand revelation. Let him doubt his sanity. Let him ache with uncertainty. The anticipation would make my eventual return all the sweeter.

The next day, I returned again still cloaked by shadows that seemed to bend to my will. I had become something new in the months since my supposed death, something darker and more dangerous than the naive Luna who had once believed in happy endings. Now I watched as Marcus argued with his Beta, his temper shorter than a lit fuse. His wolves questioned his decisions openly, their respect eroding like sand in the tide. A few even dared to say what I never thought I'd hear, their voices carrying clearly across the training grounds:

"Things were better when Luna was here."

"She never would have let the rogue situation get this bad."

"Remember how she used to settle disputes? None of this constant fighting."

He didn't lash out at the muttered comments. He didn't deny them with the righteous fury I expected. He just walked away, shoulders bowed under the weight of truth he couldn't escape. The great Alpha Marcus, brought low by the ghost of the woman he'd thrown away.

I saw him alone again that night, standing at the place where we'd first trained together. A flicker of something passed through his expression as he stared at the worn earth where we'd sparred regret, raw and undeniable.

Good, I thought savagely. Let it fester. Let it rot you from the inside out.

He sat by the river, staring into the dark water as if it held answers to questions he was afraid to ask. His reflection looked nothing like the Alpha who had rejected me with cold eyes and cutting words. His shoulders sagged under invisible weight. His eyes were hollow, haunted by choices that couldn't be undone. The powerful wolf was unraveling, undone not by war or challenge from rival packs but by memory and the slow poison of regret.

I stepped closer, still unseen but near enough to hear his breathing, to smell the sorrow rolling off him in waves. I wanted to see the exact moment his carefully constructed world began to collapse completely.

He whispered to the night, his voice barely audible, "What if I was wrong? What if everything I believed was a lie?"

The words hit me like a physical blow. Victoria had fed him lies for years, poisoned his mind against me, manipulated his pride and stoked his ambition until I became nothing more than an obstacle to be removed. And I had been the sacrifice on the altar of their twisted love story.

But now, finally, the spell was breaking.

He stood slowly, joints creaking like an old man's, and looked up at the moon, the same moon that had blessed our mating ceremony, that had witnessed our promises of forever. "If you're out there... if by some miracle you're still alive... I'm sorry. I'm so damn sorry, Luna."

The words struck me like lightning, splitting me open and letting all the carefully buried pain come flooding back. I clenched my fists until my nails drew blood, swallowing down the storm rising in my chest, rage and sorrow and something dangerously close to hope.

You don't get to be sorry now, I told myself fiercely. Sorry doesn't undo the rejection. Sorry doesn't heal the wounds or bring back the woman who loved you without reservation.

And yet... the pain in his voice was real. The regret was genuine. For the first time since that terrible night, I saw not the Alpha who had cast me aside, but the man who had once held me like I was precious, who had whispered promises against my skin and meant every word.

I turned away and disappeared into the forest before the tears could fall, my thoughts a tangle of satisfaction and sorrow. He was beginning to see through Victoria's web of lies, beginning to understand what he'd lost. But understanding didn't equal forgiveness, and recognition didn't equal redemption.

It was too late for apologies. Too late for second chances. Too late for the love that had once burned bright enough to light up the darkness.

I wasn't the Luna he had rejected anymore; that woman was truly dead, buried beneath months of pain and betrayal and hard-won strength. I was something new now, something forged in the fires of abandonment and tempered by survival.

I was the Luna he'd never deserve, never be worthy of again.

And soon, very soon, he would learn exactly what he had lost.