Chapter 4

I was led back to my room, the dark, empty east wing. Our wing. I closed the bedroom door, sank to the floor, and finally let the silent screams out, pressing my face into a pillow so no one would hear the grief that had no voice.

My body ached, cramps still rumbled low in my belly. A reminder of what had been taken from me.

Our baby was gone. My baby. Gone.

And the man who’d helped create it had celebrated its death with the one woman everyone believed he should have chosen instead. I couldn't help but hate them both. I curled into myself, arms wrapped around the emptiness where our child used to be.

The door was open a crack. I lay on the bedroom floor long after my tears ran dry, listening to the sounds of the party below. Music, clinking glasses, bursts of laughter.

“Oh, don’t worry about Liora,” Helena, my stepmother and Seraphina’s mother said. Her voice was smooth and reassuring. “She’s just exhausted from all the Luna duties lately. Poor thing needed to lie down. You know how fragile Omegas can be.”

More laughter followed.

Fragile. That was their favorite word for me.

The only thing in my head now was one clear, blazing thought: I want a divorce.

But even thinking it made my stomach knot tighter than the cramps had.

Divorcing an Alpha wasn’t like walking away from a normal marriage. The Elder Council had to approve the dissolution. They weighed the Bond, the political implications, the strength of the pack. And me? A mute Omega of illegitimate birth? I had no leverage. No power.

I didn’t even know how to start the process. When we got married, everything had been arranged for me. Even the papers had been signed on my behalf, vows nodded instead of spoken. I’d been eighteen, dazed from the new Mark on my neck, grateful just to have a place. I never imagined I’d be the one trying to leave.

How does a mute even petition for divorce? Write a letter? Stand in front of the Council and sign until my hands cramped while they stared like I was performing a trick?

I sat on the edge of the bed, pulling my knees to my chest. My mind drifted back to when I was little.

After my real mother died, my father brought me to live with his legitimate family. I was six, already quiet from the trauma, but the healers said there was still a window. They said I’d need speech therapy, exercises, patience. For a few months my stepmother, Helena, played the part: hired a therapist, cooed over my progress in front of guests. Then, quietly, she fired the woman. Told my father it was a waste of money on “damaged goods.” The window closed. My voice never came back. Not even a hum, a grunt, nothing.

At our wedding, when the officiant asked if I took Damien as my mate, I’d just nodded, eyes wet, and scribbled Yes on a card they held up for the guests to see. Everyone smiled like it was sweet. Romantic, even.

Now that same silence felt like a cage. A prison.

Hours passed. The party noise faded to occasional footsteps in the hall, doors closing, cars starting on the gravel drive. I didn’t move. I barely breathed.

Eventually the bedroom door opened without a knock.

Damien.

He stepped inside, closing the door behind him with a soft click. The hallway light outlined him for a moment. His suit jacket was gone, his white shirt unbuttoned at the collar, and his hair was slightly mussed. He smelled like whiskey and the cold night air, and something else: the low, heated spice of arousal.

His eyes found me in the dim room, glowing golden even in the low light. He looked… tired, maybe. But mostly drunk. Not stumbling drunk, just loose enough that his usual tight control had slipped.

“Hey,” he said, voice low and rough, as if nothing had happened. He crossed the room in a few strides, reaching for me like it was the most natural thing in the world.

I scrambled back on the bed, shaking my head hard.

He paused, brow creasing.His hand lifted again, brushing my cheek, thumb tracing my jaw.

His skin was burning hot with alpha heat, the kind that always pulled at my wolf no matter how much my heart resisted. The Bond hummed between us, traitorous and alive.

I signed No sharply, both hands slicing through the air.

He blinked, slow, like he was trying to focus. Then, stupidly, he murmured, “Speak.”

Speak.

The word hit me like a slap. After two years of marriage, after everything tonight, that’s what he said.Who did he take me for?

Something inside me ignited.

My hand moved before I could think, cracking across his cheek with all the force I could muster.

The sound was shockingly loud in the quiet room.

He jerked back, eyes widening, the haze clearing a little. A red mark bloomed on his skin.

I shoved him for good measure, hard enough that he took a step back. Then I grabbed the small notebook and pen I kept on the nightstand, the ones I used when signs weren’t enough, and scribbled furiously.

I want a divorce.

I held it up to show him, my hands shaking.

He stared at the words for a long second, then let out a short, disbelieving laugh. Not cruel, exactly. Just… dismissive.

“Liora,” he said, rubbing his cheek absently. “Come on. You’re upset. I get it. But divorce?” He shook his head, stepping closer again. “Where would you even go? You’re a no-rank wolf. Mute. Illegitimate. No pack would take you in.”

Each word landed like a stone in my gut, because some horrible part of me knew he wasn’t entirely wrong. But that didn’t make it hurt less.

I wrote again, faster.

I don’t care. I’m done.

He read it, and the amusement faded a little. He reached for me again, voice softening into that coaxing tone he used when the Bond got too strong to ignore. “You’re making this bigger than it is. We’ll talk tomorrow when you’re calmer. Come here…”

His hands slid to my waist, pulling me toward him. The heat of his body hit me full force, and my traitorous wolf whimpered, responding even as my mind screamed no. In bed we’d always been perfect together, bodies fitting like they were made for it, the Bond singing every time he touched me.

But not tonight. Not after today.

I didn’t know how to get a divorce. I didn’t know if it was even possible. If the Council would ever let me go.

But I knew one thing with absolute certainty: I was done being the silent, grateful Luna.

I was done loving a man who’d never truly wanted me. Or our baby. My baby.

I couldn’t shout Stop. I couldn’t say No. All I had were my hands and my will.

So I used both.

I closed my eyes and reached deep inside. I found the shimmering golden thread that connected us - the mate Bond, warm and constant and agonizing. I wrapped my mental hands around it and yanked. Hard.

It wasn’t severing the Bond completely; I didn’t have that power. But I could shut it down, slam the door, block him out for now. Like forcing a computer to cold-boot when it’s frozen - painful, unnatural, damaging to the system. But not permanent.

The recoil hit us both.

Damien staggered back with a sharp inhale, clutching his chest like I’d stabbed him. I doubled over, gasping silently, a searing ache ripping through my wolf as she howled in protest.

My vision grayed at the edges, colors bleeding into dull ash, until everything narrowed to a single, painful point.

My wolf whimpered, low and broken. Darkness enveloped me.