Chapter 1

The day Aiken brought Jessa home, a hard rain had just come through the territory.

He was covered in mud and looked rough, but he still had one arm wrapped tightly around the woman he was carrying.

Jessa was very thin. She held one hand over her left ribs and clutched his cloak with the other.

"Mira." Aiken came straight over to me. "Jessa saved my life on the battlefield. She has nowhere to go now. I want her in the Silvermoon pack."

I nodded.

I was his fated mate and the pack's future Luna.

Taking in someone wounded in battle was only natural.

Jessa didn't look at me at all. Her eyes went to the room behind me.

That room was mine.

My mother's bone chimes hung in that window, and a soft fox-fur blanket covered the floor.

"I want that room." She tugged at Aiken's sleeve and gave him a weak little smile.

Aiken glanced at me, then turned back to her. "Jessa, that room is Mira's. I can have a clean longhouse set up for you instead."

Jessa let out a soft whimper as if the movement had pulled at her wound, then leaned into him. "Aiken, I need somewhere big and clean to heal. That room gets the best light."

Then she finally looked at me. "You're the pack's Luna? Taking care of the wounded is the Luna's job, isn't it?"

I frowned at her.

Jessa clutched her wound and groaned again. "It hurts!"

Aiken immediately lost his composure and put a hand on the small of her back. "Mira, let her have the room for now. When she's healed, you can move back in."

He didn't wait for my answer. He scooped Jessa up, carried her straight into my room, and gently laid her on the fox fur.

It was the first time the man I loved had felt like a stranger to me.

He fought another Alpha over her in broad daylight, right in front of everyone. At night, he shifted and stood guard outside her door.

And now Aiken was pushing our mating ceremony back for her again.

"I want to take care of her a little longer. She just got here." Aiken took off the star pendant he always wore and pressed it into my palm, his voice softening. "Mira, haven't you always wanted this? This is my way of making it up to you. All right?"

I closed my hand around the pendant, still warm from his body, and didn't know what to think.

Aiken was an orphan.

That pendant was his only keepsake, and he valued it more than his own life.

I had asked him for it more than once and he had never given it to me.

And now, for an Omega who wasn't even from our pack, he'd handed it over as "compensation" without blinking.

Right then, Jessa's faint voice came through his phone. "Aiken..."

He let go of my hand as if by reflex.

"You're leaving again?" Furious, I grabbed Aiken's arm before he could leave. "Walk out again, and we won't need a mating ceremony at all."

His lips moved. He didn't say anything. He turned and left.

So there was no reason to drag this out any longer.

I picked up my phone and messaged my friend Faye, a witch.

"Can a fated bond be broken if it was never marked?"

"Of course it can, sweetheart," she replied almost instantly. "Have you finally had enough of that Alpha and Omega being together all the time?"

"But the circle takes two weeks to prepare."

"Also, I'll need blood from the Silvermoon Alpha as payment."

I wrote back that it was fine and turned the screen off.

The mark under my collarbone was warm, but I felt lighter than ever.