Chapter 1

Julian waited until we were in the car to explain.

“Don’t listen to the guards. Mia got hurt checking a shipment. She’s one of mine. I can’t just leave her to fend for herself.”

He paused, then added, “I mean she works for me.”

I nodded and leaned against the window without answering.

His grip tightened on the steering wheel.

“Serafina, are you still angry?”

“I promised I’d end things with her. For the past six months, I’ve come home to you every night I wasn’t away on business. What more do you want from me?”

His tense profile was reflected in the glass.

“I believe you,” I said calmly. “Let’s go home. I’m tired.”

He looked at me for a moment, as though searching for sarcasm in my answer.

But I had already closed my eyes.

The horn blared. I opened my eyes to find his hand pressed against the center of the wheel.

Outside the merchant caravan’s headquarters, by the side entrance, a few employees leaving an event turned at the sound.

One of them was Mia.

She was wearing a flimsy evening dress, her ankle bandaged, one hand braced against the wall as she stood in the cold.

“Why hasn’t she left yet?” Julian murmured.

I glanced at her, then looked away.

His gaze lingered on her bare shoulders, red from the cold. A moment later, his hand was on the door handle.

I unfastened my seat belt.

“You can take her home. I’ll call a car.”

Julian caught my hand. When he touched the bandage, he hastily let go and took hold of my sleeve instead.

“I never said I was leaving you. She’s out here alone with an injured ankle. Am I supposed to let her freeze?”

“Of course not. Go ahead.”

He stared at me, lowering his voice.

“There’s nothing between us anymore. We work together. Can you please stop assuming the worst?”

“I’m not.”

I eased my sleeve from his fingers and got out.

The night air hit me, and a faint cramp tightened low in my belly. Deep in my mind, my wolf, Ayla, called softly to me.

“Slow down.”

I steadied myself against the car door and waited for the discomfort to pass before walking toward the corner.

Julian followed me for a few steps. Then Mia gave a small cry of pain behind him, and he stopped.

Once, the faintest trace of another woman’s scent on his collar would have kept me awake all night.

He used to say I asked too many questions. He wanted a mate who was calm, dignified, and understanding.

Now that I had become that woman, he kept asking if I was punishing him.

At the corner, I glanced back.

Julian had draped his coat around Mia’s shoulders. She tipped her face up to his. He adjusted the collar, then bent to kiss her.

The mark on my neck burned.

Pain traveled through the mate bond and into my chest. I held on to a lamppost until I could breathe steadily again.

I had closed our mind-link so I wouldn’t hear his voice and he couldn’t sense my emotions. But the healer had warned me that closing the link would not spare me the pain of his betrayal.

Ayla curled up deep inside me. She no longer howled the way she once had.

“Let’s go home,” she said.

I rested a hand over my belly.

“Soon.”

The first time I caught them kissing, I stood in the warehouse doorway and waited for him to let her go. Then I asked, “Julian, do our vows still mean anything to you?”

He wouldn’t meet my eyes. He said Mia had grown up without a home and had suffered terribly.

“She’s had it just as hard as you did. I was only trying to look out for her.”

I asked him why looking out for her required kissing her.

That was when he lost his patience.

“Don’t push me, Serafina. If I hadn’t picked you up out of the snow, they wouldn’t even have let you into the pack. Name one thing you have now that I didn’t give you.”

With those words, he dismissed every year we had spent building a life together.

As though the storms I had weathered beside him and the nights I had spent guarding his cargo were nothing more than what I owed him for taking me in.

My phone vibrated, pulling me out of the memory.

It was Vittorio, an elder from the Mooncrest Pack.

“Your lineage has been confirmed. The Alpha and Luna are waiting for you to come home. The royal court has accepted your petition to dissolve the bond. Do you still intend to leave on the agreed date?”

“Yes. In ten days.”

“We can send an escort sooner.”

I looked back toward the corner. Julian was leaning into the car to fasten Mia’s seat belt. She was sitting where I had been.

“I don’t want to alert him yet. I still need to collect the original bond certificate and settle a few things.”

The elder was quiet for a moment. When he spoke again, his voice was gentler.

“Your mother asked me to tell you that your room is ready. Whenever you need to come home, you can.”

I lowered my head. At last, my eyes began to sting.

“Please tell her I’ll be bringing my baby with me.”