Chapter 1

I yanked the Moon Goddess pendant he'd given me off my neck.

“I told you I want to sever the mate bond. Today.”

Julian just took the pendant from my hand, careless about the whole thing.

“Seraphina, nothing happened last night.”

“We're bound to each other. Your own body would know better than anyone, wouldn't it?”

“Why let some made-up accusation drive a wedge between us.”

But he knew perfectly well that last night had been the full moon.

Without him, the pain would have had me rolling on the floor.

And I hadn't had the strength left to work out whether he'd actually cheated.

“I'm not joking.”

His face darkened for an instant. He leaned in, brought the chain around my neck, and tried to fasten the pendant back on, but no matter how he tried, the clasp wouldn't close.

I pushed him away, yet my hands were already starting to lose their strength.

Was the wolfsbane flaring up again?

Julian threw the pendant to the ground in a rage. The little moon split clean into two halves, just like the bond between us, beyond all mending now.

His voice was full of anger.

“I don't get why you're always losing your temper out of nowhere.”

“Why can't you be gentle and sweet, like Daisy. Would that really be so hard.”

When I first met him, he didn't even have his wolf yet, fleeing for his life from a vampire.

I was a rare prodigy, a werewolf who came into her wolf at fourteen.

My wolf howled and drove the vampire off.

He'd looked at me then with pure worship in his eyes. “Seraphina, this fire in you is exactly what I love.”

Now here he was, telling me I wasn't gentle enough, that I couldn't measure up to Daisy. It never once crossed his mind that Daisy could afford to be gentle only because he was always there to catch her.

Last night, the clouds parted and the moonlight poured over me.

I was shaking with pain, and Julian had just closed his teeth on my neck when Daisy's scream came from outside the door.

“Julian, I knocked the witch's potion over. Save me.”

He let go of me without a second thought.

“Seraphina, I can't let Daisy get struck by the wolfsbane too. She's weak. She'd never survive it.”

But no witch could ever fight their way into my estate. Daisy was perfectly safe, and he knew it.

I reached out, but I couldn't hold on to the man set on leaving, and at that thought the tears spilled over all at once.

Julian faltered, a little flustered, and reached out to wipe my tears away.

“Seraphina, don't be angry. Fine, I won't go on tonight's hunt. I'll stay home with you.”

I looked at him coldly. “I don't need you to.”

“You don't want this, you don't want that. What do you actually want from me? Do you feel satisfied only after making everyone miserable?”

“Julian, this is all my fault.”

Daisy had drifted in at some point I hadn't noticed, and she caught his hand in hers.

“It's my fault for being so clumsy. I set the witch off, and now I've made the two of you fight over me.”

Julian closed his hand around hers, the motion as natural as if he'd done it a thousand times.

And my heart clenched for a moment right along with it.

“Daisy, you're just too kind for your own good. Seraphina's the one with the temper. It isn't your fault.”

Daisy's face flushed. She looked up, ran into my cold stare, and shrank timidly behind him.

“Seraphina, I didn't do it on purpose. You won't hold it against me, will you?”

I stared at their joined hands and let out a cold laugh.

“You didn't do it on purpose?”

“You always use that one line, I didn't mean to, to wedge yourself between me and Julian.”

“On our wedding anniversary, you said you didn't spill red wine all over Julian on purpose, yet the two of you just happened to end up in matching outfits.”

“At the ball, you claimed didn't knock Julian to the floor and kiss him for a solid minute on purpose.”

“And I suppose you're about to tell me the hands you're holding right now aren't on purpose either.”

“Since you love clinging to Julian this much, then I'll hand him over to you.”