Only One

"Enough," Adrain panted, his voice rough with strain as he finally pushed Lira away from the tree. "I said enough."

But even as the words left his lips, his hands lingered on her waist—not the firm rejection of a faithful mate, but the hesitant touch of someone at war with himself.

Hidden behind the ancient oak, Nyma felt her wolf bare its teeth in silent fury. Every instinct screamed at her to charge forward, to claim what was hers, to remind them both exactly who wore the Luna's mark. But something deeper—a cold calculation she barely recognized as her own—held her motionless.

Watch, her wolf whispered with predatory stillness. Learn. Then strike.

A pause stretched between the two figures by the shed, thick with unspoken history and dangerous possibilities.

Then Lira's voice, silky and knowing, drifted through the morning air: "Oh, Rain... why do you always fight what we both want?"

Rain. The intimate nickname hit Nyma like a physical blow. No one called him that anymore—no one except...

"Because I can't," Adrain rasped, but his body betrayed him, leaning into Lira's touch despite his words.

"And why not?" Lira pressed, her tone playful yet edged with something sharper. Something victorious. "It's not like we haven't danced this dance before. Isn't that why you've been avoiding your little wife? So she won't catch my scent on you after our... training sessions?"

The world tilted beneath Nyma's feet.

Training sessions. Months of them. All those times he'd returned late, shower-damp and carefully neutral. All those diplomatic meetings that ran long into the night. All those moments when she'd sensed something different in his scent but convinced herself she was being paranoid.

Her hand instinctively moved to the locket at her throat, its protective magic suddenly feeling like a collar of lies.

"We were good together, Adrain," Lira murmured, her fingers tracing patterns on his chest with practiced familiarity. "We still are. Remember what you told sweet little Nyma about that blood moon night six months ago?"

Nyma's breath turned to ice in her lungs.

The blood moon. The night she'd told him about the pregnancy. The night he'd proposed with trembling hands and desperate eyes, swearing his devotion while she'd glowed with joy and possibility.

What could he possibly have lied about that night?

"How creative you were with the truth..." Lira's thumb brushed across Adrain's lower lip, intimate as a lover's caress. "How smoothly you covered for us."

Us. The word reverberated through Nyma's skull like a death knell.

"Lira." Adrain's voice carried warning, but it was the weak protest of someone whose resistance was crumbling. "That's not—"

"Isn't it?" Lira's laugh was velvet poison. "You didn't seem to have any regrets that night. In fact..." Her voice dropped to a purr that carried clearly through the still air. "You seemed quite satisfied with our arrangement. Quite willing to let me console you while she celebrated alone."

The memory hit Nyma with devastating clarity: that magical night when she'd shared the news of their child, when Adrain had disappeared for hours afterward, claiming he needed time to process the magnitude of becoming a father. She'd understood, given him space, even felt grateful for his thoughtfulness.

How utterly, completely naive she'd been.

"You already know what's coming," Lira continued, her nails digging into Adrain's shoulders possessively. "The council's decision. The pure bloodline requirements. A Crescent heir changes everything, yes—but so does a proven inability to produce multiple offspring."

Nyma's womb cramped violently as understanding dawned. The political calculations. The bloodline purity. The carefully worded suggestions from the royal court about the strength of their genetic combination.

They'd been planning this. Planning her replacement.

"I can give you pure-blooded pups too," Lira whispered, pressing closer. "Stronger than whatever she's carrying. Without... complications."

Complications. As if her child—their child—was nothing more than a political inconvenience.

Adrain's hands flexed at his sides, and for one desperate moment, Nyma thought he might push Lira away completely. Might choose his family, his vows, his pregnant wife over this serpent wrapped in beautiful skin.

Instead, he said quietly, "The alliance with her family—"

"Fuck the alliance!" Lira's composure shattered, her voice cracking with raw desperation. "You think I don't see how you look at her? Like she hung the moon and stars just for you?" Her breath hitched, and when she spoke again, her voice dropped into something broken and pleading. "You used to look at me like that. You said I was your world, your future, your—"

"Things changed," Adrain said, but the words lacked conviction.

"Did they?" Lira's hands cupped his face, forcing him to meet her eyes. "Or did you just convince yourself they did because duty demanded it? Because the pack needed alliances more than you needed happiness?"

Their foreheads nearly touched now, breathing the same air, existing in a bubble of intimacy that excluded the rest of the world. Excluded the pregnant wife watching her marriage dissolve in real time.

Nyma couldn't breathe. Couldn't move. Could only stand frozen as her worst fears took shape before her eyes.

"You know I care about you," Adrain said finally, his voice barely above a whisper. "But Nyma—"

"Nyma, Nyma, Nyma!" Lira's mask slipped completely, revealing the bitter jealousy underneath. "What exactly does she have that I don't? Status? A powerful bloodline? A pretty face? A swollen belly full of political necessity?"

A beat of weighted silence. Then Adrain's voice, rougher now, more honest: "You know it's not that simple. She's the last of her line, Lira. The Crescent legacy—"

"And I'm the daughter of your father's Beta," Lira shot back. "Pure Lycan nobility stretching back generations. I can give you everything she can, and more."

"This isn't about bloodlines," Adrain said, but something in his tone suggested otherwise.

"Isn't it?" Lira pressed closer, her body molding against his with practiced ease. "Then what is it about? Love?" The word dripped with scorn. "When did you become such an unromantic, my prince?"

For a moment, neither spoke. The morning air hung heavy with possibility and betrayal, with the weight of decisions that would reshape everything.

Then Adrain said, so quietly Nyma almost missed it: "I need to go. She's waiting."

But even as relief flickered in Nyma's chest, Lira moved with her wolf's inhuman speed.

Her top tore away in her own hands—a calculated gesture that left her bare from the waist up, vulnerable and devastating in the morning light. Before Adrain could react, she caught his wrist and pressed his palm against the smooth skin of her ribs.

"You've waited this long," she murmured, guiding his touch with deliberate sensuality. "What's a few more minutes? What's she going to do—leave without saying goodbye to her devoted husband?"

Adrain froze, his throat working soundlessly. Nyma watched in horror as his pupils dilated, as his breathing quickened, as every line of his body screamed his body's recognition of familiar territory.

"Nyma will understand," Lira purred, trailing his captured hand higher. "She always does. Always forgives. Always waits patiently while you make your difficult choices."

The contempt in her voice was devastating. As if Nyma's patience, her understanding, her willingness to support his political necessities, made her weak. Pathetic. Deserving of betrayal.

"Lira—" Adrain's protest died as she captured his lips in a kiss that was anything but hesitant.

This wasn't the uncertain exploration of new lovers or even the desperate passion of forbidden attraction. This was the practiced intimacy of lovers who knew each other's bodies, who'd mapped each other's desires across months or years of secret meetings.

Nyma's wolf howled silently as she watched her mate's resistance crumble completely. His hands fisted in Lira's hair, backing her against the shed wall with a hunger that shattered every illusion Nyma had clung to about their marriage.

"Not here," he panted against Lira's throat, but the protest was token at best.

"Why not?" Lira's smile was all sharp teeth and victory as she wrapped her legs around his waist. "Scared your precious Luna will catch us? Will finally see what you really want?"

"The showers," Adrain managed, even as his hands roamed familiar territory. "If someone sees—"

"Let them," Lira purred, her claws raking down his back with possessive satisfaction. "Let her wonder why her devoted husband reeks of another woman. Let her finally understand that some hungers can't be satisfied by duty and political necessity."

The sounds that followed—breathless gasps, tearing fabric, the wet slide of skin against skin—carved themselves into Nyma's memory with surgical precision. Every moan, every bitten-off curse, every desperate plea was a blade twisting in the mating bond that should have protected her from this agony.

But the bond didn't shield her. Instead, it forced her to feel his pleasure, his desperate want, his complete surrender to desires that had nothing to do with the pregnant wife waiting for his goodbye.

Through the connection that should have been sacred, Nyma felt the exact moment Adrain's control shattered completely. Felt his release as if it were her own, tainted now with another woman's triumph.

And then, through the red haze of betrayal and agony, she heard the most devastating sound of all:

Adrain's voice, rough with satisfaction and something that sounded dangerously like relief: "Mine."

Not a claim of ownership, but recognition. As if he were finally admitting what had always been true.

Lira's answering laugh was pure victory: "Always yours, my prince. Always."

Nyma stumbled backward, one hand pressed to her mouth to stifle the sound threatening to tear from her throat, the other clutching her swollen belly where their child moved restlessly, as if sensing her distress.

She'd seen enough. Heard enough. Felt enough through their cursed bond to understand exactly what her marriage had been built on.

Lies. Political convenience. The careful management of inconvenient truths.

The locket at her throat pulsed with protective warmth, but even its magic couldn't shield her from this particular devastation. If anything, its presence felt like mockery—protection offered too late, armor granted by someone who'd already delivered the killing blow.

As she watched the scene that had shattered her world, one thought rose above the chaos in her mind:

I will never forgive or forget... I will remember everything. Every lie, every betrayal, every moment they thought I was too naive to understand.

And when the time comes for consequences, they'll learn exactly what a Crescent wolf is capable of when her trust has been broken and her child threatened.

The locket pulsed against her throat like a heartbeat—no longer a symbol of love, but of the power she would claim from the ashes of her marriage.

And thanks to their arrogance, she now knew exactly her fated mate and husband was not worthy of her love.