Chapter 2: The Rejected Mate's Revenge

She found me exactly eleven days after my wedding, in the one place I thought was safe.

The clearing behind the old training grounds had been mine since I was twelve, a gap in the pines where moonlight pooled like spilled milk and nobody ever bothered to look for the Alpha's new wife. I went there to breathe. I went there to hold the ledger's words in my head without my face giving anything away to the staff, to Kael, to anyone.

I did not expect Selene.

She stepped out from between two trees like she'd been standing there the whole time, waiting, and maybe she had. Moonlight caught the sharp line of her cheekbone, turned her dark eyes nearly black. She wasn't smiling this time.

"You found it," she said. Not a question.

My whole body went still. "Found what?"

"Don't." Her voice cracked on the word, one syllable of real feeling breaking through whatever careful mask she usually wore. "Don't stand there and lie to me, Luna. I've watched you for a week. You stopped smiling at him in front of people. You stopped touching him unless someone's watching. You *found it*."

I said nothing. My silence was answer enough.

She laughed, short and ugly, and wrapped her arms around herself like she was cold, though the night was warm and thick with the smell of pine sap. "Do you know how long I loved him?"

"Kael?"

"Six years." She spat the number like it tasted foul. "Six years I served that pack. Six years I told myself that when the merger was done, when he had what he needed from your bloodline, he'd finally choose me. That's what he promised."

The ground seemed to tilt under my feet. "He promised you."

"He promised me *everything*." Her voice climbed, cracked again, and this time she didn't fight it. "Your land. Your bloodline rights. Your father's territory folded into his like it was always supposed to be his. And you, sweet, stupid Luna, you were supposed to be a formality. A signature. A womb, if the elders got their way about heirs."

Something in my chest turned to ice. I'd read the ledger. I'd seen the numbers, the transfer schedules, the cold clinical language of a business deal wearing a wedding dress. But hearing her say it out loud, in that clearing, with the moon watching, made it real in a way ink on paper never could.

"He rejected you," I said slowly, understanding arriving late and heavy. "His fated mate. He rejected the bond."

"In front of the whole council." Her hands curled into fists at her sides, nails biting crescents into her palms. I could smell copper on the air, faint, sharp. "He looked me in the eye and told them he chose the Everly girl for the good of the pack. For *duty*. And everyone applauded him for it. Called him noble. Called him strong." Her lip curled. "Nobody called him what he actually is."

"Selene." I held up my hands, palms out, the way you'd approach something wounded and dangerous. "I didn't know. I swear to you, I didn't know any of this until eleven days ago."

"That doesn't matter anymore."

"It matters to me."

"IT DOESN'T MATTER!" Her scream tore through the clearing, sent birds exploding out of the branches above us in a panicked clatter of wings. She was shaking now, full body tremors, the kind that come right before a shift. "You have his name. You have his bed. You have everything I bled six years for, and you didn't even *want* it. You'd give it back if you could, wouldn't you? Just hand it over like it's nothing."

"Yes." The word came out of me before I could stop it, fast and true. "Yes, I would. Take it. Take him. I don't want any of this."

For half a second, something flickered across her face. Hope, maybe. The ghost of a different ending.

Then it hardened again, worse than before.

"You think it's that simple," she said, voice dropping to something low and terrible. "You think I can just walk up to the council and say, oh, actually, Luna's changed her mind, let's swap her out like a defective part. It's done, Luna. The bloodline rights are signed. Your father's territory is folded in. I served six years for nothing, and it's *because of you.*"

"That's not fair."

"Fair?" She laughed again, and this time it had no humor in it at all, just something raw and broken scraping its way out of her throat. "You want to talk to me about fair? I watched him put a ring on your finger tonight, eleven days ago, and I stood in the dark and I smiled and I clapped, because that's what you do when your whole life gets handed to someone else. Don't you dare talk to me about fair."

The air around her shifted, thickened, that particular pressure that comes right before a wolf loses the fight to stay human. Her eyes flashed gold at the edges, a warning I recognized a half second too late, my own instincts screaming at me to run even as my feet stayed rooted to the ground.

"Selene, wait, we can figure this out, there has to be another way, please, just wait, *listen* to me, I never wanted any of this, I never asked for any of it, please just—"

She wasn't listening anymore.

Her shoulders dropped low, feet spreading into a stance I'd only ever seen in training rings, controlled and lethal and nothing like the trembling, weeping woman who'd stood before me a moment ago.

"I'm sorry," she said, and I almost believed she meant it. "I'm so sorry, Luna. But I can't let you have what should have been mine."

She moved.

I didn't even see the strike coming, just a blur of motion and moonlight and the terrible, animal certainty in her eyes as her hand shot toward me, fingers curved into claws, and the last coherent thought I had was that I never even got to say goodbye to my brother.