Chapter 4 - Nathan

The pain is like nothing I’ve ever felt—like someone’s trying to carve out my still-beating heart with serrated spoons while laying me on burning coals. It’s sharp. It’s constant. It’s everywhere.

I can’t breathe, let alone speak. The pain only intensifies when Tomas and Jai touch me to lift me off the ground. I don’t even register why they’re carrying me until the sunlight hits my skin—and that is a whole new kind of agony. Like being flayed alive under a magnifying glass.

I didn’t know pain like this could exist and not kill you. Honestly, I’m not convinced it won’t.

Then Tomas drops me.

No warning. No gentleness. Just the ground slamming into my back. My wolf howls in my head, but all my body can manage is a whimper. Jai hesitates, eyes darting between Tomas and me, but Tomas waves him off. Jai shrugs and walks away.

Great. I’m left alone with an enraged male who’s about to make me feel even worse.

Takes a minute before I can even register his voice over the dull roar of pain.

“You fucking idiot!” Tomas yells. “You just threw away the best thing that could’ve ever happened to you! Why the hell would you do that?! You fucking—”

He’s cut off by another furious voice—my father.

“WHAT THE HELL DID YOU JUST DO?!” Dad roars.

He’s always treated the matebond like it’s sacred. The holiest thing the Moon Goddess ever gifted us. His bond with Mom is legend. Their friends? All mated wolves who built this pack from the ashes of war and turned it into something strong.

And I just spit in the face of that gift.

The physical pain starts to dull, but now there’s something worse: a yawning emptiness in my chest. I feel... incomplete. Hollow. Like I’m frantically searching for something I already pushed away. My whole body trembles—not from the cold, but from the ache of loss.

I didn’t know it would hurt like this. Did Tomas feel this when Zoe and Kaia rejected him? What about Alexander and Jacob when Josefina left them? How the hell did they survive this?

Panting, my voice just a whisper, I croak, “She’s a Riding Hood. I can’t be mated to that.”

“She was a Riding Hood,” Mom says, stepping beside Dad, her hand on his arm. The skin-to-skin contact calms him immediately. “She was born into it, just like you were born to Julian.”

“She’s the strongest witch in the world, Mom,” I say, voice shaky but rising. “It’s only a matter of time before she turns on us.”

“She saved the hostages. She stopped the sacrifices. She worked with us to end the Riding Hoods!” Dad says, closing the distance between us with fury in every step. “She’s the reason we were able to stop them!”

“Not all of them,” I shoot back. “Her mother got free. The strongest one of all.”

Mom starts to argue, “That wasn’t her fault—”

But I cut her off with a sneer. “Kind of a convenient coincidence, don’t you think?”

“SHUT THE FUCK UP!” Tomas explodes.

We all freeze.

Tomas never yells. Never really gets mad. He’s easygoing, reckless, the life of the party. That’s who he’s always been.

But not anymore.

Since Zoe and Kaia rejected him two days ago, he’s been... broken. Empty. And now, furious.

I turn to him and finally see him. He looks like hell—sunken cheeks, sallow skin, like he hasn’t eaten or slept since the rejection. The fire in his eyes is all that’s left of him.

“You let your hate—your prejudice—cost you the best thing you’ll ever have,” he says, voice shaking with rage. “At least Jacob and I earned our rejections. Nyx? She didn’t do a damn thing. From what I’ve heard, she’s amazing. Esteban can’t stop talking about her—”

A growl rises from my throat before I even realize it. Doesn’t matter that I rejected her. Doesn’t matter that Esteban is a friend. The thought of another male admiring her like that makes my wolf go feral.

Tomas laughs—bitter and cold. “You dumbass. You don’t even get it yet. That hole in your chest? That aching, gnawing feeling that you’ll never be whole again? That doesn’t go away. It just gets worse. You’ll feel it every single day until you find your second-chance mate.”

I freeze.

It took me five years to find my first mate. How long until the second?

And worse? Worse than this?

Tomas sees the horror on my face and lets out another mirthless laugh. “Yeah. Now you get it.”

I can’t even answer. I just stare at the grass, blinking at nothing.

I fucked up. Bad. But so did the Moon Goddess. How could she do this to me?

Tomas turns to walk away but throws one last dagger over his shoulder. “I hope your second-chance doesn’t show up for years. Maybe by then, you’ll be worthy of her.”

He’s gone.

And I finally break.

The tears start before I even notice. Then Mom is there, wiping my cheeks, wrapping an arm around me, pulling me against her chest like she used to when I was a kid.

She doesn’t say anything. She just holds me. Rubs my back. Lets me cry.

Dad paces in front of me, fists clenching, shoulders tight. His wolf is barely leashed. I recognize the signs—the flex of his hands, the way he tilts his head like he’s ready to shift and bolt.

He and Mom are mindlinking. I can tell by the empty look in their eyes.

Then suddenly Dad stops, turns to face me, and speaks with the kind of ice that makes your bones ache.

“You didn’t just reject your mate. You rejected your luna. You robbed our pack of the strength her bond would’ve brought. And now? You’ve likely destroyed your own prophecy.”

I stare at him, stunned.

His brittle smile cracks as he continues, “Didn’t think about that, did you? What if this—that bond—was how you were meant to end the Riding Hoods? She could’ve helped us find the last three. She could’ve helped us find Selene. Or Hecate. She could’ve protected us from threats we haven’t even seen yet. And in return, we could’ve given her the love and family she’s never had.”

Mom steps beside him.

And I know it’s coming.

She uses the voice she reserves for punishments that go beyond disappointment. The voice she uses when wolves cross lines they can’t uncross.

“You’ve proven you can’t put the needs of the pack above your need for vengeance,” she says, voice cold and steady. “You are unfit to be Alpha of the Moon Goddess Pack.”

My stomach drops. The world tilts.

She swallows—just once, betraying how much this hurts her too.

“But I am still Luna,” she says. “And I will protect this pack. Effective immediately, you are stripped of your status as my heir. The title of Alpha will pass to your brother, Ethan, when he comes of age.”