Her Rival's Return

Ivara’s POV

She crossed the room like she owned it, and I watched Draven’s face break open into something I had never seen him wear for me.

“Selara.” Her name left his mouth like a prayer.

She did not even look at me, she just walked straight past me, straight into his arms, and kissed him like I was a piece of furniture in the way.

His hands came up to her waist and he kissed her back.

I stood there frozen, and watched my husband held another woman the same way he held me last night.

“I thought you were dead,” Draven said against her lips, and his voice cracked.

“They told me you died.”

“I’m here now.” She pulled back just enough to smile at him, then finally, finally, her eyes slid to me like she was noticing a stain on the carpet.

“Is this her?”

“Ivara.” Draven said my name like an afterthought. “My wife.”

“Wife.” Selara laughed, but it was soft and cruel.

“How sweet.”

My chest was caving in. “Draven, what is going on? Who is she?”

He didn't answer right away, he just looked at Selara like the answer was written on her face, like he owed her the explanation before he owed it to me, his own wife of three years.

“Selara and I were together before you and I married,” he finally said.

“We were supposed to be mated. Her pack sent word she died in an attack five years ago.”

“I wasn’t dead.” Selara wrapped her arm around his, resting her head on his shoulder like it was the most natural place in the world.

“I was taken. It took me this long to escape and find my way home.”

“Home.” I said the word slowly, tasting how wrong it felt in my mouth.

“This is my home.”

“Was,” Draven said quietly.

There it was, the truth I had been circling since I woke up this morning humming, since I fell asleep last night believing he finally chose me.

“You married me because of her.” My voice shook.

“That’s it, isn’t it? That’s why you never looked at me. That’s why three years went by and you never once called me anything but Luna in front of others.”

Draven’s jaw tightened. “My father owed her father a blood-debt. Marrying you was how we settled it. Your father agreed to give you to our pack to erase what he owed mine.”

The room tilted, my father sold me, not because he loved Draven’s pack, not because it was some honor, but because he owed a debt and I was the payment.

“So all this time,” I said, and my voice was barely above a whisper, “I was just a debt being paid off.”

“Ivara…”

“And last night?” My eyes burned but I refused to let the tears fall in front of her.

“Was that a debt too? Or did you just need someone warm since your real love wasn’t here yet?”

Selara’s mouth curved. “Careful how you speak to your Alpha.”

“I wasn’t speaking to you.” I didn't even look at her, my eyes stayed on Draven, waiting, praying he would say something, anything, that made this make sense in a way that didn't leave me shattered on his study floor.

But he said nothing, he just stood there with Selara’s arm looped through his, guilt flickered behind his eyes for half a second before it disappeared again, the same way it disappeared this morning.

“I want you to sign the divorce papers,” he said finally. “Today, now, if possible.”

Something in me went very still.

Three years of biting my tongue, three years of running his pack while he ignored me, three years of hoping the man behind his eyes would finally look at me the way he looked last night.

And in one morning, all of it got erased like it never mattered.

I would not beg, I decided that right there, standing in front of the woman he actually loved.

I would not beg for a man who kissed another woman in front of me before the sheets from our night together were even cold.

“Where are they?” I asked.

Draven blinked, like he expected a fight. “What?”

“The papers. Where are they?”

He gestured to the desk. There, sitting under a paperweight shaped like a wolf, the same paperweight I bought him for our first anniversary, are the divorce papers, already drawn up, already waiting.

He had them ready before he ever called me in here and before Selara ever walked through that door, he knew what today would be before I did.

I then walked to the desk and my hands were shaking but I didn't let that stop me.

I then picked up the pen, and for one moment I hovered over the paper, some small foolish part of me hoping he would stop me, hoping he would say wait, hoping last night meant something even a fraction as real as it felt.

He said nothing and I signed my name.

“There.” I set the pen down and looked at Selara, who was watching me with a satisfied little smile like she just won something she had been chasing for years.

“You can have him.”

“Ivara,” Draven started, and for the first time his voice sounded almost unsure, almost like regret, but I did not wait to hear the rest.

I walked out of that study with my back straight and my chin high, and I didn't let a single tear fall until I was halfway down the hallway, until I was sure neither of them could see me.

I then went straight to my room.

Our room, I didn't know what to call it now.

I just pulled out my old traveling bag from three years ago, the one I brought with me the day I first arrived here as a nervous bride who didn’t understand yet what kind of debt she was paying.

I started packing whatever was mine, my mother’s necklace and a few dresses that didn’t have the pack crest stitched into them

Anything that felt like it belonged to me and not to the Luna title I was about to lose.

I was folding the last dress when I heard boots outside my door, heavy and many, more than one set.

I opened the door and found two guards standing there, faced blank, expressions carved from stone.

“Ivara,” the taller one said, not even using my title anymore.

“The Alpha has ordered you to move to the omega quarters, effective immediately.”

I stared at him, waiting for the rest, waiting for some explanation that made this make sense.

There wasn’t one.