1 - NAOMI'S POV

I stood in the center of the crowded pack hall and focused my eyes on the heavy stone floor. The room was terribly quiet.

Azriel stood right in front of me with his jaw clenched tight. He reached out and grabbed my left hand.

His fingers dug deeply into my skin. He squeezed my wrist hard enough to leave dark bruises, but I refused to pull away.

"This is the right decision for the Crescent Moon Pack," Azriel said loudly. He wanted the elders to hear his justification. "We need a Luna who knows how to nurture our people."

"You mean you need a Luna who does not question your bad decisions," I replied calmly.

Azriel narrowed his eyes. He grabbed the silver Luna ring resting on my finger and he pulled it straight down over my knuckle.

The thick silver scraped painfully against my bone and left a bright red mark behind. I kept my face perfectly blank and I refused to shed a single tear.

"I am your Alpha," Azriel warned me in a low voice. "You will show me respect today."

"You are a fucking idiot," I told him directly. My voice echoed clearly across the large stone hall.

Azriel turned a dark shade of red. He dropped the heavy silver ring directly into the open hand of the woman standing right next to him.

My twin sister smiled brightly. Kailani slid the ring onto her own finger and held her hand up under the bright chandelier lights.

"It fits me so much better," Kailani said. She looked at me with a smug expression on her face. "You never really cared about the traditions anyway, Naomi."

I stared back at my twin sister. "I cared about keeping the winter food storage full, Kailani. The traditions do not feed starving children."

Kailani rolled her eyes and sighed loudly. "You always make everything sound so dramatic. Azriel just wants a mate who actually spends time with him."

"I spent five years locked in the office balancing his broken budgets," I pointed out. "If I spent my time attending your parties, the human banks would have foreclosed on this land three years ago."

Azriel stepped forward and crossed his arms over his broad chest. He glared at me.

"That is enough," Azriel commanded. "Naomi Bennett is officially stripped of her title. Kailani will take over the duties starting tonight."

I looked at the row of elders sitting at the long wooden table at the front of the room. They shifted uncomfortably in their chairs but nobody stood up to object.

"Are you all going to sit there and let him do this?" I asked the elders loudly.

Elder Thomas swallowed hard. He adjusted his glasses and looked down at his paperwork.

"The Alpha has the legal right to choose his mate, Naomi," Thomas said quietly. "We cannot interfere with a mating bond."

"A mating bond?" I asked Thomas. "Is that what we are calling treason now?"

Thomas frowned and looked up at me. "Do not use that word in this hall. It is just a change in leadership."

"It is a death sentence for your economy," I argued back. "Tell the hall who secured the southern lumber routes last winter. Tell them who negotiated the prices."

"You did the paperwork," Thomas admitted softly. "But Kailani can learn to do the paperwork."

I laughed a short and bitter laugh. I pointed my finger directly at my sister.

"Kailani failed basic math three times," I told Thomas. "She does not know how to read a transit manifest. She does not even know the name of our primary lumber supplier."

"His name is Nolan," Kailani snapped quickly. She crossed her arms and glared at me. "See? I know his name."

"Knowing his name is not the same as negotiating a tariff," I replied. I turned my attention to the man sitting next to Thomas.

"Elder David," I said loudly. "Tell Azriel exactly how much money we have left in the emergency medical fund right now."

David rubbed his forehead with his hand. He looked extremely nervous. "We do not need to discuss pack finances during a formal severing ceremony, Naomi."

"We absolutely need to discuss it," I insisted. "Because I am the only person in this room who knows the access codes to the human bank accounts."

Azriel stepped closer to me. His canine teeth began to lengthen as his wolf pushed forward out of pure frustration.

"You will give Kailani the access codes before you leave this territory," Azriel demanded.

"I will not give her anything," I told him. "You severed the bond. You can figure out the accounting yourselves tomorrow morning."

Kailani grabbed Azriel's arm in a panic. She looked up at him with wide eyes.

"Make her write the passwords down, Azriel," Kailani pleaded. "I already promised the decorators I would pay them tomorrow for the new bedroom furniture."

I stared at my sister in pure disgust. "You bought new furniture on the same day the winter meat rations were supposed to be ordered?"

Kailani lifted her chin defensively. "I am the new Luna. I deserve a bedroom that does not smell like your old paperwork."

"The pack is going to starve by next month," I told her honestly. "You cannot buy loyalty with new bedsheets."

Azriel roared loudly. The sound echoed off the stone walls and made the ordinary pack members in the back of the room flinch backward.

"Shut your mouth," Azriel shouted. He pointed his finger toward the heavy front doors. "You are leaving my territory tonight. Go upstairs and pack your bags."

"I am going upstairs to pack my heavy boots and my jeans," I told him. "You can keep the expensive dresses you bought me."

I turned to walk toward the main staircase. I just wanted to grab my heavy duffel bag and walk out the front door as fast as possible.

"Wait," Azriel called out. "You are leaving the encrypted laptop here. That laptop belongs to the Crescent Moon Pack."

I stopped walking and I looked over my shoulder. "The laptop belongs to me. I bought it with my own money before we were married."

"It contains my financial ledgers," Azriel argued. "You are not walking out of here with my private information."

"Your ledgers are a mess," I replied. "I spent five years fixing your mistakes. The laptop comes with me."

Azriel growled low in his throat. He looked at the four armed guards standing near the front entrance of the hall.

"Detain her," Azriel ordered the guards loudly. "Lock her in the guest room until she hands over the laptop and writes down the treasury passwords."

The four guards stepped forward slowly. They looked incredibly hesitant to attack me.

I recognized the lead guard. His name was Julian and I personally approved his promotion to captain last summer.

"Julian," I said calmly. "Do you really want to do this?"

Julian stopped walking. He lowered his eyes to the floor and he gripped his wooden baton tightly.

"Please do not make this difficult, Luna," Julian whispered. He caught his mistake and he quickly corrected himself. "I mean Naomi. Just give him the passwords."

"You know I will not go quietly into a locked room," I warned him. "I know how you fight, Julian. I wrote your training schedule."

"I have direct orders from the Alpha," Julian said. He sounded miserable but he took another step toward me anyway.

"Your Alpha is making a massive mistake," I told him. "If you lock me in a room, I will break the window and leave anyway."

"Grab her," Kailani shouted from the front of the room. "She is disrespecting the Alpha in front of everyone."

Julian sighed heavily. He raised his wooden baton and he signaled for the other three guards to surround me.

The guards slowly formed a half-circle around me to block my path to the stairs. I raised my fists and I shifted my weight into a defensive stance.

I calculated the exact distance between Julian and myself. I prepared to strike his knee with my heavy boot to break his stance.

Before Julian could take another step forward, a massive noise shattered the quiet tension in the room.

The heavy oak doors at the very back of the pack hall crashed open violently.

The thick wood slammed hard against the stone walls. The sound was as loud as a bomb exploding in the enclosed space.

The metal hinges groaned loudly. One of the heavy doors cracked right down the middle from the sheer force of the impact.

Every single person in the hall jumped in surprise. The elders stood up from their wooden chairs in a pure panic.

Azriel spun around to face the entrance. His eyes widened and he pushed Kailani behind his back to shield her from the unknown threat.

Julian and the guards stopped moving toward me. They turned their attention away and looked at the broken doors at the back of the room.

The dust settled slowly around the entrance. A massive man stepped over the broken wood and walked onto the marble floor.

He was dressed in dark black military tactical gear. His heavy combat boots hit the stone floor with a slow and deliberate rhythm.

He wore a thick kevlar vest over his broad chest. A silver combat knife was strapped securely to his muscular thigh.

I turned around slowly to look at him. My heart skipped a beat and my hands began to tremble at my sides.

He was no longer the bruised and starving teenager I remembered hiding in the cellar from five years ago. He was a lethal enforcer now.

The stranger stopped walking. He stood near the back row of chairs and he looked across the crowded room with absolute authority.

An intense and overwhelming scent suddenly flooded the large hall. It smelled exactly like fresh rain and deep cedar wood.

The scent hit my nose and it felt like a heavy punch directly to my chest. The air violently rushed out of my lungs.

My suppressed wolf woke up instantly and howled in my mind. My heart hammered against my ribs and the mate bond snapped firmly into place.