Chapter 2

Six years ago, Callum asked me to be with him on the stone steps behind that same banquet hall.

Back then, everyone in Black Hollow knew me as Tessa Reed. No one knew I was Tessa Valeborn, the Alpha King’s only daughter and heir.

The Valeborn name came with territory, influence, and men who became painfully respectful as soon as they recognized me. They saw royal protection and power gained through a mating bond, not a woman they loved.

I wanted to be chosen when I had nothing to offer except myself.

So I took my mother’s maiden name, wore a moonstone pendant that suppressed my royal aura, and rented a small apartment near the edge of Black Hollow territory.

That was where Callum found me.

He had recently inherited the pack. He was young and ambitious, with a warm smile that made ordinary life feel safe. He brought me coffee after work, waited with me for cars on rainy nights, and remembered things I had forgotten telling him.

I turned him down five times.

The sixth time, a drunken rogue followed me out of a bar. With my royal scent hidden, he assumed I was an unprotected woman without a pack.

When he reached for me, Callum stepped between us and took the punch meant for my face.

At the pack clinic, a healer pressed gauze against his split lip. Callum looked at me over the bloodstained cloth.

“Tessa, would it kill you to let someone take care of you for once?”

Something inside me softened.

That night, he took me to the stone steps behind the banquet hall. Rain darkened the ground, and music drifted through the walls as he held my hands.

“If you stay with me, you’ll never have to be alone again.”

I believed him.

For six years, I held on to the memory of the man who had protected me when he believed I had no family, territory, or power worth gaining.

I planned to reveal my identity after he formally chose me as his Luna. I didn’t need the title; I needed to know he had chosen Tessa Reed before learning what the Valeborn name could give him.

Then I would remove the moonstone and introduce him to my parents as the man I loved.

For months, my parents had urged me to come home and consider a mating alliance with Darius Moreau, the Alpha of Nightfall Pack. Our families had trusted each other for generations, but I refused because I still wanted Callum.

Tonight, he had finally answered me.

After leaving the banquet hall, I called a car. Rain blurred Black Hollow beyond the window, turning the streetlights into streaks of gold.

An encrypted message had been sitting unanswered on my phone for five days. It came from Marcus Vale, my father’s most trusted adviser.

The subject contained two words.

Come home.

The heir’s seat will remain yours until moonset tomorrow night. If you choose to return, the royal plane will be waiting at the northern private airfield.

I had spent five days waiting for Callum to keep his promise and turn six years of love into something real.

Now I typed my reply.

Tessa Valeborn agrees to return. Tell my parents I will discuss the Moreau arrangement when I arrive.

Sending it did not destroy me. It only ended the waiting.

I returned to the Alpha House, washed the laurel wine from my face, and began packing.

Although I had lived there for three years, everything I owned fit inside two suitcases: clothes, books, a velvet box engraved with the Valeborn crest, and a pair of black leather gloves my father had sent during my first winter away.

The gloves had arrived without a note, but I understood. No matter how long I stayed away, I still had somewhere to return to.

At three in the morning, I pulled my suitcases toward the door just as the lock turned.

Callum entered with Sienna hanging from his shoulder, giggling and unsteady from too much laurel wine. He carefully lowered her onto our sofa, tucked a cushion behind her head, and held out a bag of herbs to me.

“Good, you’re still awake. She feels sick. Make her something to sober her up. The honey and moon lemons are in the kitchen.”

I stared at the bag without taking it.

Sienna opened her eyes. For one brief second, her gaze was perfectly clear.

She looked at my suitcases, then at the bag in Callum’s hand. The corner of her mouth lifted before she closed her eyes and leaned more heavily into the sofa.

She knew exactly what he was asking me to do.

Soon after Callum and I moved in together, he once came home from a pack celebration burning with fever. I stayed awake beside him and went into the kitchen before dawn to make herbal soup.

The clay pot cracked over the fire, splashing boiling liquid across my arms and chest.

Callum carried me to the sink and held my burns beneath cold water. His face was so pale and frightened that I almost comforted him.

After I healed, he hung a wooden sign on the kitchen door.

Dangerous Area. Tessa Is Forbidden to Enter.

From then on, he never let me cook. He even washed and sliced fruit before placing it in my hands.

I had treated that memory as proof of his love. Now I understood that his love only protected me when protecting me did not inconvenience Sienna.

I removed the sign and dropped it into the trash.

“I don’t owe her anything. Let one of her friends take care of her.”

I stepped around Callum and reached for my suitcases. Only then did he notice them.

“Why did you pack those?”

“I’m leaving.”

As I moved toward the door, Callum caught my wrist. My back brushed the wall, and the moment I winced, his grip loosened.

“That’s enough, Tessa. Saying those things at the banquet was one thing. Packing your bags in the middle of the night is too much.”

“I made myself clear.”

“You’re angry.”

His voice softened into the familiar tone he used whenever he wanted me to stay. He touched a strand of my hair that still smelled faintly of laurel wine.

“I know you want to be my Luna, and I want you beside me. Tonight’s joke went too far. I’ll make Sienna apologize.”

He offered me another promise as though it could erase everything.

“Next spring full moon, I’ll hold the Luna ceremony.”

He still believed all I needed was another date.

“I never waited because I wanted the title.”

Callum frowned. “Then what is this about?”

“I waited because I wanted you to choose me.”

“I am choosing you.”

“No. You ask me to wait while you choose Sienna every time it matters.”

His hand fell away from my hair.

“I will never be your Luna.”

Callum froze.

“Tessa.”

“I told you. We’re over.”