CHAPTER 1

The elders always claimed a wolf is most vulnerable to a mate’s plea when the moon is high and the heat of the bond is still simmering in his veins.

After a frantic, bone-deep coupling that left the room smelling of cedar and musk, I lay spent against Andrew’s chest. My skin was still flushed, my breath hitching as I looked up at the man who held my leash. I reached out a trembling hand, my voice raspy.

“Where is my Moon-Bond gift, Andrew?”

Unlike my disheveled state—bare-chested and marked by his teeth—Andrew Wolfe looked as if he hadn't just spent the last hour claiming me. He was already pulling on his dark shirt, his movements precise, the silver buttons catching the light. Only his collar was open, revealing the sharp, lethal line of his throat.

His eyes, those deep-set golden orbs, were cold again, shuttered behind a wall of Alpha discipline. It was hard to reconcile this stoic commander with the beast who, moments ago, had pinned my wrists to the headboard and driven into me with a desperate, primal hunger.

I waited, my heart hammering with a sweet, foolish hope. He looked down at me, his expression flat. “What gift, Lanka?”

I went cold. He had been away with the Northern Pack for over a month. I truly believed his return tonight was to mark my birth-dawn and our second year as mated pairs. I’d heard rumors through the pack link that he’d secured a rare moonstone from the mountain territories, and his mother, Margaret, had even shown me the Hawthorne family’s ancestral obsidian blade.

Either would have meant he finally accepted me.

“You know exactly what tonight is,” I huffed, lunging upward to press a kiss to his jaw, needing to feel that spark of the bond again.

He flinched. Andrew moved with the predatory speed of a True Alpha, dodging me so completely I kissed the stale air where he had been.

I stiffened, the rejection stinging worse than a silver burn. We had shared a bed for two years, but he had never once initiated a kiss. I thought the moon-fever would change him, but it was just another biological transaction to him.

Seeing my hurt, his inner wolf seemed to stir with a cruel, teasing edge. He grabbed my hand, forcing it against the heavy leather of his belt.

“Not satisfied yet? You want a prize, Omega? Let’s see if you can actually earn it this time.”

I fought down the rising shame, my face burning. Despite our two years of "marriage," these moments were rare and usually dictated by his cycle. I was still shy, trying to pull my hand back.

“Do it yourself,” I muttered, reaching into the bedside drawer to hand him the protection we always used—he refused to let me carry his pup.

Andrew snorted at my retreat, but when his eyes fell on the packet in my hand, they turned to shards of ice. He lunged, his fingers catching my chin in a bruising grip.

“Lanka! Who taught you these pathetic, low-born schemes?”

The heat was gone. In its place was a lethal, Alpha roar that made my wolf cower. I looked down, dazed, and saw what he saw—the packets in the drawer had been systematically punctured.

He thought I was trying to trap him. He thought I was the same desperate boy who had supposedly "tricked" him into a bond four years ago.

“It wasn’t me!” I gasped, my voice thin.

I scrambled to show him the rest, but every single one had been sabotaged.

Andrew was already fully dressed, looming over me like a mountain. “Not you? No one enters the Alpha’s quarters without permission. You’re the only one who cleans this room because you’re so terrified of the servants seeing your shame.”

My heart ached. I did the chores myself to please him, to show him I wasn't the spoiled brat the pack thought I was. Now, my devotion was my indictment. Then, I remembered.

“Your mother... Margaret was here while you were at the border. She came into the room.”

“My mother? You think the Matriarch of the Wolfe line would stoop to this?” His voice was a whip.

I knew the truth—Margaret Wolfe hated me. She wanted a "pure" match for her son, someone like the Hawthornes, and she’d do anything to prove I was a deceptive snake. But Andrew wouldn't hear it.

“You are beyond redemption,” he spat.

He turned to leave. Panic flared in my chest—the anniversary was slipping away into a nightmare. I reached out to grab his arm, but his phone buzzed. He shook me off with a snarl to answer it. His voice, once jagged and cold, turned impossibly soft.

“I’m coming. I know what night it is. Just wait for me.”

I caught the faint sound of a voice on the other end—silky, refined, and definitely not mine. As he strode toward the door, I threw on a robe and chased him. My sleeve caught on a crystal decanter, sending it shattering across the stone floor. Dark wine pooled like blood.

I didn't care. I blocked the door, my chest heaving. “Who is it? You’ve been with them all month, haven't you? You're leaving our mating night for them? You can’t! You’re my Alpha!”

Andrew’s gaze was a winter storm. “Lanka, look at yourself. Do you honestly think a stray I picked up from the dirt has the right to demand anything of me?”

The words gutted me. He shoved past me with effortless strength and disappeared into the hall. I collapsed onto the shards of glass, my voice cracking as I screamed after him, “If you walk out, Andrew, I’m breaking the bond! I want a divorce!”

His footsteps didn't even falter.

I sank onto the floor, the weight of a decade crushing me. When I was eight, Andrew had found me—a half-dead pup in the Redstone woods—and brought me back to the Wolfe Crest. He was my protector. He taught me how to hunt, how to shift, how to survive. He was my brother, my mentor, my entire world.

At eighteen, I would have died for him. At eighteen, I was found in his bed in the middle of a feverish haze, a scandal that rocked the entire Lunar Council. The Hawthorne elders had demanded his head, and his own grandmother had nearly exiled him. To save face, he mated with me.

His true love, Serena Wolfe’s kin, Serena’s friend Vanessa—everyone turned their backs.

He mated me, but he never loved me. He treated our bond like a cage. He hated me for ruining his status, and he forbade me from ever calling him "Andy" again. I kept my true feelings buried, terrified that if he knew I actually loved him, he’d hate me even more.

I didn't know what happened that night four years ago. I just woke up to the world calling me a predator.

“Luna Lanka? Why are you on the floor?” Elaine Brooks, the pack observer, stood at the door.

I wiped my eyes quickly, standing up and trying to hide my trembling hands. “What is it, Elaine?”

“The Alpha ordered me to bring this.”

She held out a cup of silver-laced water and a suppressant pill. The Wolfe version of "the morning after." I took it, swallowing the bitter medicine under her watchful eye.

Once she left, I numbly cleaned the glass. It was only when I saw the red smears on the stone that I realized a shard had sliced deep into my foot. I didn't feel it. I just laughed—a hollow, broken sound.

I went down to the Great Hall. The stag I’d hunted and the moon-cakes I’d prepared were sitting cold on the table. I sat alone in the dark, eating in silence, a funeral feast for a dead marriage.

Suddenly, Judith Lane ran into the room, her eyes wide. “Luna! Something is wrong! Young Lucas Wolfe has collapsed! He’s burning up!”

Lucas was Andrew’s younger brother, a sweet pup who was the only one in this house who didn't look at me with disgust.

“Get the driver!” I shouted, my instincts taking over. “I’ll get him to the Silverline Center!”

By the time we reached the medical center, it was midnight. Lucas was rushed into the back. Margaret and Vanessa arrived shortly after, looking frantic. I stayed in the hall, waiting for the healers.

The door to the private consult room was cracked. I went to ask about Lucas, but stopped when I heard Margaret’s voice.

“Is he stable? Does he need the marrow?”

“The leukemia is aggressive, Matriarch,” the healer sighed. “But Lucas has the rare Silver-Blood type. Transfusions are hard to come by. If Lanka were to conceive, the pup would be a perfect match. A natural donor. The Wolfe pack didn't keep that stray around for nothing.”

I felt like I’d been doused in ice water. They didn't want me to have a child for love. They wanted me to breed a medicine cabinet for their Golden Boy.

Sick to my stomach, I turned and walked toward the exit. I thought the night couldn't get any darker, until I saw him.

Andrew was standing by the fountain in the moon-garden. He wasn't alone. He was with a man, their heads close, wearing matching festival garlands. Andrew looked relaxed—happier than I’d seen him in years.

He was looking at his phone while the other man playfully reached up to adjust a wolf-ear headband on Andrew’s head. On the stranger's wrist, the Hawthorne obsidian blade glittered—the family heirloom Andrew said he didn't have.

My vision blurred. I felt a surge of nausea and retched into the bushes. Andrew turned, his golden eyes locking onto mine.

He didn't look guilty. He didn't even look surprised. He just whispered something to the man beside him.

The man turned around. He was beautiful, polished, and radiated Alpha power.

It was Vanessa’s brother, Matthew Hawthorne. He was back. And Andrew had never stopped waiting for him.