Chapter 1-The Smell of Another Woman

Sera's Pov

My back slammed into the concrete wall, the impact barely registering over the pain ripping through my chest. A broken groan escaped me.

Not again.

I grabbed my thigh, nails digging into denim, trying to anchor myself before it felt like my soul tore clean out of my body. My lungs refused to cooperate. Every breath came sharp and shallow, as though invisible hands had wrapped around my throat. The rain from last night's storm had turned the ground into slick mud, swimming in and out of focus beneath my boots.

How many times has this happened now? Forty? Fifty? I'd stopped counting after the first dozen.

The mate bond wasn't some beautiful blessing the elders loved to romanticize. It was an iron chain forged between two souls. When one strayed, the other bled.

And I was bleeding.

Cedarwood. Rain-soaked pine. Caden. My Alpha. My mate. My husband.

The scents should have grounded me. Instead, another smell crashed into them, thick and suffocating. Jasmine. Cheap vanilla. The unmistakable pheromones of a female in heat.

My wolf exploded inside me, howling loud enough to split my skull. She wanted to run. Hunt. Tear through flesh until that scent disappears forever.

I squeezed my eyes shut. Don't fall. Not here. Not in front of Eli.

The tears never came. They had dried up months ago, washed away by sleepless nights and excuses I kept making for the man I loved.

Only rage remained. It rose slowly, bitter as poison.

I pushed away from the wall and forced my legs toward Ashbourne Nursery.

Children's laughter filled the crisp afternoon air. Parents chatted by the gates while little wolves darted between them, backpacks bouncing against tiny shoulders.

"Mommy?" Small fingers slipped into mine. I looked down. Gray eyes stared back at me — Caden's eyes. Our son's eyes. "Why is your hand shaking?"

My heart cracked a little more.

Because your father is destroying me. Because I already know what I'm going to find.

Instead, I smiled. What could he do about it anyway?

"I'm fine, sweetie."

The lie tasted like ash. I swallowed it anyway.

"Let's go find Daddy."

"Okay," he replied gleefully.

Every step toward Crescent Moon Packhouse felt like walking willingly toward my own execution. The towering stone walls had always made me feel safe. Today they felt like a prison.

The guards standing outside the Alpha's wing wouldn't meet my eyes. One lowered his head. Another stared hard at the floor. Not one of them spoke. Not one of them stopped me, either — and looking back later, I would wonder why the wing that was always locked at this hour stood open without a single hand near the door.

They knew. The entire pack probably knew.

I felt so stupid. I was the last fool still pretending my marriage could be saved. Heat climbed my neck — humiliation mixed with anger until I could barely tell them apart.

My wolf growled. You ignored me.

She was right. For weeks she'd whimpered every time Caden came home carrying that faint trace of jasmine beneath his cedarwood scent. I had convinced myself it was nothing. Pack meetings. Training. Border patrol. Anything but the truth.

The hallway leading to the Alpha's private quarters stretched endlessly. The closer I came, the stronger the jasmine became — clinging to the air, the walls, every breath. My stomach churned. I tightened my grip around Eli's hand. He simply matched my pace, his little legs hurrying to keep up.

He trusted me completely.

The thought nearly broke me.

I reached the door.

The sounds were unmistakable.

I didn't knock. This was our room.

The heavy oak slammed into the wall with a thunderous crack. Silence followed. My world stopped turning.

The bed sat at the center of it all.

Caden was there. Shirtless. Powerful muscles shifted beneath scarred skin as he slowly turned toward me — not startled, not scrambling, but turning the way a man turns when he already knows exactly who's standing in the doorway.

Those hands. The same hands that had steadied me through twenty hours of labor. The same hands that had sworn before the Moon Goddess to protect me.

Now they were tangled in another woman's blonde hair.

Lyra. A low-ranking wolf from the outer borders. A girl I had personally ensured received extra winter rations when her family struggled through winter.

The irony made me sick.

Caden didn't scramble away. Didn't cover himself. Didn't apologize. For half a second, something moved behind his eyes — too fast to name, gone before I could trust that I'd seen it — and then his amber eyes flashed with Alpha authority as his aura burst through the room, crashing into me like a tidal wave meant to force me to my knees.

He expected obedience. Submission. Silence.

Something inside me shattered. Was this the man I devoted my loyalty to?

The woman who had loved him without question died in that instant. The devoted Luna. The faithful mate. The wife who always forgave him.

Cold emptiness filled the space she left behind.

I stood straighter. His Alpha power struck me — and broke against me like water against stone.

I met his gaze without blinking.

"How could you?"

My voice cracked despite every effort to hold it steady. I'd suspected. I'd denied it. I'd prayed I was wrong. Seeing it with my own eyes wasn't heartbreak. It was the violent death of every future I'd imagined.

I opened my mouth to say more.

No words came.

Caden's jaw tightened like he was holding something back — an explanation, maybe, or a plea — and then he let it go slack again, his face closing over like a door shutting from the inside.

Lyra smiled. Not nervously. Not apologetically.

She looked at me with quiet triumph, as though I were interrupting something precious. Something that belonged to her.

My fingers went numb.

Eli slipped free.

My heart lurched. Before I could stop him, he sprinted across the room, sneakers squeaking against polished wood — straight toward the bed.

He never looked at Caden.

He never looked back at me.

Lyra pulled the silk sheet over bare breasts with infuriating ease and opened her arms.

Eli ran into them. He buried his face against her neck, breathing in the scent that had just destroyed my life.

Not like a frightened child.

Like someone coming home.

Ice flooded my veins.

He lifted his head, smiling at her with a warmth I hadn't seen directed at me in two long years.

Then, in a tiny, trusting voice, he whispered the word that finished breaking me.

"Mommy."