Chapter 1

MERRYN

“Sign it.”

The words landed between us with the weight of a death sentence. I stared at the papers on the desk.

My name was printed under the word DIVORCE in neat black letters.

For a moment, I couldn’t make myself look at Lucian. If I did, I knew I would see the same expression he had worn for the past three years.

Indifference. My fingers tightened around the edge of the paper.

Three years!

Three years of being Alpha Lucian Vale’s Luna, and somehow, I had still never learned how to stand beside him without feeling like an unwanted guest.

He had never held my hand in public, not even for once. 

Whenever we walked into pack gatherings together, his hand remained at his side while mine hung uselessly beside me. If photographers appeared, Lucian always found a reason to step away, very far and quickly 

As if being photographed beside me might stain his reputation. At one pack celebration, I reached for his arm without thinking.

He literally glanced down at my hand. Then stared at me.

“Don’t!”

One word.

I immediately pulled my hand back so fast my bracelet had scraped against the table. Afterward, I spent an hour in front of the mirror wondering what I had done wrong. Maybe my dress had been too tight, or the color had been unflattering. Maybe I looked too big beside him. That has become my favorite explanation for everything.

My clothes made me look bigger, my hair made my face look rounder. That dress showed too much of my stomach. That skirt made my thighs look enormous.

Lucian never had to say lose weight. He had found a hundred softer ways to tell me I took up too much space.

So I changed, I stopped wearing fitted dresses. I bought darker colors, I skipped meals before important pack events. I spent ridiculous amounts of money on clothes that were supposed to make me look smaller.

I had even stood in front of the bathroom mirror one night, holding my stomach in until my lungs burned, imagining what I might look like if I were the kind of woman Lucian could proudly touch.

It had never been enough. He had never called me beautiful, not on our mating night, on my birthday, his own, not for once.

At pack events, he introduced the visiting Alphas, their wives, their daughters, their advisers. Everyone expects me.

Sometimes people looked around afterward, confused.

So where is the Luna?

I used to smile and pretend I didn’t notice.

Now I wonder why I had spent three years pretending anything. I lifted my eyes to him.

“Why now?”

Lucian sat behind his desk, perfectly composed in his black suit. Not a wrinkle disturbed his shirt. 

His expression was as controlled as ever.

As if he weren’t ending our marriage. As if the three years we had  spent together were nothing more than an appointment he had decided to cancel. His jaw tightened.

“Because there’s no reason to continue something that was never meant to last.”

I swallowed.

“There’s someone else.”

His silence answered me. My chest tightened.

“Selene!”

Lucian’s gaze shifted toward the window.

“She came back to Albion yesterday.”

I almost laughed, of course Selene Arden.

The woman everyone in the Vale Pack knew Lucian had loved before me. The woman he had supposedly left behind when his father arranged our marriage.

The woman whose name had lived between us for three years without ever needing to be spoken. I looked down at the divorce papers again.

“You’re divorcing me because she’s back?”

Lucian didn’t deny it, my throat burned.

“She is the woman you should have married.”

His eyes finally met mine.

“Yes.”

The single word cut deeper than an argument could have. I pressed my palms against my knees beneath the desk.

“Was I ever enough for you?”

There it was. The question I had swallowed every night for three years.

I had imagined asking it so many times. In my imagination, Lucian always softened.

Sometimes he even reached for me. Sometimes he told me he had been wrong. Reality was less kind. His eyes moved over me.

Not my face, but my freaking far ass body, slowly and deliberately. 

I felt every inch of myself become something to be measured. Then his mouth twisted.

“Do you think I’ll ever walk hand in hand with a girl four times my size?”

Everything inside me went still, the room didn’t disappear.

The clock on the wall kept ticking. The curtains still moved with the breeze. Somewhere outside, a wolf barked. But I couldn’t hear any of it properly. All I could hear was that sentence.

Four times my size!

My fingers curled into the fabric of my dress. For three years, I had been trying to become smaller.

Smaller in photographs, smaller in rooms, smaller beside him and smaller in his life. 

And somehow, I was still too big. I blinked quickly.

Once, twice. I refused to let the tears fall in front of him.

If Lucian wanted freedom, he could have it. I picked up the pen. His eyebrows lifted slightly.

Maybe he had expected begging. Maybe he expected another promise from me.

Another diet, another desperate attempt to become the woman he wanted.

I signed my name. Merryn Vale. The letters blurred for half a second. I pushed the papers across the desk.

“There.”

Lucian looked down at my signature. Then he took the pen and signed under it.

Just like that. Three years reduced to ink. He placed the pen aside.

“You shouldn’t make this difficult.”

I stared at him.

“I haven’t.”

“Good.” He leaned back. “Because Selene will soon take your place as Luna.”

My stomach twisted, he said it so casually.

As if I were a chair being removed from one room so someone else could sit in it.

I stood, the chair crunched loudly against the floor.

Lucian didn’t move. I gathered the papers with trembling fingers.

“You won’t have to worry about me anymore.”

His expression didn’t change. I walked to the door. One step, then another, I wouldn’t cry.

Not here, not in front of him. I opened the door and stepped into the hallway.

The moment it closed behind me, my breath broke. I pressed the papers against my chest.

Three years, gone just like that. I started down the staircase. I barely made it to the bottom before I stopped. Someone was standing there.

Selene Arden.

She was even more beautiful than the pictures.

Tall, elegant, slim and a figure eight to be precise. Her golden hair fell over one shoulder, and the smile on her lips was soft enough to look innocent. Her eyes dropped to the papers in my hands.

Then she returned to my face.

“I think I should thank you.”

My fingers tightened around the divorce papers. I couldn’t move, couldn’t speak. 

Selene walked past me. Her perfume lingered in the air. Then she opened the study door without knocking.

Lucian stood immediately, for the first time in three years, I watched him smile genuinely.

Not the polite smile he gave the pack, or the restrained expression he’d worn beside me.

A real smile. Selene crossed the room, Lucian met her halfway and his arms went around her waist as though they belonged there.

And before I could look away, he lowered his head and kissed her without hesitation and shame. 

Without once worrying about who might see, including me.