THE LUNA WHO LEFT HER ALPHA CHAPTER 4

He spun to face her in earnest, his eyes a rich green with a depth that wasn’t simply a matter of worry anymore.

“Damn it, what the hell is happening with you? You’ve been different since this morning – distant, cold. You don’t want me to touch you, to go running with me. You even stare at me like a stranger rather than your mate.”

Because you made yourself into one, she thought to herself bitterly. The day you decided to take her over me, and smiled while I died.

“Perhaps I just figured out something,” she said quietly.

“What’s that?”

She locked eyes with him.

“That being chosen by the Goddess of the Moon isn’t necessarily being chosen by you.”

Leon’s expression grew blank, then angry.

“That’s not right.”

“Is it?”

“You’re my mate, my Luna. Every single thing I do is for this pack, and for us.”

“And the way you watch Trisha like that when you think no one is looking?”

“She’s pack,” he repeated, very carefully, perhaps too carefully. “She saved my life once, so I owe her protection. Doesn’t mean..”

“I owe her nothing that I own.”

The silence between them was heavy, loaded with menace.

Leon took her hand like he always did, as though sure she would accept his touch.

Corinne jerked her hand away and crossed her arms across her chest.

That low growl, that deep, Alpha tone that had used to make her melt on the spot, resounded in the quiet room. “I own you, Corinne. Marked by the Goddess. You don’t just get to walk out on that. Now or ever.”

She rose and dusted off her jeans with the same practiced calmness before looking at him with eyes that had been dead for this man once and that would never be again.

“Watch me.”

They left her mouth as though she’d pulled a sword out of the dark silence, sharp and unforgiving and irrevocable.

Everything froze for an entire heartbeat. The mate bond that tied them together thrashed, pulling like the golden thread that would tear straight out of her chest if it stretched too tight. Leon’s eyes dilated wide. Shock. Surprise. And something much, much darker than either of them had ever shown one another before.

He moved.

In one breath he was sitting on the rooftop. In the next he was standing, reaching out to grasp her wrist before she could throw herself over the edge. His fingers were steel. Unyielding alpha strength. Like the time he’d pinned her to him on those nights under the moonlight, and spoken her name and claimed her as his own.

“Stop,” he snarled, commanding. “You can’t just leave me, Corinne. Never again.”

She made no effort to break free. She merely twisted her head and looked into the spot where his fingers gripped her wrists with the bond burning and blazing, hotter than anything else in their connection, and looked back into his eyes with a coldness that was more chilling than rejection.

“Release me.”

“I won’t.”

“Release me!”

The space between them crackled with the smell of electricity as their dominance battled with each other. His wolf was completely awake, bristling with anger and rage against the distance that she continued to keep between them, as hers hissed in a low growl, white furs ruffling, teeth bared, not anymore the adoring creature that would roll over with pleasure whenever he exerted his power.

His jaw tightened. “I feel your pain. You’re hurt. No matter how badly things have gone wrong..we will fix it. It’s what mates do.”

“Will we?” Her voice was soft. Too soft. As soft as the broken thing in her eyes. “Was that how you thought as I died a few feet from you? That we would fix it together?”

His face paled.

The impact was even worse than a physical blow. In that split second, the Alpha facade cracked, and Corinne could see pure, unadulterated terror reflected in his expression. Their bond shattered violently enough for her to taste blood on her tongue.

“What the hell do you mean?” he asked in a whisper.

She didn’t reply.

She just looked at the hand gripping her wrist one final time before she gently separated his fingers from her wrist, one by one.

At the instant the final finger withdrew from her, their bond cried out.

Leon stumbled a step as if she had ripped his heart out of his chest. His breathing became shallow. His eyes glowed with the color of a wolf’s.

“Corinne….”

She leaped.

Her body took the shock, clear and honest. No looking back. No need to. She could feel him at her back, still as stone on the roof, the mate bond raging like an animal in pain between them. The moment when he went from shock to something else…something colder, sharper, something tasting of real fear.

She walked.

Each footstep further from him was like severing another tie. Each breath, a small act of defiance. Behind her, she heard the soft thud of boots on concrete as he moved to follow her.

“Corinne. Wait.”

She did not.

“Fucking hell—Corinne!”

His voice broke over her name. No Alpha command now. Something more desperate.

She walked until she saw the lights in the windows of the pack house, everything exactly as before, except nothing was the same.

As her hand reached out for the back door handle, a second presence touched the edge of her awareness quietly, steadily, razor sharp.

Percie.

He was somewhere among the shadows near the training ground, observing. He watched. Waiting. Not getting involved. Just being there. An observer to the first crack in the connection that formed her whole world before.

Leon’s footsteps grew slower behind her.

She opened the door.

She walked inside.

For the first time in two lifetimes, she closed the door in the face of her destined mate.

The click of the lock echoed more loudly than any howl could.

On the other side of the wood, Adrian Leon found himself alone under the darkening skies looking at the closed door.