Chapter 1

Selene's POV

The security guard's smile was warm, familiar, a stark contrast to the cold dread that would soon coil in my stomach.

He opened the gates without hesitation.

"Good evening, Miss Ashford."

"Evening, Ben."

My voice was light, airy.

I drove slowly up the winding road, the gravel crunching softly under my tires, but my eyes were locked on the silhouette of the Alpha House.

Specifically, on the black Range Rover parked in the driveway.

Kieran's car.

He was home.

A genuine smile tugged at my lips, softening the fatigue of the day.

Good.

I parked beside his vehicle, the engine ticking as it cooled, but I didn't move immediately. Instead, I lifted my hand, the dim streetlight catching the brilliance of the diamond on my finger. I traced the band with my thumb, the metal cool against my skin, yet it burned with the weight of a promise.

Two months.

In exactly two months, the name on that ring would match my heart.

In two months, I would become Selene Blackwood.

I still wasn't used to the thought. It felt too big, too perfect.

After four years of waiting, of loving him through the darkness of his duties, through the violence of the pack wars, I finally had everything I'd ever dreamed of.

The man I loved.

The home we were building together.

A wedding to plan.

A future I had been too afraid to hope for, now waiting right in front of me.

"I'm going to make him happy," I whispered to the empty car, my voice trembling with excitement. "I'm going to make him so happy he forgets he ever had a reason to be sad."

I climbed out of the car, my heart hammering a joyful rhythm against my ribs.

I reached for the paper bag on the passenger seat. Inside, the containers were still warm.

Steak, cooked medium-rare, just how he liked it.

Garlic mashed potatoes, creamy and rich.

Cheesecake, his guilty pleasure.

Kieran's favorites.

He'd skipped breakfast this morning. Again. An emergency pack meeting had called him away before the sun was even up.

Knowing him, knowing the way he threw himself into his duties until he collapsed, he hadn't eaten a single thing.

"You'd make a terrible patient," I muttered, shaking my head, though a fond smile lingered on my face. "Luckily, you've got me to take care of you."

I walked up the steps to the front door. My hand hovered over the knob, expecting resistance.

It turned easily.

Unlocked.

I frowned, my smile faltering for a fraction of a second.

I pushed the door open.

"Kieran?"

No answer.

The house was silent.

Not the comfortable silence of a home at rest, but a heavy, suffocating quiet. The air felt stale, wrong. Normally, the halls were alive with the chaos of pack life—warriors rushing through with reports, betas arguing over patrol schedules, the constant hum of power and responsibility.

Today, there was nothing.

"Kieran?" I called again, my voice echoing unnaturally in the empty foyer.

Still no answer.

A cold knot tightened in my stomach.

Maybe he was asleep. He had been working himself to the bone for weeks. He must have passed out from exhaustion.

"Kieran, I brought food," I called out, trying to keep my tone light, trying to ignore the way my instincts were screaming at me to run.

I slipped off my heels, the cold marble floor biting into my bare feet. I carried the food toward the kitchen, intending to leave it on the counter and check on him quietly.

That's when I saw them.

A pair of red high heels.

They were sitting casually by the staircase.

Expensive.

Strappy.

Blood-red.

They weren't mine.

I stopped walking.

The world seemed to tilt on its axis.

I stared at the shoes, my mind scrambling for a logical explanation, any explanation that didn't involve the horror rising in my throat.

Someone must be here.

One of the female warriors...

Maybe Alpha Ethan's wife stopped by for an emergency...

No.

The thought was a whisper, but it carried the weight of a scream.

Alpha Ethan's wife wouldn't be wearing red heels like that.

Not in my house.

Not in our house.

I forced my legs to move.

I forced myself to keep walking, to pretend I hadn't seen them, to pretend my world wasn't crumbling around me.

Then I heard it.

A laugh.

Soft.

Feminine.

Intimate.

It floated down from the second floor, drifting through the air like poison.

It wasn't a laugh of friendship.

It was a laugh of possession.

My grip tightened around the paper bag until the cardboard crunched, my knuckles turning white.

"Kieran?" I called again.

My voice was louder this time, desperate, trembling.

Silence.

Then...

A low chuckle.

His chuckle.

The sound that used to make me feel safe, loved, cherished.

It was followed by a breathless moan.

The sound hit me like a physical blow.

The paper bag slipped from my fingers.

Time seemed to slow as the containers hit the marble floor.

The crash was deafening, a violent explosion of sound in the quiet house.

Sauce splattered across the white tiles, red and brown stains spreading like blood, like a crime scene.

I didn't flinch.

I couldn't.

My heart pounded so violently it felt like it was trying to break out of my chest.

Pain, sharp and blinding, radiated through my entire body.

No...

No, that's not...

It couldn't be.

I took one step toward the staircase.

Then another.

Each sound from upstairs—the creak of a bedframe, a whispered name, the rhythmic sound of skin against skin—made my legs weaker.

My vision blurred, tears I didn't remember forming streaming down my face.

By the time I reached the bedroom door, I was shaking so badly I could barely breathe.

My hands were numb.

My soul felt like it was being ripped out of my body.

The door was slightly open.

I lifted my trembling hand, my fingers brushing against the wood, praying that if I pushed it open, I would find an empty room.

I prayed I would find Kieran sleeping alone.

I prayed for a lie.

I pushed the door open.

The room blurred.

At first, my mind refused to process what my eyes were seeing.

It rejected the image, trying to protect me from the truth.

The crumpled white sheets.

Clothes scattered across the floor—his shirt, her dress.

A wine glass resting on the bedside table, half-empty.

Then...

Him.

Kieran.

My fiancé.

The man I'd loved for four years.

The man I had planned to spend my entire life with.

He was there.

In our bed.

With her.

His bare back faced me, muscles tense as he leaned over the woman beneath him.

His hips were grinding slow and deep into her slick, dripping pussy, a rhythmic, obscene motion that made my stomach turn.

Time stopped.

The air lodged in my throat, choking me.

No.

No... This isn't happening.

This is a nightmare.

I'm dreaming.

I have to be.

This isn't real.

"K... Kieran?"

My voice came out as nothing more than a broken whisper, a ghost of a sound.

His entire body froze.

He stopped moving, his thick cock still buried to the hilt inside her.

The silence that followed was louder than any scream.

For one long, suffocating second, no one moved.

The air in the room was thick with the scent of sex, of betrayal, of my life ending.

Then the woman beneath him turned her head.

Our eyes met.

She didn't scream.

She didn't try to cover herself with the sheets.

She didn't look ashamed or scared.

Instead... she smiled.

A slow... victorious... smile.

It was a look of pure triumph.

She looked at me not with guilt, but with pity.

With satisfaction.

My knees almost gave out beneath me.

I had to grab the doorframe to stay standing.

"Kieran..." I whispered again, my voice trembling, tears blurring my vision until he was just a dark shape in a nightmare. "What... what is this?"

He closed his eyes briefly, his jaw tightening.

He let out a slow, frustrated breath.

Then, slowly, he turned to face me.

As he moved, his thick cock slid free from her soaked cunt, glistening with her fluids.

The sight made me want to vomit.

There wasn't panic in his eyes.

There wasn't fear.

There wasn't even guilt.

There was only... annoyance.

He looked at me as though I was an inconvenience.

As though I had interrupted something important.

As though my pain was a minor irritation in his day.

My heart cracked.

It didn't just break; it shattered into a million irreparable pieces.

It wasn't because of the woman in his bed.

It wasn't even because he had betrayed me.

It was because the man I loved... the man I thought existed... looked at me like I was the one who didn't belong.

Like I was the intruder in my own life.

"Kieran..."

The engagement ring on my finger suddenly felt too heavy.

It felt like a shackle, a lie, a curse.

His gaze dropped to the ring.

His eyes darkened, but not with remorse.

Then slowly, deliberately, he lifted his gaze back to my face.

He opened his mouth.

"Selene..."

His voice was calm.

Too calm.

Cold.

Detached.

As though he'd been expecting this moment.

As though finding another woman in our bed, in our home, wasn't enough to shatter me.

As though my destruction was a calculated risk he was willing to take.

My lips parted, but no words came out.

I couldn't breathe.

I couldn't think.

I could only stare at him, searching for any trace of the man who had sworn to protect me.

At the man who had slipped an engagement ring onto my finger.

The man who had promised to love me until his last breath.

The man I had trusted with my whole heart, my soul, my very existence.

He reached for the sheet and lazily pulled it around his waist, covering himself but making no effort to cover her.

He climbed off the bed, his thick cock still glistening with her juices, dripping onto the floor.

Not once did he look ashamed.

Not once.

He took a step toward me.

I instinctively stepped back, my back hitting the wall.

The movement stopped him.

For the first time, something flickered across his face.

Not guilt.

Not regret.

Frustration.

"Selene..." he said again, dragging a hand through his dark hair, his expression one of pure irritation. "This isn't how I wanted you to find out."

Find out?

The words echoed inside my head, bouncing off the walls of my shattered mind.

Find out what?

My gaze shifted to the woman still sitting in our bed.

She crossed one long leg over the other, watching us with a satisfied smile, as though she'd already won.

As though she had taken something from me that I could never get back.

Her pussy was still wet and swollen from his cock, a testament to what I had just lost.

My stomach twisted, bile rising in my throat.

"Kieran..." My voice cracked, sounding foreign, broken. "Who is she?"

Silence.

The air in the room was so thick with tension I could taste it.

I waited.

I begged with my eyes, tears streaming freely down my face now.

Please...

Tell me there's an explanation.

Tell me I'm misunderstanding this.

Tell me this isn't real.

Tell me you love me.

Tell me you'll stop this.

Instead, he sighed.

A tired... impatient... sigh.

As though I was being difficult.

As though I was the one making a mistake.

"I was going to tell you tonight."

Every word cut deeper than the last.

Each syllable was a knife twisting in an open wound.

"You were going to tell me..." I repeated, barely recognizing my own voice. It sounded hollow, dead. "That you're sleeping with another woman? In our home? In our bed?"

His jaw tightened, his eyes flashing with something dark.

"It's more complicated than that."

I laughed.

The sound that escaped me didn't even sound human.

It sounded broken.

Desperate.

It was the sound of a soul dying.

"Complicated?" Tears blurred my vision, hot and endless. "You call this complicated? You call betrayal complicated?"

I pointed a shaking finger at the woman in our bed.

"Our bed," I screamed, my voice rising, cracking under the weight of my agony. "The bed we picked out together! The bed where you asked me to marry you! The bed where you promised we'd spend the rest of our lives together!"

My chest heaved violently, each breath a struggle.

I felt like I was drowning, suffocating on the air in this room.

"So tell me, Kieran," I choked out, my voice dropping to a whisper, filled with a pain so deep it felt physical. "What exactly is so complicated about betrayal? What part of cheating on your fiancé is complicated?"

He looked away.

He looked away from me.

Away from the tears streaming down my face.

Away from the woman he had sworn to love, protect, and cherish.

When he finally spoke, his voice was quiet.

Almost emotionless.

Cold as ice.

"Her name is Lyra."

The woman—Lyra—smiled.

A slow, triumphant curve of her lips.

Kieran took a slow breath before meeting my eyes again.

His gaze was steady, devoid of any love I had ever known.

"She's my fated mate..."

My heart stopped.

The world stopped.

Time itself seemed to freeze.

Fated mate.

The words hung in the air, a death sentence.

In our world, there was no excuse greater.

No justification more absolute.

"No..." I whispered, shaking my head, stepping back until my back hit the wall again. "No, Kieran... No..."

He didn't stop.

He didn't hesitate.

He delivered the final blow with the same calmness he might use to order a drink.

"And she's the one who's going to be my Luna."

The room spun.

The floor seemed to drop out from under me.

My ears rang so loudly I couldn't hear my own heartbeat, couldn't hear anything but the sound of my life shattering.

Every dream.

Every promise.

Every plan we'd made together...

Every moment of love, every touch, every whisper...

Shattered.

I stared at the man standing in front of me, desperately searching for the love I'd known for four years.

Searching for the man who had saved me, protected me, loved me.

It was gone.

And in its place...

Stood a stranger.

A monster.

A man who looked at my destruction and felt nothing but annoyance.

And I was alone.