All Chapters of Claimed by the moon: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

Selene POV:"You are nothing, Selene. You hear me? Nothing."Damien's voice cut through the celebration noise spilling from the packhouse behind us. His blue eyes were cold, colder than I had ever seen them, and I stood frozen on the back porch with my fingers curling around the railing."I heard you the first time," I said."Then why are you still standing here looking at me like I owe you something?" He stepped closer, and the mate bond hummed between us, warm and insistent, the way it always was. I hated that it still did that. I hated that my body still responded to him even now."Because you do owe me something, Damien," I said. "Three years. You owe me three years."He laughed, and it was not a kind laugh. "Three years of what? Watching you fail every training session? Three years of the whole pack wondering why their Alpha chose a mate who cannot even shift properly?""I can shift.""Barely." He looked me over the way someone looks at a piece of furniture they are planning to t

Selene POV"I need you to step back," I said.Colt Ashford did not step back. He stood at the foot of my porch steps and watched me with those storm grey eyes and the mate bond pulled between us like a current in deep water, strong and patient and completely indifferent to the fact that I had been rejected less than twelve hours ago."I understand this is overwhelming," he said."Do you." It was not a question."I felt it the same moment you did.""Then you understand why I need you to step back."He took one step back. Just one. Enough to show me he was listening without pretending the distance was going to change anything.I sat down on the porch step because my legs were not entirely reliable and I pressed both hands flat on my knees and I breathed. The bond was nothing like what I had felt with Damien in the beginning. With Damien it had been immediate and consuming, the kind of thing that swallowed you whole before you had time to think. This was different. This was quieter and d

Selene POV"Maya, what do you mean he is coming?" I said into the phone."He left this morning," she said. "I tried to call you yesterday but you did not pick up. Selene, he told the pack he is going to bring you home.""I am not his mate anymore. He rejected me.""I know that. You know that." She lowered her voice. "He woke up this morning and I think the reality of it hit him and now he is driving north and he would not listen to me."I pressed my back against the nearest tree and looked up through the branches. "He does not know exactly where I am.""He knows about the cabin. You mentioned it once, apparently, and he remembered."Of course he did. Damien had a precise and selective memory. He forgot birthdays and anniversaries and the things that mattered to me but he retained every piece of information that might one day be useful to him."How far out is he?" I asked."Four hours maybe. He left around seven this morning."I checked my phone. It was just after ten."Okay," I said.

Selene POV"Your grandmother never told you," Garrett said. It was not a question.I sat across from him at the long table in the packhouse dining room with both hands wrapped around a mug of tea and the morning light coming through the windows at a low angle. Petra had brought me up the mountain path after breakfast because Garrett had asked to speak with me and Petra had described it as urgent in the way she described most things, with a directness that left no room for delay.Garrett was perhaps seventy, with white hair and the deeply lined face of a man who had spent his life outdoors. His eyes were sharp and brown and kind."Tell me what?" I said.He folded his hands on the table. "Helena Voss was not simply a lone wolf who owned a cabin on neutral ground. She was a Voss woman. And Voss women have a specific bloodline history that your pack, Blackridge, would not have known to tell you about because it is not documented outside of the old mountain records."I set my mug down. "Ga

Selene POV"Start from the beginning," Colt said.We were in the meeting room, the same long table, the same morning light through the windows, but the room felt different with Ezra in it. Fuller somehow. Like a frequency that had been slightly off had corrected itself.Ezra sat across from me with both hands flat on the table. Rafe was at Colt's right. Petra had appointed herself note-taker and had produced an actual notebook from somewhere, which told me she had anticipated this conversation."Eight months ago I started tracking anomalies in rejected bond cases across four territories," Ezra said. "I have contacts in the neutral council, people who document bond disputes and rejections for pack legal records. They started noticing a pattern.""What kind of pattern?" Rafe said."Rejections that were too clean. Too easy." Ezra looked around the table. "You all understand how a mate bond rejection works. It is painful. It is damaging. It leaves marks on both parties that take months to