He mated with me because of a political alliance. Nothing more.

As long as I remained obedient and stayed in my place, he would give me a title and a rank within the pack. But never his heart.

For five years after that arrangement, I waited.

Waited for even the smallest sign that something had shifted. That I mattered, even a fraction.

Now I understood the truth.

It wasn't that Dominic Ashford was incapable of love.

He simply never loved me.

Every moment I had endured, every humiliation I had swallowed, every night I had spent alone while my wolf keened softly in the dark — all of it had been a joke. A pathetic, drawn-out joke with no punchline.

I wiped the tears from my face and walked out of the enforcers' hall.

My fingers were steady as I pulled out my communicator and placed the call.

"Elder Grimshaw, I need you to draft a Bond Severance Accord."

The next morning, I arrived at the Ashford Pack Compound with the freshly prepared accord in hand.

The Beta stationed at the front gates stopped me before I could enter the Den.

"Luna, the Alpha hasn't been at the compound in quite some time."

The word hit like a needle driven between my ribs.

Quite some time?

Dominic Ashford — the same wolf who had once spent an entire moon cycle living inside the Den without rest, overseeing a critical territory dispute — hadn't been at the compound?

I swallowed the bitter ache rising in my throat. "Where is he?"

The Beta she-wolf at the gate shifted uncomfortably, dropping her gaze. Her voice fell to barely a murmur. "He's accompanying Miss Holloway to the Grand Pack Exchange."

The Grand Pack Exchange.

The rumors flooded back at once. How the Supreme Alpha of the Ashford Pack lavished treasures on his favored companion without hesitation. How he spent fortunes to make her smile. How the entire supernatural world whispered about it while I sat alone in an empty wing of the estate.

I drew a slow breath, turned on my heel, and drove straight to the Exchange hall.

The grand hall blazed with enchanted moonlight chandeliers. The air was thick with the mingled scents of dozens of powerful wolves — cedar and amber and old blood, silk and cold iron and territorial musk. Pack leaders and their entourages filled every row, draped in formal cloaks and ancestral insignias. The elite of the werewolf world, gathered in one glittering space.

I spotted him immediately.

Dominic sat in the front row. Beside him was Serena Holloway, bright-eyed and vivacious, her slender fingers resting possessively on his arm.

The auctioneer at the raised dais was presenting the final and most coveted relic of the evening — a blue diamond necklace once worn by a legendary Luna Queen of the old British Isles packs. The opening bid was already staggering.

The bidding turned fierce.

But each time a numbered crystal was raised from the crowd, Dominic lifted his hand with unhurried ease, his offer crushing the last without effort. His posture was languid, almost bored, yet his aura radiated an unmistakable certainty. The air around him pressed outward with quiet, absolute dominance. He would have that necklace.

No one in the hall doubted it.

In the end, he claimed it at a price that sent a ripple of stunned murmurs through every row.

Every eye in the room turned to Serena.

She laughed, bright and delighted, and threw her arms around his neck. Her lips pressed against his cheek in front of the entire gathering.

I stood only a few paces away. Close enough to catch the faint, sickening sweetness of her scent clinging to his collar. Close enough to see the way his hand settled briefly against the small of her back.

My chest ached so deeply it went numb.

In all our years of mating, Dominic had never once given me a gift. Not a moonstone. Not a wildflower. Not a single token that acknowledged I existed as anything more than a political convenience.

I had told myself he simply wasn't the kind of wolf who understood such gestures. That romance was foreign to his nature.

Now I understood. He was capable of all of it.

He simply never wanted to be that wolf for me.

My fingers tightened around the Bond Severance Accord until the edges of the parchment bit into my skin. I drew one more breath — slow, deliberate, forcing my wolf to stop trembling — and walked toward them.

He saw me first.

The faint trace of warmth that had softened his expression a moment ago vanished. His features turned to granite. His eyes, storm-dark and unreadable, went cold in an instant.

And then, almost before he seemed to think about it, his body shifted. He moved Serena behind him. Shielding her. Protecting her.

From me.

"What are you doing here?"

That single instinctive gesture cut deeper than silver. It drove into the center of my chest like a blade and twisted.

I held myself together. Barely. My voice came out level, though something inside me was fracturing along fault lines I hadn't known existed.

"I have a document that requires your signature." I extended the accord toward him.

At that moment, an Exchange attendant approached with a respectful bow, informing Dominic that they needed him in the back chamber to finalize the necklace transfer.

His tone was flat, dismissive. "I'm occupied. Whatever it is, it can wait."

Wait?

I didn't want to wait anymore. Not another heartbeat. Not another breath spent in this limbo where I was neither loved nor released.

"This is an important document. It will only take a few moments." I pressed forward, and despite every effort, my voice betrayed me — a fine tremor running through the words like a crack spreading through ice. "Dominic, I want to sever our bond. Sign the accord. After the moon cycle waiting period passes, we will have no connection to each other. You have someone you care about. I'm letting go — of you, and of myself. We each find our own path. Neither of us holds the other back any longer."

The words poured out of me in a single rush, and my heart hammered so violently I could feel the pulse in my temples, my throat, behind my eyes.

He barely reacted. A slight crease formed between his brows, nothing more.

After a long pause, he turned his head toward me as though I were an interruption he had already forgotten. "What did you say? I told you I'm busy. We'll discuss it later."

Then he was walking away, following the attendant toward the back chamber.

Just like the last five years.

My words meant nothing to him. They never had. I might as well have been speaking to the wind, to the stone walls of the compound, to the empty silence of our mating quarters where his scent had long since faded to nothing.

I started to follow.

But Serena stepped into my path.

She snatched the accord from my hands before I could react, her sharp eyes flicking over me with open contempt. A small, pitying smile curled across her lips.

"So you're Dominic's little arranged-mating Luna?"

She leafed through the pages of the accord with a casual, almost bored indifference. Her tone was light, careless, as if she were discussing something of no consequence at all.

"Whatever documents you need signed, you can leave them with me. Dominic gave me his Blood Seal. He said I have the authority to sign on his behalf for any and all official matters."

My breath stopped.

Everything stopped.

The Blood Seal. The Alpha's Blood Seal — the most sacred instrument of his authority, infused with his own blood, making any document it touched irrevocable under Moon Goddess law.

He had given it to her.

The Alpha's Blood Seal.

Authority to sign all documents on his behalf.

Dominic Ashford — the wolf so meticulous, so obsessively controlled, that he reviewed every critical blood oath accord with his own eyes before granting approval.

And he had given that power to her.

As if to prove it, Serena reached into her bag and produced an exquisite crimson seal, carved from moonstone and pulsing faintly with the residual essence of Dominic's own blood.

She didn't even glance at the contents.

She flipped straight to the last page.

The seal came down with a sharp, decisive crack.

"There. Signed."

She shoved the documents back into my hands, her tone dripping with the casual condescension of someone tossing scraps to a stray. "I've heard all about it from Dominic. You two are nothing but an arranged mating — a political bond. So stay in your place. These little accords for dens and trinkets? Bring them directly to me from now on. Stop bothering him with every small thing. He doesn't want to see you."

I looked down at the fresh crimson imprint on the page.

That mark — the symbol of his identity, his bloodline authority, the most sacred instrument of an Alpha's power. Any document bearing it became irrevocable under Moon Goddess law.

And now it sat on this page like a vast, bloody joke.

My lips parted. I wanted to tell her.

This wasn't an accord for purchasing a den.

This was a Bond Severance Accord.

But before the words could form —

A piercing alarm shrieked through the building, the shrill wail of fire wards activating all at once.

"Fire! Run!"

Someone's scream cut through the crowd.

In the next heartbeat, chaos erupted.

Every wolf in the hall surged toward the exits in a frenzied stampede. Serena and I had been standing deep inside the venue, and the crush of bodies closed around us like a vice, pressing from every side.

An instant later, we were both knocked to the ground.

"Ahhh!"

"Don't step on me!"

Countless feet trampled over us. Pain detonated through my body like lightning strikes, one after another. I felt my ribs compressing, my bones grinding as if they were being crushed inch by inch. I clawed at the floor, desperate to rise, but I couldn't move. The weight of the stampede pinned me flat, and my wolf — already weakened from years of silver exposure and malnourishment — could barely stir beneath my skin, let alone lend me the strength to shift or fight free.

"Dominic, save me!"

Serena's voice was raw, ragged with sobs, tearing through the noise like a wounded animal's cry.

And then — the next second — I heard his voice.

Laced with a panic I had never once heard from him in five years.

"Baby!"

I saw him fight his way back through the fleeing crowd, his massive frame cutting through the stampede like a predator moving against the current.

I shoved at the bodies pressing down on me, and somewhere in the wreckage of my chest, a pitiful, desperate spark of hope flickered to life. He was coming back. He was coming back for —

But the next second, I saw everything clearly.

He charged forward, and his gaze locked onto Serena with the precision of a wolf tracking its sole prey. Without a heartbeat of hesitation, he bent down, scooped her into his arms, and cradled her against his chest. His body curled around hers — shielding her, protecting her — and he turned and sprinted toward the exit.

From start to finish, he did not look at me once.

"Dominic! Dominic!"

I screamed his name with every shred of breath left in my lungs.

But my voice drowned beneath the shrieking alarms and the thunder of panicked wolves. The sound was swallowed whole, as if I had never made it at all.

Did he hear me?

Perhaps he did.

But he didn't turn back.

Just as I was certain I would be trampled to death on that floor — my ribs cracking, my wolf whimpering and fading into silence inside me — that familiar silhouette appeared again in the smoke-hazed doorway.

He came back.

Something surged in my chest. A guttering flame in the ashes of my heart, desperate and pathetic and alive.

He came back for me after all.

But the next second, I understood exactly how foolish I was.

He rushed to my side, but his eyes never found mine. Not once. He simply bent down and plucked something from beside my hand — a delicate bracelet that must have fallen from Serena's wrist during the chaos. His fingers closed around it, knuckles white, and he turned to leave without a single word.

From the doorway, Serena's voice carried back to me — tearful one moment, then bright with laughter the next: "Oh, thank the Moon Goddess, you found it! That's my favorite bracelet — if it had been crushed I would have cried all day!"

He strode back to her side, and his voice carried the easy relief of something precious recovered, wrapped in that familiar, indulgent warmth he reserved only for her: "Well, I couldn't let my baby cry. That's why I went back for it."

"You're so good to me."

She rose on her toes and pressed a kiss to his cheek.

So that was why.

He came back for a bracelet.

In his heart, I — his bonded mate of five years, the Luna who bore his mark on her shoulder — was worth less than a piece of her jewelry.

The last thread holding me together snapped.

My wolf let out a single, broken keen deep inside my skull, and then she went silent. Completely, terrifyingly silent — the way a wolf goes quiet only when it has given up.

My vision darkened.

I lost all consciousness.

When I woke again, it was on a healer's table.

The blinding white light of the Healing Hall's examination lamps seared through my eyelids, so harsh I could barely force my eyes open. The sterile scent of medicinal herbs and antiseptic wolfsbane-neutralizer hung thick in the air.

The pack healer's voice reached me through the fog: "Luna Ashford, you're awake. You've sustained extensive soft tissue damage across your body. There are suspected fractures along your ribs, and the trampling caused internal bleeding in your abdomen. We need to operate immediately."

The attending healer was already preparing to inject the sedative into my arm.

Then a deafening crash split the air.

The door to the healing chamber was kicked open with enough force to crack the frame.

Several enforcers in black stormed inside and ripped the needle from my hand without a word.

"What do you think you're doing? This patient needs surgery now!" The healer's voice rose in fury, stepping forward to block them.

They didn't even acknowledge him.

Rough hands seized me and dragged me off the table. My body screamed with agony at every point of contact, pain so intense it turned everything numb, as if my nerve endings had simply surrendered. My wolf didn't even stir. She lay curled in the farthest corner of my mind, utterly still, utterly broken.

"Let go of me… where are you taking me…"

My voice was so weak it barely carried past my own lips.

No one answered.

The enforcers dragged me through the corridors of the Healing Hall, my feet scraping against the stone floor. I could feel the blood seeping through my clothes, leaving a dark trail behind me.

Then they threw me onto the cold floor of the private healing ward.

I lifted my head.

And saw him.

Dominic sat at the edge of the healing cot, carefully tilting a cup of water to Serena's lips. His movements were tender, almost reverent. The scent of jasmine and honeyed musk clung to her — that sickly-sweet perfume she always wore, now filling the entire room until it choked me.

She had a few scratches. A faint bruise on her arm. She looked slightly shaken, nothing more.

And I was drenched in my own blood.

He looked at me. Those steel-grey eyes swept over my broken body, and not a single flicker of emotion crossed his face.

Cold. Like I was a stranger. Like I was nothing.

"Serena wants osmanthus cakes," he said, his tone flat and detached. "I recall you make the best ones. Go prepare a batch now."

I thought I had misheard him.

I was covered in blood. My insides were torn apart. My wolf was barely conscious, whimpering somewhere deep in the shattered recesses of my mind.

And he wanted me to bake osmanthus cakes.

Because she said she wanted some.

Every ounce of grief, every swallowed injustice, every year of pain and despair and silent endurance — it all erupted at once. The dam inside me didn't just crack. It shattered.

I clawed my way upright, my voice so raw it sounded like something tearing apart from within.

"Dominic Ashford, you have gone too far!"

"When I was being trampled half to death at the Grand Pack Exchange, where were you? You only had eyes for her!"

"Now I'm bleeding internally and I need a healer's intervention, and you drag me here because she said one sentence!"

"All these years — what have I ever been to you?"

"I am your bonded mate! Your Luna by sacred rite! Is this how you treat the wolf bound to you before the Moon Goddess?"

I screamed until my throat gave out. Tears mixed with blood, streaming down my face in a wretched mess. My wolf howled inside me — a broken, keening sound that rattled through my bones. I could feel her thrashing weakly, trying to rise, trying to make him feel even a fraction of the agony pouring through us.

But he showed nothing.

Not a flicker. Not a flinch. Not even the decency of anger.

It was Serena who reacted. She wrinkled her nose in his arms and pressed her hands over her ears with a look of distaste. "So loud. My head is pounding now."

He immediately pulled her closer, one large hand cupping gently over her ear, his voice dropping to a murmur of pure warmth. "Shh, it's all right. I'm here."

Then he raised his head and looked at me.

The warmth vanished. His eyes turned to ice, and the weight of his Alpha aura pressed down on me like a physical force — suffocating, crushing, deliberate. My wolf whimpered and went still.

"You've said all that, and you still refuse to go."

I stared at him.

Something inside my chest died. Not all at once. Piece by piece, like embers going dark.

He seemed to lose patience entirely. His voice dropped to something frigid and final.

"Since she won't go willingly, lock her in the silver-lined cold cell. When she's ready to do as she's told, let her out."

The enforcers seized me immediately.

They didn't care about my struggling. They didn't flinch at my cries.

They dragged me away.

The door of the cold cell slammed shut behind me with a sound like a coffin lid closing.

The cold hit me instantly — not ordinary cold, but the bone-deep, marrow-freezing cold of a chamber lined with silver. The metal hummed in the walls, a low vibration that seeped into my skin and silenced my wolf completely. She didn't whimper. She didn't howl. She simply went dark, as though the silver had snuffed her out like a candle flame.

My wounds screamed. Every laceration, every bruise, every place where my body had been broken felt like it was being pierced by a thousand frozen needles. The silver prevented any healing. My blood, which should have been knitting itself back together, simply kept flowing. Slowly. Steadily.

The internal bleeding in my abdomen was getting worse. I could feel it — a heavy, spreading warmth beneath the cold, the terrible sensation of something vital leaking where it shouldn't.

I was dying.

I knew it with absolute clarity.

The cold and the despair swallowed me whole, dragging me down into a darkness that felt almost peaceful. My consciousness flickered like a guttering flame, dimming, dimming.

But at the very edge — at the moment when everything was about to go black forever — some wretched, animal instinct clawed its way to the surface. Survival. The most basic, most humiliating drive a wolf could possess. It crushed what remained of my dignity beneath its desperate weight.

I dragged myself across the frozen floor. Every inch was agony. My fingers were numb, my arms shaking so violently I could barely hold myself up. I reached the iron door and raised one trembling hand to beat against it.

My voice came out in broken fragments.

"I'll… do it… I'll make them…"

"Let me out…"

The door opened.

I was pulled out like a discarded rag and half-carried, half-dragged to the small kitchen in the Healing Hall.

My body wouldn't stop shaking. My fingers had no feeling left in them. I could barely grip the wooden spoon. But I stood at the counter, propped against it like a corpse held upright by sheer will, and I made those osmanthus cakes.

Every motion was mechanical. Muscle memory from years of being ordered to prepare ceremonial offerings for Serena — cakes, pastries, elaborate dishes she would take one bite of and push away. My hands knew the recipe even when my mind was dissolving.

I carried the tray into the healing ward.

Dominic glanced at the cakes.

Just once.

Then he spoke, his voice utterly indifferent.

"Take her to the healers for her procedure."

I was wheeled back into the treatment chamber. The pack healer's face was grim as she worked, murmuring incantations and pressing herb-soaked compresses against my abdomen. Then the sedative tincture entered my veins, slow and heavy.

My consciousness began to blur.

One last tear slipped from the corner of my eye and traced a warm line down my cold cheek.

Dominic Ashford.

From this moment forward.

We walk separate paths.

I will never love you again.

The days after the procedure stretched long and agonizing.

I lay alone in the healing cot, watching the herbal infusion drip steadily into my veins through a thin silver-free tube. The dull throb of my wounds came in waves, relentless and grinding. Each time the healer's attendant changed my dressings, it felt like a fresh round of torture.

The young Omega attendant was as gentle as she could be. But the pity in her eyes — the way she couldn't quite hide it — that hurt worse than anything she did to my wounds.

"Just bear with it a little longer. It's almost done."

Her voice was soft, meant to comfort.

After she left, I heard her speaking with another attendant just outside the door. Their voices were low, but my wolf hearing — even weakened as it was — caught every word.

"Poor thing… injuries that severe, and not a single packmate has come to see her. She had to authorize her own healing procedure."

"I know. Meanwhile, that Serena in the private ward down the hall barely had a scratch, and Alpha Ashford hasn't left her side. I heard he turned down three major alliance pacts worth billions in territory just to stay with her."

"Same pack, different fates."

Their words sank into me like fine needles, one by one, pricking into places that should have been too numb to feel anything.

But they were right. I had no feeling left.

I closed my eyes and turned my face toward the window, letting the pale moonlight fall across my skin. I pretended I hadn't heard a thing.