For six months, my Alpha husband has been teaching me how to hate him.

He moved out of our bedroom.

Stopped touching me.

Let his childhood sweetheart wear his shirt, sit beside him at Pack dinners, and slowly take every place that used to be mine.

So when I started coughing black blood, the doctor gave me ninety days and one impossible cure.

Stop loving my mate, or we both die.

That night, I went home ready to tell Noah.

Instead, Serena walked out of his room half dressed.

“I want a divorce,” I said.

Noah looked at me for a long time.

Then he said, “Finally.”

So I left.

I resigned as Luna.

I got into another Alpha’s car.

And I started learning how to live without my husband.

What I didn’t see was Noah waiting until my car disappeared before collapsing against the wall.

Coughing up the same black blood.

****

LENA'S POV

Noah's collar was crooked.

It was such a small thing. Most people in the Blackthorn banquet hall wouldn't have noticed, not with the chandeliers blazing and the string quartet playing and half the pack already three glasses deep into the good wine. But I had spent six years noticing everything about my husband, and my hands moved before my brain could stop them.

I reached up to fix it.

Noah stepped back.

It wasn't dramatic. He didn't flinch or snap at me. He just shifted half a step out of reach, like my fingers were something he'd rather not touch, and my hand hung in the air between us in front of the entire Alpha council.

"Serena," he said, without looking at me.

She was there in a second, as if she'd been waiting for her cue. Serena Blake, his childhood friend, his "advisor," the woman the pack whispered about when they thought I couldn't hear. She slid her arm through his and smiled at me with perfect, glossy sympathy.

"Don't worry, Lena. I've got him."

I lowered my hand and smiled back, because I was the Luna of this pack and Lunas didn't fall apart over a collar.

For the next hour, I did my job. I thanked the elders for coming. I asked Beta Marcus's mate about her newborn. I laughed at a joke from the Eastwood Alpha that wasn't funny. Across the room, Noah stood with Serena on his arm, and every time I glanced over, he was already looking somewhere else.

By the time I reached the restroom, my chest felt tight, like someone had wrapped wire around my lungs and was slowly twisting.

I locked the door, gripped the marble sink, and coughed.

Something wet hit the white porcelain.

It was black. Thick and black, like tar, sliding toward the drain in a slow, ugly streak.

I stared at it while my reflection stared back, lips stained dark.

---

Dr. Elara didn't say anything for a long time.

She was the oldest healer in the pack. She had delivered half the wolves at that banquet, and I had never once seen her hands shake. They were shaking now as she lowered the scanner from my sternum and pressed two fingers to the mark on my neck, the one Noah had given me the night we were mated.

The skin there had gone gray at the edges.

"How long have you been coughing?" she asked.

"Tonight. Just tonight." I swallowed. "Elara, what is it?"

She pulled her stool closer and sat, which scared me more than anything else had. Healers stood when the news was good.

"It's called Twin Rot," she said. "It's a sickness of the mate bond itself, not of you. I've only read about it. There are only three recorded cases in four hundred years."

"Okay." My voice came out steadier than I felt. "So how do we fix it?"

"Lena, listen to me first." She took my hand. Hers was cold. "The bond is feeding on itself. On the two of you. As long as you and Noah are still in love with each other, it keeps growing, and in about ninety days it will consume both your wolves at the same time."

I laughed. I didn't mean to, but it just came out, short and broken.

"Then it's wrong. Your scanner's wrong. He doesn't love me anymore. You saw him tonight. Everyone saw him tonight."

"The bond doesn't lie," Elara said quietly. "If it's rotting, it's because the love is still there. On both sides."

I pulled my hand back and pressed it to my mouth. Six months of cold dinners. Of him sleeping in his private study. Of Serena at his elbow at every meeting, every event, every holiday. And the bond was telling me he still loved me?

"What happens to us?" I whispered. "When it takes our wolves."

She didn't answer. She didn't need to. A wolf without its wolf didn't live long.

"You said there are recorded cases," I said. "Did anyone survive?"

"One pair." Elara hesitated. "The only treatment that ever worked was when one of them truly stopped loving the other. Not pretending, not separating. Actually stopping. The bond starved, and they both lived."

The room went very quiet.

"That's not a cure," I said. "That's a funeral."

"It's the only one we have."

---

All the way home, I rehearsed it.

I would wake him up if he was asleep. I would make him sit down. I would tell him about the black blood and the gray mark and the ninety days, and maybe, just maybe, he'd look at me the way he used to. Maybe this would be the thing that cracked whatever wall he'd built between us. If the bond said he still loved me, then somewhere under all that ice, he did.

He deserved to know he was dying.

I deserved to know if he'd care.

The house was dark except for the hallway light outside his private room. I left my heels by the door and climbed the stairs barefoot, my heart pounding so loud I barely heard the door at the end of the hall open.

Serena stepped out.

Her legs were bare. Her hair was down. And she was wearing a white dress shirt that hung to her mid-thigh, the cuffs rolled to her wrists.

Noah's shirt. I'd bought it for him in Milan on our fourth anniversary. I knew the stitching on the collar.

She saw me and stopped. For one second, something flickered across her face, and then it was gone, smoothed over into that same polite sympathy from the banquet.

She didn't pull the shirt closed. She didn't say it wasn't what it looked like.

She tilted her head and asked, "Lena? Why are you home so early?"

As if I were the one who'd walked into the wrong house.

I didn't answer her. I looked past her shoulder, into the dim room behind her.

Noah was standing just inside the doorway, one hand on the frame. He was still in his suit pants. His feet were bare, and his jaw was tight, and his eyes were on me.

Not on her. On me.

I waited for the tears to come. They didn't. I waited for the scream, for the shaking, for all the things I would have done a year ago. None of it came. There was just a strange, hollow calm, like standing in the eye of a storm.

Ninety days. Both of our wolves.

Unless one of us stopped.

I looked down at my left hand. The ring was a simple platinum band with a single gray stone, the color of his wolf's coat. He'd slid it onto my finger under a full moon and told me he'd never take it back.

I twisted it once, and it came off easier than I expected.

Serena's lips parted. Noah didn't move at all.

I held the ring out on my open palm.

"I want a divorce."

My voice didn't break. I was almost proud of that.

Something happened to Noah's face. It was quick, so quick I might have missed it if I hadn't spent six years memorizing every line of it. His throat moved. His fingers tightened on the door frame until his knuckles went white. For half a heartbeat he looked like a man who'd just been shot and hadn't fallen down yet.

Then it was gone. He made it go.

He stepped forward, took the ring from my palm without touching my skin, and closed his fist around it.

"Finally," he said.

The word landed in the quiet hallway like a door slamming.

And beneath my collarbone, where his mark sat gray and rotting, something burned so hot I had to bite down on my tongue to keep from making a sound.

LENA'S POV

I told myself he'd been angry.

That was the only explanation I could live with at three in the morning, lying awake in our bed alone while the mark on my neck throbbed like a second heartbeat. People said cruel things when they were cornered. Noah had been caught with Serena in his shirt, and I'd handed him a ring in a dark hallway. Of course he'd said something sharp. Of course he'd tried to win.

By morning, I'd almost convinced myself we'd talk.

Then I walked into the kitchen and found a manila folder sitting beside my coffee cup.

Noah was already at the head of the table, sleeves rolled, reading something on his tablet like it was any other Tuesday. He didn't look up.

"What is this?" I asked.

"Separation papers." He scrolled with one finger. "I've signed them. Marcus will file them with the council once you do."

I opened the folder. His signature was on the last page, dark and certain, the ink not even smudged. He'd done it at some point between finally and sunrise.

"That was fast," I said.

"You asked for it."

"I asked last night, Noah. You had a lawyer draft this in six hours?"

He set the tablet down then and finally met my eyes. His were gray and flat as river stones.

"There's something else. Until the council formalizes things, Serena will be taking over the Luna's duties. The healers' rotation, the school board, the Eastwood trade meetings. She already knows most of it."

I stared at him.

"She knows most of it," I repeated, "because she's been sitting in on my meetings for six months."

"She's been useful."

There it was. Not a defense. Not an apology. Just a fact, laid on the table next to the papers.

A year ago, I would have fought. I would have cried and argued and asked him what I'd done, how I could fix it, whether he remembered the night under the full moon. I could feel the old words lining up in my throat, worn smooth from use.

I didn't say any of them.

I pulled out the chair across from him and sat. Then I reached up to the collar of my blouse and unclasped the Luna pin.

It was silver, shaped like a crescent moon wrapped around a pine branch, the symbol of Blackthorn. Noah's mother had worn it before me. He'd fastened it on me himself at my ceremony, his fingers clumsy because he'd been nervous, and he'd laughed at himself in front of the entire pack.

I laid it on the table between us.

His gaze dropped to it and stayed there.

"Serena can have that too," I said. "It'll save you a trip."

"Lena."

"No, you've said what you needed to say. Now it's my turn." I folded my hands on top of the folder. "I want the house on Cedar Lane. It's in my name anyway, my father left it to me. Everything I brought into this marriage stays with me. Everything you brought stays with you. The joint accounts get split down the middle, and I want the council to audit them, not Marcus."

His jaw shifted. "You don't trust Marcus?"

"I don't trust anyone who answers to you right now."

"And your duties?"

"Gone. All of them. As of this morning." I pushed the folder toward him. "I'll sign once my own counsel reads it. I'm not signing anything you put in front of me over breakfast."

He watched me for a long moment, like he was trying to find the crack in me. I didn't give him one.

"You've thought about this," he said.

"You made it very easy to think about." I held his gaze. "You wanted this, Noah. You said so. So I'm going to give it to you, and I'm not going to beg you to come back. Not today, not next month, not ever. You don't have to brace yourself for it."

Something moved in his face again, that same quick shadow from the hallway. His hand flattened on the table, close to the pin, not touching it.

"Good," he said. "Then we understand each other."

"We really don't," I said. "But it doesn't matter anymore."

He opened his mouth to answer.

The window behind me exploded.

I heard the crack first, sharp as a gunshot, and then the high glittering sound of glass giving way. I didn't even have time to turn. A chair scraped, and something hit me hard from the front, and suddenly my face was pressed into Noah's chest and his arm was locked around the back of my head.

Glass rained against him. I felt it through his body, a dozen small impacts, the sting of it hitting his back and shoulders while he curled over me like a wall.

Outside, someone was shouting. The training field. One of the younger wolves must have thrown a boulder in a drill, or kicked loose a chunk of the stone wall.

None of that registered for long.

Because Noah was holding me.

His heart was slamming under my cheek, fast and wild, nothing like the cold man at the head of the table. His hand was spread across the back of my skull, fingers buried in my hair, and he was breathing hard against my temple. For one stupid, endless second, he smelled exactly the way he had when we were twenty-two and he'd carried me home from the river after I'd twisted my ankle. Pine and smoke and something warm underneath.

The mark on my neck flared. Not with pain this time. With recognition.

He felt it too. I know he did, because his whole body went rigid.

Then he shoved me away.

Not gently. He let go like I'd scalded him, both hands lifting off me at once, and stepped back so fast his heel crunched on broken glass. I caught myself on the edge of the table.

We stared at each other across a floor glittering with shards. A cold breeze pushed through the shattered window, lifting the corner of the separation papers.

"Are you hurt?" he asked. His voice was rough.

"No." I looked at him. Really looked. There was a thin cut along his cheekbone, and his right hand was bleeding freely, a long gash across the back of it where he'd shielded my head. Red ran between his knuckles and dripped onto the tile. "Noah, your hand."

"It's nothing."

"You moved before you even thought about it."

I hadn't meant to say it out loud. It came out soft, almost a question, and I hated how much hope was folded inside it. Ninety days. The bond doesn't lie. If he still loved me, if it was still there under all that ice, then maybe—

His expression closed like a door.

"Don't," he said.

"Don't what?"

"Don't read into it." He pulled a napkin off the table and wrapped it around his hand without looking at the wound. "The Luna of Blackthorn getting sliced up by a window in her own kitchen, the week she files for separation? You know how that would look. The council would be all over it. The other packs would say I couldn't protect my own house." He tightened the napkin with his teeth and spat out the next words. "I'm not dealing with that scandal on top of everything else."

The little flicker of hope in my chest went out quietly.

It didn't hurt the way I expected. It was more like stepping off a stair that wasn't there, that small lurch, and then the floor again, solid and cold.

I looked down at his hand. The napkin was already soaking through, red spreading across the white cotton in a slow bloom. A drop slid off his wrist and landed beside the Luna pin, a bright spot on the polished wood.

Under my collarbone, the mark burned. I wondered if his was burning too. I wondered if he'd ever tell me.

He wouldn't. I knew that now.

So I picked up my coffee cup, stepped carefully around the glass, and paused beside him just long enough to meet his eyes.

"Then you won't have to worry about your Luna much longer."

I felt him go still beside me.

I didn't wait to see what was on his face this time. I walked out of the kitchen with glass crunching under my slippers and his blood drying on the table behind me, and I didn't look back.

LENA'S POV

The Harvest Moon celebration had been my idea three years ago.

I'd picked the long cedar tables and the lanterns strung across the Pack House rafters. I'd convinced the elders to invite neighboring Alphas so Blackthorn could stop pretending it existed on an island. Every year since, I'd stood at Noah's right side on the raised platform while he welcomed our guests.

Tonight, Serena stood there instead.

She wore deep green silk, the color of the pack banner, and she'd pinned her hair up so the whole room could see her neck. Noah's hand rested lightly at the small of her back as he guided her into place. He didn't look toward the side door, where I'd just walked in.

The room noticed. A hundred wolves noticed.

Conversation didn't stop, exactly. It thinned. Glasses lowered halfway to mouths. Beta Marcus's mate glanced at me, then quickly at the floor. Two of the elder women near the punch bowl leaned their heads together, and I didn't need wolf hearing to know what they were saying.

So it's over, then.

Noah lifted his glass. "Thank you all for coming."

I walked toward the platform anyway. My heels were quiet on the wooden floor, and the crowd parted for me the way it always had, except now it felt less like respect and more like people stepping back from something contagious.

I stopped at the bottom of the steps. Serena saw me first. Her smile wavered, then held.

"Lena," she said warmly, loud enough to carry. "We didn't think you'd make it."

"I wouldn't miss it," I said. "I planned it."

A few people laughed nervously. Noah finally turned his head. His eyes went over my dress, my face, the bare place at my collar where the Luna pin used to be, and something tightened along his jaw.

"You don't need to be up here," he said quietly.

"I know. That's why I came."

I climbed the three steps anyway and turned to face the hall. My chest ached the way it had for days now, a low, steady pressure, like a hand pushing against my ribs from the inside. I ignored it.

"Before Alpha Noah finishes his welcome," I said, "I have an announcement."

The room went completely still.

"As of tonight, I'm stepping down from all Luna duties. The healers' rotation, the school board, the trade council, all of it. I'm not waiting for the council to remove me, and I'm not asking anyone to pretend this is temporary." I paused and found Marcus's mate in the crowd. "I've loved serving this pack. That part was never a lie."

Someone in the back murmured, "She's really doing it."

I reached into my clutch and pulled out the silver key.

It was old and heavy, the kind of key that didn't open any real lock anymore. It had once opened the pack archives and the treasury vault, back before electronic seals. Now it was simply a symbol, passed from Luna to Luna, proof that the pack trusted you with everything it had.

Noah's mother had pressed it into my palm when she got too sick to hold it herself. She'd closed my fingers around it and said, Take care of him for me.

I'd tried.

I held it out to Noah.

He looked at it for a long moment. Serena shifted beside him, her hand drifting toward the key like she thought it was meant for her. Noah didn't let her reach it. He took it from me himself, his fingers closing around the silver so hard his knuckles went bone white.

I watched his throat move. I watched him not say whatever he was about to say.

"Good," he said.

That was it. One word, flat and final, in front of everyone we knew.

I nodded once, as if he'd confirmed a dinner reservation. Then I turned, walked down the steps, and crossed the hall without looking at anyone. Somewhere behind me, Noah started speaking again, his voice smooth and practiced, welcoming the Eastwood delegation.

He didn't miss a beat. He never did.

---

The night air hit my face like cold water.

I made it through the heavy oak doors and onto the landing at the top of the Pack House steps before the ground tilted.

It started in my chest, that pressure suddenly turning into a fist. Then it spread up into my throat and behind my eyes, and the lanterns hanging along the stone railing smeared into long streaks of gold. I reached for the railing. My hand closed on air.

The mark on my neck burned so hot I tasted metal.

Twin Rot. Elara had warned me it would come in waves.

My heel caught the edge of the top step. There were twenty-two of them, steep and old and worn smooth by a century of wolves, and I was going to hit every one.

I didn't scream. I didn't have the breath.

An arm caught me around the waist.

It stopped my fall so suddenly my head snapped forward, and then I was being pulled back against a solid body, a hand braced flat against my stomach. The world kept spinning for a few seconds. I clutched at a sleeve, expensive wool under my fingers, and waited for my vision to settle.

"Easy," a man's voice said near my ear. Low, unhurried. "I've got you. You're not going anywhere."

I knew that voice. Not well, but I knew it.

Julian Ashford, Alpha of Silvercrest. I'd sat across from him at two trade summits and argued with him for four hours over river rights. He'd won. I'd been furious for a week.

"Alpha Ashford," I managed. "You can put me down."

"You can't even stand." He said it plainly, not unkind. "Give it a minute, Luna."

"Not Luna. Not anymore."

"So I heard." He shifted his grip, turning me so I could lean against the railing instead of him, but he kept one arm firmly around my back. "You made quite an exit."

I laughed weakly, then coughed. I pressed my hand to my mouth, terrified I'd see black on my fingers. There was nothing. Not this time.

Julian went very quiet.

I felt him lean in, just slightly, his face close to my temple. He breathed in once. Then again, slower, the way wolves did when they caught a scent they didn't like.

When he pulled back, his dark eyes had gone sharp.

"Your blood smells wrong," he said.

My stomach dropped. "It's just perfume."

"It isn't." He kept his voice low. "It smells like something going bad. Like fruit left too long in the sun." His gaze dropped to my neck, to the edge of the gray mark peeking out from my collar. "What's happening to you, Lena?"

No one had called me just Lena in days. Not like that, like he actually wanted the answer.

I opened my mouth. I had no idea what I was going to say.

The doors behind us crashed open.

The force of it rattled the lanterns. I felt Noah before I saw him, the bond yanking tight under my skin like a chain pulled taut. Then he was on the landing, and his Alpha aura rolled out ahead of him in a wave so heavy the air seemed to bend.

He looked at me. Then at Julian's arm around my waist.

His eyes flashed gold. A low growl tore out of his chest, raw and unmistakable, and his shoulders bunched like he was a heartbeat from shifting right there on the stone. His hands curled. I saw the tips of his fingers darken, claws starting to push through.

Then he stopped.

It looked like it physically hurt him. His whole body locked in place, muscles straining against something only he could feel. The gold in his eyes flickered, fought, and slowly drained back to gray. His claws retracted. His chest rose and fell, hard and fast.

He didn't say a word. He just stared at Julian's hand on my back.

Julian didn't move it.

He didn't puff up or growl back. He simply stood there, steady and calm, holding me up while my husband shook with the effort of not tearing him apart. Then he tilted his head, almost curious.

"If she's no longer your Luna," Julian said mildly, "why do you look like you want to kill me?"

Under my collarbone, the mark flared white-hot.

And Noah, who always had an answer, said nothing at all.