I turned around and walked out.

The hallway felt a mile long. My boots left dried mud on the floorboards I had polished myself last week. Behind me, the bedroom stayed silent. Then footsteps came, fast and heavy.

"Talia."

I kept moving.

"Talia, stop."

A hand closed around my elbow and spun me. Caelan's shirt hung open. His hair was a mess, and I knew whose fingers had done it.

"Where are you going?"

"The pack hall." I yanked my arm back. "I'm ringing the bell. The elders can hear it tonight. Why wait until morning?"

His face drained. "You'll do no such thing."

"Watch me."

"Listen to me." He dropped his voice, the way he did in council meetings when he wanted the room to lean in. "If this gets out, it ruins the Ashford name. Blackridge loses everything. Do you understand? *Everything.*"

I laughed. It scraped my throat raw. "You are the one who ruined everything."

"I have thought, Caelan. For three years I've done nothing but think about this pack." I counted on my fingers, and my hands wouldn't stop shaking. "I ran the healing den when Old Mara died. I sat up with your warriors through fever season. I hosted every Alpha you needed to impress. I smiled at your mother when she called me a border stray. I did a Luna's work every single day."

"No one's denying that..."

"And my reward is coming home to find my husband and his *sister* on my sheets."

His jaw ticked. He had no answer.

A door creaked behind him.

Sabine slipped into the hallway wearing nothing but Caelan's white shirt. It barely covered her thighs. Her bare feet whispered across the wood, and she tucked herself behind his shoulder like a scared child hiding behind a parent.

"Caelan." Her voice wobbled. "Please don't let her do this."

"Go back inside, Sabine."

"I didn't mean for it to happen." Fresh tears rolled down her cheeks. She clutched the back of his shirt. "My heat came early. I lost control, I swear I did. I didn't even know what I was doing."

"You knew enough to put on lace," I said.

She flinched as though I'd struck her. Then she peered up at Caelan with swimming eyes.

"If the elders hear this, they'll exile me. A rogue with no pack, Caelan. I'll die out there. She knows that. She *wants* that."

"Enough." Caelan's voice dropped into something deep and bone-heavy. I felt it a second before he spoke the word.

"Talia. *Stay.*"

The command slammed into me.

The command landed as a weight, pressing down from the top of my skull to the soles of my feet. My wolf yelped and fled, shoved backward into some dark corner of my mind I couldn't reach. My knees buckled. I grabbed the wall, but my fingers slid off the wallpaper and I sank to the floor.

"You... used that on me?" My tongue felt thick. "Your *mate*?"

He didn't answer. He crouched, scooped me up, and carried me down the hall. I tried to kick. My legs only twitched.

He set me down on the leather couch in his study. Then he stood and pressed his palm flat against the doorframe. Silver light pulsed under his hand. An Alpha seal.

"You'll stay here until you calm down," he said. "Then we'll talk."

"Caelan." I forced each word out. "If you walk out that door..."

The door shut.

The lock clicked.

---

Hours crawled past. The moon moved across the window. I lay on the couch and called for my wolf again and again.

*Come back. Please. Answer me.*

Nothing. Only a faint, wounded silence.

Somewhere past midnight, the silver seal flickered.

I lifted my head. The light on the doorframe stuttered, dimmed, and then went dark. The door swung inward.

Sabine stepped through, fully dressed now, in a soft blue sweater. She looked sweet. Innocent. Like she was bringing me tea.

A man followed her in.

He was tall and wiry, with a scar splitting one eyebrow and the stink of the wild on him. Pine sap. Old blood. No pack scent at all.

A rogue.

"How did you break the seal?" I rasped.

Sabine twirled a thin steel key between her fingers. "Caelan keeps a spare in his desk. He never hides anything from me." She tilted her head at the man. "Merrick, this is Talia. The Luna."

Merrick grinned. Half his teeth were yellow. "Prettier than you said."

"Don't get attached." Sabine dropped into the armchair by the fireplace and crossed her legs. "Here's how it works. You ruin her reputation, and Caelan can never keep her as Luna again. The pack would riot. A Luna caught rolling around with a rogue? Please."

My stomach turned to ice. "Sabine. Don't do this."

"Too late."

Merrick crossed the rug in three strides. I threw myself sideways off the couch, but my arms folded under me like wet paper. He caught me by the ankle and dragged me onto the floor.

"Get off me!"

He pinned my wrists above my head with one hand. His knee shoved my legs apart. He leaned down and dragged his tongue up the side of my neck, slow and wet, right over the spot where Caelan's mark should have been.

Bile surged into my throat. I bucked under him. I twisted, clawed, tried to bite. Every movement came out weak and sluggish, like fighting underwater. The command still sat on my chest like a stone.

His free hand caught the collar of my shirt and ripped. Buttons pinged across the floorboards.

"Stop it!" My voice cracked. "Stop!"

Sabine giggled from the armchair.

"Look at her squirm. You'd think she hated it." She rested her chin on her fist. "Tomorrow I'll tell everyone how the Luna can't keep her legs shut around any male who walks by. How she lured some filthy rogue in here while her husband slept down the hall. They'll believe me."

"Still cleaner," I spat, "than crawling into your own brother's bed."

Her smile vanished.

Her palm cracked across my cheek so hard my head snapped sideways.

"Shut up." Her voice shook with something ugly. "You don't get to talk about him. You're *nothing*." She straightened and smoothed her sweater. "Merrick. Teach her some manners. Take your time."

Merrick's hand went to the waistband of my jeans. He tore the button loose and began dragging the denim down my hips.

*No. No, no, no.*

I reached inside myself with everything I had left.

*Please. Please, wake up. I need you. Fight with me.*

My wolf didn't answer.

The silence inside me was worse than his hands. I was alone. Completely alone in my own body.

Terror ripped through me, so huge it had nowhere to go but out. It tore down the mate bond like a scream down a tunnel, every ounce of fear and pain and disgust flooding toward the one person tied to my soul.

Merrick yanked again. Cold air hit my skin.

Then the door burst off its hinges.

It crashed against the bookshelf and splintered. Books rained onto the floor.

Caelan stood in the doorway, chest heaving, eyes already bleeding gold.

His gaze dropped. To my torn shirt. To my jeans halfway down my legs. To the rogue's hand still clamped around my wrists.

The air in the room went thick and hot.

A sound rolled out of Caelan's chest, low and rising, a growl so deep the windows rattled in their frames.

"*Who,*" he said, "*touched my mate?*"

Caelan didn't wait for an answer.

He crossed the room in a blur and tore Merrick off me by the back of his neck. The rogue flew. He hit the fireplace stones with a crack I felt in my teeth.

"Alpha, wait! She told me to..."

Caelan's boot drove into his side. Ribs snapped like dry branches. Merrick curled around the pain, wheezing.

"You put your hands on my Luna." Caelan hauled him up by the collar. "In my house."

"The girl paid me! Ask her!"

"Out."

Caelan dragged him to the splintered doorway and threw him at two warriors charging up the stairs. "Break his legs."

Merrick's howls faded down the stairwell.

Then Caelan turned to Sabine.

She had flattened herself against the bookshelf, both hands over her mouth. Gold still burned in his eyes.

"I only wanted to scare her!" Tears spilled down her face. "I swear on Mother's grave, Caelan. She kept threatening me. He was supposed to *talk* to her, that's all. Then he went crazy. It was him. Not me!"

"You watched."

"I froze! I was terrified!" She stumbled forward and caught his sleeve. "Caelan, you know me. Would I ever..."

I lay on the floor in the shreds of my shirt and waited for him to see it.

His shoulders dropped an inch.

Only an inch. That was all it took for me to know.

"Go to your room," he said. "We'll deal with this tomorrow."

Tomorrow. She'd brought a rogue in to rape me, and she got *tomorrow*.

Something in my chest simply stopped trying.

Sabine slipped past him with her eyes lowered. At the doorway she glanced back at me, just once. Then she was gone.

Caelan dropped to his knees beside me. He stripped off his jacket and wrapped it around my shoulders, tugging it closed over my bare skin. Then he gathered me into his lap and held on.

"I'm sorry." His mouth pressed against my hair. "Talia, I'm so sorry. I felt you screaming. I felt it and I ran. I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

I said nothing.

His palm stroked down my back, and I smelled her on it. Vanilla. Sweat. Heat. Every pass of his hand dragged me back to those gray sheets, to his fingers sliding under black lace.

"Say something," he begged. "Please. Yell at me. Hit me."

I fixed my eyes on the broken door.

"I was wrong." His voice cracked down the middle. Something wet landed on my temple. Caelan Ashford, who hadn't shed a tear at his own father's funeral, was crying. "I was so fucking wrong. I'll never touch her again. Never. I swear it on my wolf."

"I want to leave," I said.

His hand stilled on my spine.

"I won't tell the council," I went on. My voice sounded calm. Almost polite. "I won't tell anyone. Sabine keeps her name. You keep your alliances. I just want to walk out of Blackridge and never come back."

"No."

"Caelan."

"*No.*" His arms locked tighter. "I love you. You're my mate. The Moon Goddess tied us together. The bond proves it. We belong to each other."

I pulled back far enough to look at him.

"The bond," I repeated. "You want to know what the bond did tonight?"

He went still.

"It let me feel you want her." I held his stare. "All of it. Your heartbeat. The heat in your stomach. How badly you wanted to be inside her. I felt it like it was happening to *me*. So don't tell me what the bond proves."

His face emptied, like I'd slapped every bit of color out of it.

I slid off his lap. The jacket fell away. I knelt on the rug in front of him, torn shirt hanging open, and bowed my head.

"Reject me."

"Talia, get up."

"Reject me. Formally. Say the words."

"Don't do this." He grabbed my arms. "Don't kneel to me. Not like this."

"Please reject me."

"You're in shock. In a week, you'll..."

"Please."

"Talia..."

"Please. Please." It stopped sounding like begging. It just sounded like a word I'd forgotten how to stop saying. "I don't want to feel you anymore. I don't want my body to know when you touch her. Please. Please. Please."

He cupped my face, thumbs pressing hard against my cheekbones, like he could hold the request inside me.

"Look at me."

I looked through him.

"Please," I said.

His jaw worked. His throat moved twice. For a long moment the only sound in the room was the rain starting against the window.

Then his hands slid away.

"Fine," he whispered. "If that's what you need. Go. Take some time." He swallowed. "You'll come back. And when you do, I'll earn you back. Every day. I swear it."

I didn't argue. Let him believe whatever helped him say the words.

He drew a ragged breath.

"I, Caelan Ashford, Alpha of Blackridge, reject you, Talia Corwin, as my mate and my Luna."

The bond tore.

It didn't snap. It *ripped*, like a hand had reached through my ribs, closed around my heart, and pulled it out by the roots. I folded forward. Hot copper flooded my mouth and spilled over my lips, dripping onto the rug in dark red spots.

Deep inside me, my wolf lifted her head for the first time all night.

She let out one thin, long cry.

Then she was quiet.

I wiped my chin with the back of my hand and smeared blood across my wrist.

"I, Talia Corwin," I said, "accept your rejection."

Caelan pitched forward onto his hands. A choked sound tore out of him. His shirt fell open, and across his chest, right over his heart, a red line seared itself into his skin, jagged as a claw mark, smoking faintly.

He stared down at it like he'd never seen his own body before.

I got to my feet. My legs shook, but they held.

I left his jacket on the floor.

"Talia." He reached for my wrist. "Wait. Talia, please."

I stepped aside.

His fingers closed on empty air.

I didn't look back. I walked down the stairs in my ruined shirt and my unbuttoned jeans, past the warriors who wouldn't meet my eyes, out the front door and into the rain.

It came down hard, cold enough to sting. It soaked me in seconds. Every step sent a fresh spike of pain through the hollow place in my chest, where something warm had lived for three years.

The tree line blurred. The old stone marker of the Blackridge border rose out of the dark.

I passed it.

Two steps. Three.

Then the ground rushed up to meet me.

Mud filled my mouth with the taste of iron. Rain hammered my back. I reached inward one last time, searching for her.

*Are you there?*

No answer.

Only the storm, and far behind me, a howl rising from the packhouse.

It no longer belonged to me.