Three years into our mating bond, I stumbled upon a secret: my husband, Alaric Blackmoor, the Alpha who supposedly loved me to the marrow of his bones, kept a hidden nesting den on the outskirts of pack territory.

I followed him there and watched with my own eyes as he slid his hand inside another woman's clothes in full view of his enforcers, his gaze burning with a desire I knew all too well.

The wolves around them exchanged knowing looks. "You're so desperate for her, Alpha, why not just claim Vesper Thornscar already? You've been feeding your Luna that wolfsbane through the healer for years. Aren't you just waiting for her to fail to conceive so she'll offer to step aside herself?"

He cut them off with a frown. "Shut your mouths. And speaking of the manor, make sure Malach keeps the dosage careful. I won't have it damaging her health."

After a pause, he added one more warning.

"If word of this reaches my mate, none of you will be spared."

They all went silent, hands at their sides, and watched as he wrapped his arm around the woman and led her into the back room.

Soft moans drifted through the closed door. My heart froze over, inch by inch. Somewhere deep in my chest, my wolf went perfectly, horribly still, like a creature that had just heard the crack of a snare closing around its leg.

So the Alpha who had treated me like his whole world had already given his heart to someone else.

Fine, then. Moon Goddess above or abyss below, I would make sure he never found me again.

——

I fled the den in a blind panic, wandering aimlessly until the moon hung high before I finally made it back to the manor.

Aria was waiting in the kitchen with the usual glass of warm tonic the pack healer had prescribed, ready for me to drink.

The faint metallic tang of blood hit my nose, and my thoughts drifted far away.

After our mating ceremony, Malach had examined me and declared my constitution too weak to conceive easily.

Alaric refused to watch me grieve. He summoned healers from as far as the Northern Lakefront packs and the coastal territories until one of them devised a rare remedy: a tonic brewed with a wolf's own blood, said to strengthen the body at its root.

Without a moment's hesitation, he took a blade to his own chest and began brewing the tonic with blood drawn from over his heart, every single day.

I would trace the lattice of scars across his chest, my heart aching so badly I could barely breathe. I refused to waste a single drop of what his suffering had bought. So I choked down that bitter, iron-reeking tonic for three years straight, never missing a dose.

I had believed he wanted the same thing I did: a pup that carried both our bloodlines.

Yet he would rather cut himself open than let me bear his child.

Alaric walked through the door just as I sat staring blankly at the glass in my hands.

He came up behind me, rested his hands on my shoulders, and murmured, "What are you thinking about, Selene? The tonic will go cold if you don't drink it soon."

I looked up at the gentle, warm man before me and let my gaze travel over him, careful not to show it.

He had changed his clothes at some point. His fingertips and hair carried a clean, freshly scrubbed scent. He must have bathed before coming home.

But no matter how meticulous he was, the faint trace of jasmine and copper still clung behind his ear. Vesper's scent. His own cedar and cold iron couldn't fully mask it.

The ghost of her scent on his skin conjured the image of their tangled bodies, and bile rose in my throat. My wolf recoiled, pressing against the far wall of my ribs as though trying to get away from the wrongness.

"It's nothing. I ran out past the old border today and might have caught a chill. The tonic tastes more bitter than usual."

A flicker of panic crossed Alaric's eyes.

"Past the border? Why on earth would you go out there? It's still freezing. Did you run into anyone?"

"No."

I shook my head and set the glass on the table, letting my lower lip jut out in a small pout. "Do I really have to keep drinking this? It's been years and nothing's happened. That healer must have been a fraud."

The tension drained from his shoulders all at once. He pulled me into his arms and tapped the tip of my nose.

"Now, now, Selene. Don't be a child. Don't you want to give your mate a son or daughter?"

He picked up the glass. "Be good. Let me feed it to you."

His dark eyes held a tenderness deep enough to drown in. My own eyes stung red as I asked one more time, my voice barely above a whisper: "I really have to drink it?"

He blinked, then smiled softly and nodded. Spoonful by spoonful, he tipped the tonic into my mouth.

I swallowed it mechanically, one mouthful after another, the bitterness so sharp that tears pooled in my eyes. Inside me, my wolf lay flat, ears pressed down, making no sound at all.

He was that determined. He would never let me carry his child.

If he had fallen in love with someone else, he could have simply told me. I would have stepped aside. There was no need for all of this.

After I finished the tonic, Alaric kissed the tears from my face, then dismissed the den staff and undressed me himself, drawing my bath with practiced hands.

He had done this for me countless times without complaint. In the beginning, I'd felt embarrassed and tried to call someone in to help.

But he'd gazed at me with open adoration. "A body this beautiful? I'd never let anyone else so much as glimpse you."

"You're mine alone."

Every detail of my daily life, large or small, he insisted on handling personally, and he seemed to relish every moment of it.

What made it rarer still was that in three years of our mating bond, he had kept no one but me. His den staff consisted entirely of males. There wasn't a single she-wolf to be found inside the manor walls.

Alaric was young and held the highest seat of power any Alpha could claim. Even Alpha Lucian Grimvale had once tried to send him a pair of unmated Omegas as a gift following a successful territory negotiation, a gesture of goodwill between packs.

He refused outright, in front of every Alpha at the Moon Council table. The insult nearly started a war. Three of Lucian's enforcers put him on the ground in the stone courtyard afterward, and they didn't stop until someone pulled them off.

I'd seen him that night, his shirt soaked through with blood, not a rib left uncracked, and I wept and cursed him for being a fool.

But even through the pain, he smiled and pulled me close. "Don't cry. I'd sooner betray the whole world than betray you."

Back then, I believed I was the luckiest mate alive.

Everyone in the territory knew that Alpha Blackmoor kept a Luna he treasured like the very eyes in his head. They envied me endlessly.

Yet that woman, Vesper, had shattered something. For the first time, the husband I'd loved for years felt like a stranger, and every tender moment between us felt like an elaborate lie.

By the time I came back to myself, I was wrapped in thin silk and cradled in Alaric's lap.

He nuzzled my neck, coaxing, and I turned my head away on instinct. His scent, cedar and cold iron and woodsmoke, was the same as always, but something in me flinched from it now. "I'm tired. Not tonight."

Alaric blinked, then softened. He ruffled my hair, eased me down onto the pillows, and tucked the covers snugly around me.

I waited until his breathing grew deep and even before opening my eyes in the dark.

Even in sleep, his arms were locked around me, refusing to let go. He loved me so completely. How could any of it be a lie?

The next morning, Alaric was in high spirits, eager to take me to the wildlands outside the territory, a quiet stretch of forest the pack owned under an old land trust where no enforcers stood post.

Before I could answer, someone appeared at the study door requesting a word.

The visitor barely got two words out before Alaric's brow creased and he snapped, "It's my day off. I made it perfectly clear that no one was to come to the den."

I tugged at his sleeve. "Don't be angry. It might be something urgent."

I called the visitor forward to deliver the message, but the instant the figure raised its head, Alaric strode over and placed himself between us, blocking my view entirely.

His throat worked. He looked at me with something close to guilt.

"I just remembered, there is something pressing I need to handle. I'll be quick. I won't miss the wildlands, I promise."

I studied him in silence. The visitor wore the dark jacket of one of the den attendants, but the frame beneath it was slender and soft. And there was a scent beneath the fabric, faint but wrong. Not birch bark or clover honey, not any wolf I recognized from the manor. Something sweeter. Something that didn't belong here. Given how rattled Alaric was, who else could it be but the woman he kept at the nesting den?

My thumb pressed against the inside of my ring finger, hard, until the knuckle ached. I kept my expression neutral and my voice light. "If it's that urgent, you should go. No need to rush back on my account."

The moment I said it, Alaric turned on his heel and left without looking back.

I watched his figure disappear through the front hall, past the two enforcers flanking the door who straightened as he passed, and a bitter taste crept across my lips.

This was the first time he had ever left me for another woman.

The restlessness gnawed at me until I couldn't stand it. After a long hesitation, I took one of the unmarked vehicles from the garage and followed him myself.

The moment they turned out of the lane in front of the Blackmoor estate, Alaric stopped the car and yanked the cap off the so-called attendant's head. Silk-dark hair spilled down past her shoulders.

"Who gave you permission to show your face anywhere near my mate?"

The woman shrank back like a startled fawn, her eyes wide and brimming with hurt.

"I didn't mean to. Please don't be angry."

Then Vesper's face lit up with joy as she pressed a hand to her lower belly.

"The pack healer says I'm expecting a pup. I was so eager to see you that I just..."

"Please don't be so harsh with me, darling. You're scaring me."

Alaric stood frozen. A long moment passed before he spoke again, his voice noticeably softer.

"You're carrying a pup? Then why aren't you resting at the nesting den instead of running around? What if something happens to you?"

Vesper gazed up at him with glistening eyes, her red lips pushed into a pretty pout. "I just couldn't wait to share the good news with you... Darling, won't you spend the day with me? Please?"

Alaric refused, his tone clipped. "I promised Selene I'd be with her today."

But Vesper wasn't giving up. A flush crept across her cheeks as she leaned in close, whispering something against his ear.

"Don't you miss me at all..."

Alaric's restraint crumbled. He pulled her into his arms and squeezed her body against his, letting out a low, rough laugh. "You little temptress."

"Same rules. Don't leave any marks."

I watched every shameless second of it, and it felt like a blade twisting between my ribs.

In all our years of mating, he had only ever been composed and dignified in front of me. The Alpha, measured and controlled, restrained even in our shared bed. I had never once seen him like this. His wolf had never surfaced like that in front of me, never slipped its leash for me. Not once.

Alaric helped Vesper into the back of the black sedan with exaggerated care. The driver pulled away from the curb, but the car didn't get far. It idled at the end of the block, the tinted windows fogged from the inside. They couldn't even wait.

I don't know how long it lasted. Eventually the sedan pulled forward again and merged into traffic.

I followed them the entire way. I watched Alaric slide an elegant silver claw-pin through her tangled hair and twist it into place. I watched them walk arm in arm through the old quarter of the territory, past the pack-run dens and the market stalls where wolves who answered to him lowered their gazes and looked the other way. I watched them sit at a corner den-tavern and share a single plate, his hand covering hers on the rough wooden table.

At last they climbed back into the sedan, laughing, and the car turned toward the highway heading out of the territory. I looked up and recognized the direction. The nesting den.

So Alaric could be this tender, this attentive, with another wolf after all.

I stared until my eyes burned. Only then did I look away and give the order to my driver.

"Take me home."

"And not a word about today. To anyone."

On the ride back to the manor, I couldn't stop seeing it. Vesper's hand resting on her belly, that soft, glowing smile. The faint scent of jasmine and copper that had clung to Alaric even from where I stood, layered over his cedar and cold iron like something that didn't belong but had been there for a long time.

And then I thought of the wolfsbane-laced suppressant Alaric had been feeding me for three full years, disguised as a Moonblessing conception tonic, and the grief was so thick I couldn't breathe.

Before today I had still been lying to myself. Even if Alaric had deceived me about the tonic, it didn't mean he felt nothing for me. Maybe he simply didn't want pups.

But just now, the way he'd looked at Vesper's belly. The way his voice had changed. He cared about that pup.

I remembered something he'd said before our mating ceremony. "Only two people who truly love each other should bring a life into this world together."

He had never loved me. Not from the very beginning. That was why he'd done everything in his power to keep me from carrying his pup.

But if he felt nothing for me, why bother with the lie? Why keep it going for so many years?

I drifted back to our rooms like a ghost and threw every last thing connected to him into the fireplace.

The carved moonstone screen he'd given me. The rare books he'd hunted down from every corner of the territory, first editions tracked through dealers and old blood-debts called in. The countless letters we had written together, line by line, in the early years when I still believed.

I watched them curl and blacken, inch by inch, until there was nothing left. Only then did the pressure in my chest ease, just slightly. Somewhere beneath my skin, my wolf lay utterly still, as though something in her had gone quiet too. Not a whimper. Not a snarl. Just silence where there should have been warmth.

No. Not enough. How could I have forgotten?

I stormed into Alaric's study like a woman possessed and found it on his desk, right where it always sat. The journal.

He had started it the day we met. Every little thing I liked, every habit, every preference, collected drop by drop over the years. By now it was thick as a fist.

I opened the yellowed pages, and every word made my eyes swell with pressure.

Selene has a sweet tooth and hates sour flavors. The den kitchen must prepare a sweet dish with every meal.

Selene gets cold easily. Have the hearth-fires lit in her rooms by the autumn moon.

Selene is afraid of the dark at night. She likes to fall asleep in my arms.

I love Selene so much, so much, so much. Remember: never let her cry.