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.

They say the written word never lies. So how could all this love, overflowing from every page, be nothing but a lie?

I tore through the pages one by one, ripping without mercy.

My gaze caught on an ornate wooden box. Something compelled me to open it.

A delicate portrait of a woman, all soft curves and coy beauty, had been tucked carefully into a hidden compartment. Along the edge, in small, unassuming script, were the words:

"I wish to be the sparrow nesting in the eaves, so that morning and evening, we may always be together."

"The fifth of October. The year we were mated."

I sank to the floor, my vision blurring before I could stop it.

That was one moon cycle after our Mating Ceremony. His heart had already strayed by then.

I was a fool. A complete and utter fool.

The dishes on the table had been reheated again and again. I waved my hand, signaling Aria to clear them away.

"I'm tired. Help me to bed."

Aria stared at me in disbelief. "My Lady, aren't you going to wait for the Alpha? He promised he'd make it back in time to take you to the northern ridge. The moonblossoms along the old trail."

I shook my head and began undressing without another word.

Alaric wasn't coming back.

The next morning, the first thing I saw when I opened my eyes was Alaric kneeling at the side of the bed, his face heavy with guilt. The scent of cedar and cold iron clung to him, sharper than usual, layered with something restless underneath.

"Selene, I'm sorry. I lost track of time yesterday. I broke my promise..."

I stared at him for a long time, unblinking.

Who would have believed it? The Alpha who cut through Moon Council politics without flinching, who ordered wolves' fates decided with a nod, on his knees before me over a broken date.

A mate like that. Anyone would find it impossible to stay angry.

When I said nothing, he grabbed my hand and pressed it against his own body, urging me to hit him.

"If you're upset, take it out on me. Hit me until you feel better, all right?"

I shook my head, my voice flat. "I'm not upset. I just think it's a shame. The moonblossoms in full bloom. I never got to see them."

Relief flooded his face. He lifted my hand to his lips and pressed a deep, lingering kiss against my fingers.

"Silly girl. There'll be plenty of chances. I promise I'll take you. I swear it."

Then he hurried off to the pack hall. There was business with the enforcers that couldn't wait, there was always business that couldn't wait. The heavy den doors closed behind him and two patrol wolves fell into step at his back, their footsteps fading down the stone path.

I watched his retreating figure, straight-backed and sure, and sat there motionless for a long time.

Alaric. There is no "plenty of chances" for us. Not anymore.

After Alaric left, I sent someone to bring Vesper from the hidden nesting den.

She arrived with one hand braced against the small of her back, walking at a leisurely pace. The enforcer who'd driven her stood by the vehicle until I nodded for him to go. When she reached me, she met my gaze without a flicker of fear. A faint trace of jasmine and copper drifted from her, threaded with something too sweet, almost cloying. My wolf stirred uneasily at the edge of my awareness, hackles lifting at a scent it could not place.

"Selene Moonthorn. So you did recognize me yesterday."

I looked her over, head to toe.

A willowy frame, a face no bigger than the palm of a hand. A classic beauty from the southern border packs.

I'd made inquiries in private. Three days after our Mating Ceremony, Alaric had been dispatched south to manage storm-ravaged packlands, the Blackmoor bloodline coordinating relief runs through the devastated territories, half aid, half resource consolidation. That was where his entanglement with Vesper began.

He'd been caught in the floodwaters pulling survivors from a collapsed structure. Delirious with fever, he mistook her for me. One reckless night, and he took her innocence.

Afterward, pitying her as an orphan with no pack in the world, he brought her back to Blackmoor territory. Installed her in the hidden nesting den. Spent every day at her side.

When I followed him there that day, I saw how exquisitely the place had been furnished. Every detail chosen with care. Alaric must have loved her deeply.

A bitter ache spread through my chest.

Vesper noticed the look on my face. Satisfaction crept across hers.

"Selene Moonthorn. Everyone says Alaric adores you. But the way I see it, you're the most pitiful woman alive."

"Your own mate slips wolfsbane into your fertility tonic every single day, yet he and I are the ones expecting a pup. Tell me, how does that make any sense?"

"You don't even know, do you? He comes to the nesting den every day. Every day. Have you ever seen the way he looks when he loses control in bed?"

"He's always telling me that she-wolves in the territory are so dull. That I'm the only one who stirs something real in him. Every time, he pushes me so far I have to beg him to stop before he'll let me go..."

As she spoke, she loosened her clothes right in front of me, baring her body without shame.

Skin pale as silk, covered in bruises. Dark ones and faint ones, layered over each other. My throat tightened, and I looked away.

"Look, these are all the marks he left on me. He's always like this. Once he gets excited, he loses all control and leaves me so sore I can't get out of bed the next morning..."

"Alaric told me that as long as you couldn't bear him a pup, sooner or later the guilt would eat at you until you offered to let him take a second mate on your own. All I had to do was wait..."

She said so much in one breath, more than I could absorb. By the end, I realized there was nothing left inside me to feel. Somewhere deep beneath my ribs, where my wolf had always curled warm and watchful, there was only silence. Not grief. Not rage. Just silence, as though she had lain down and refused to rise.

Alpha Alaric Blackmoor. What a brilliant strategist.

I slumped against the back of the chair. My thumb pressed hard against the inside of my ring finger, against the band that suddenly felt like a brand. The claiming mark at the junction of my neck and shoulder had gone cold. Not the sharp cold of silver, but the dead cold of something that no longer recognized its other half. A long time passed before I could force out a single sentence.

"If that's how it is, the position of his Luna is yours."

I didn't want to be Luna of the Blackmoor Pack anymore.

I didn't want Alaric Blackmoor anymore either.

After Vesper left, Alaric sent a messenger back with word that Moon Council business had called him beyond the territory borders. He wouldn't return for two weeks at least.

Perhaps that was fate.

I packed my belongings calmly, climbed into the car already waiting beyond the manor's back gate, and drove south through the night until the territory lights disappeared behind me. No scent trail. I had crushed moonflower root and wild sage into my skin until my own wolf could barely recognize me. Whatever he sent to track me would find nothing.

Alaric Blackmoor, perhaps you've forgotten what I once said to you.

"With the Moon Goddess as my witness, if the day ever comes that your heart changes, I will make sure you can never find me, not in this life, not in the next, not even in the depths of the spirit realm."

Alaric didn't return to the territory until a full two weeks later. He didn't even stop to change out of his overcoat before rushing through the manor, past the enforcers who straightened at his approach, through the hall where the den keepers went silent, and into the bedroom.

The Moon Goddess only knew how desperately he'd missed that little she-wolf he could never love enough, his darling moon, the one he wanted to pull into his very bones. Her scent. He needed her scent. Moonflower and warm rain and lavender, the particular softness that had lived in every room she'd ever entered. He could already feel his wolf surging forward beneath his skin, restless and aching.

But when he pushed open the door, the scent that hit him was wrong. Jasmine and copper and something sweet tipping toward rot. A different woman looked up, one hand cradling her belly with a coy smile. Alaric's heart plummeted.

"What are you doing in Selene's room?"