"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?"