The moment the private pack doctor arrived, Alpha Draven stalked toward him. His shoulder slammed into mine without a glance, the force sending me stumbling back.

I caught my breath, straightened my spine, and turned to leave.

Outside the packhouse, Alpha Draven's Beta waited, his posture stiff, eyes downcast. He’d been standing guard for a long time.

I quickened my pace, needing space—air.

But before I reached him, two hands, strong as iron, grabbed my arms and yanked me back.

“Alpha Draven requests your presence,” Draven's loyal warrior growled, his voice as emotionless as stone.

I didn’t resist. There was no point.

In the study, Alpha Draven stood by the hearth, casually buttoning his dark shirt, the moonlight catching on the Alpha insignia sewn into the collar. His movements were controlled, cold.

As I stepped inside, he tipped his chin once. Another warrior stepped behind me, gripping my shoulders and forcing me down into a medical chair that had clearly been prepared ahead of time, as if it had been prepared exactly for me.

“Freya’s suffering from severe anemia,” Draven said calmly, motioning to the doctor. “She needs a transfusion. You’re a match.”

I lifted my head, my voice barely steady. “Draven, I just came out of heat sickness. My body—my wolf—isn’t even fully healed yet.”

“Six hundred milliliters,” he ordered flatly, eyes on the doctor. “Begin.”

The thick, silver-tipped needle pierced my vein with brutal precision. I clenched my jaw until I tasted blood. But that pain was nothing compared to the one in my chest.

Through the cracked door, I heard the low murmur of the pack physician.

“Alpha, she recently miscarried. Her hemoglobin is critically low. This could push her into shock—”

“Spare me,” Draven cut him off, unmoved. “Freya carries my heir. She cannot wait.”

Blood siphoned from my arm in thick streams, the bag gradually filling. My vision swam.

Draven stepped in front of me and, in a gesture so unlike him, gently wiped the cold sweat from my brow. His handkerchief was warm, he scented faintly of cedar and wolf musk.

“If it hurts, scream,” he murmured. “Just bear with it. This is for the future of the pack. Think of it like you are also saving our child.”

I closed my eyes. I didn’t want to see him.

Our child?

Would he still call it ours when the pup is born and he marks Freya instead?

A scream pierced the silence from the upper floor. It was Freya’s voice—sharp, trembling.

Draven’s face automatically darkened.

He turned back to the doctor and barked, “Another four hundred.”

The doctor paled. “That could kill her!”

“She’s already fading—”

“Freya is my Luna-to-be. She comes first,” Alpha Draven snapped, already moving toward the door.

I could barely speak, but I forced the words out. “Draw it.”

The physician froze.

“It’s settled,” I whispered. “Once this is done, let me go.”

Alpha Draven turned slowly. His eyes, golden and narrowed, burned into mine. Then he strode over and gripped my chin hard enough to bruise.

“You’d run away over this?” he sneered.

Freya’s whimper echoed again and, without another word, he shoved me away and disappeared.

Without his support, I slumped to the cold marbled floor like a discarded doll.

Blackness swallowed me whole, the doctor’s shouts dimming as the world slipped away.

--

I woke to antiseptic air and harsh fluorescent light. The sterile scent of the pack infirmary stung my nose.

Draven sat nearby, tapping on his laptop. The moment he noticed I was awake, he closed it and grabbed the bowl on the tray table.

He offered me a spoonful of porridge—mechanical, detached.

“I can feed myself,” I murmured.

But swallowing felt like dragging razors down my throat. I winced with every bite.

The Alpha watched, his brow creased like I was a failing calculation he couldn’t fix.

When I reached for the next spoon, he caught my wrist, firm but not unkind.

“The doctor said you need more blood later,” he said. “Back at the packhouse—it was rushed. We didn’t mean to take so much. You can—”

“There's no need for that,” I said, cutting him off. “I’m not dying.”

His eyes flickered, confused by the lack of submission.

Silence settled between us like fog.

Then he spoke again, his voice shifting. “Your phone’s been going off all day.”

I reached for it. Dozens of missed calls. Messages. Notifications.

Draven’s gaze darkened as he leaned in.

“Who’s been trying to reach you?”

“A friend.” I didn’t elaborate.

Suddenly, his tie hit the floor. He leaned in closer, his presence overwhelming.

“Ella, what the hell are you doing? First, you try to run, and now this silent act? You still think you’re some delicate she-wolf we all have to coddle?”

He scoffed. “If you weren’t born a Luna, stop pretending to be one!”

“Look outside,” he hissed. “Wives who can’t bear pups—they get rejected. You’re lucky I didn’t do the same.”

His breath was hot, his fury close. Once, those words would have shattered me. I would’ve wept and begged and told him I was sorry.

Now?

I only felt the numbing void where love used to be.

Why were we still holding onto this bond when it had already broken?

Before I could respond, his phone buzzed. He straightened like a puppet on strings and strode to the hallway.

Then his laughter filtered in—low, soft, tender.

For her.

The door clicked shut.

A moment later, my phone rang.

I answered.

“Ella?” a deep, anxious voice whispered.

“Why did you go back? Don’t tell me... You still can’t let him go?”

“No. Just something… unexpected happened this time. But it won’t be long now. I’ll contact you then.”

Just as I ended the call, the infirmary door creaked open, heavy door groaning against the stone floor.

Draven stood there, silhouetted in the doorway, his golden wolf eyes glowing faintly beneath the flickering sconces. His gaze locked onto mine, as if stunned by something he hadn’t seen in years—my smile.

A real one.

No bitterness. No anguish. Just silence, serenity.

His brow twitched, barely noticeable—but I caught it.

“Freya’s having a rough time with the bond and pregnancy. Morning sickness,” he said, his voice low, clipped. His hand curled into a loose fist by his side. “I have to get back to her.”

He didn’t ask who had called me.

Because if he did, that would mean he still gave a damn.

And admitting that would be a crack in his carefully maintained Alpha pride.

He snatched his suit from the chair and tossed it over his shoulder. “Something urgent at the southern border. I’ll return tomorrow.”

The door shut before I could reply.

I turned to the IV bag pumping wolfsbane antidote into my veins and started counting the drops.

One drop.

Two drops.

Just like I used to count the lies he told me during our seven-year mating.

In Draven’s world, “tomorrow” was a day that never arrived.

--

Three days had passed. He never came.

Instead, I was bombarded with glowing video-scrolls from packmates—footage of Draven at the Alpha Summit, with his hand curved protectively over Freya’s swollen belly. Feeding her honeyed elk meat at the banquet. Kissing her bump under the stars at Blackridge Lake, the same place where he once promised me eternity.

On the day of my discharge, a new Blackthorn Pack broadcast lit up my phone.

Draven had posted a series of nine bonded-mate photos.

He was kneeling in the middle of a wild moonbloom field, his cheek pressed to Freya’s stomach. The caption read:

“Awaiting our little moonflower.”

The comment feed gushed with praise. Freya is glowing! What a perfect Luna!

He hadn’t blocked me.

I tapped the heart emoji anyway.

Seconds later, my device vibrated. Alpha Draven’s name lit up.

I didn’t answer.

I slipped the phone into my hoodie jacket and handed my release paper.

As I walked past the maternity wing of the hospital's hall, I heard a voice that stopped me cold.

“Luna Freya Hart, your mate is so devoted,” a nurse giggled. “He hasn’t missed a single soul check, the alpha always makes sure he's with you every prenatal check-up! Even brought you a heatstone for the chill of the scan.”

I froze. My hand drifted protectively over my flat stomach.

There was a time when Draven had been just as anxious for me. Just as tender.

I’d been pregnant once.

But I never got the chance to tell him.

Because the day I returned from a healing mission, I found him and Freya entwined on the floor of our room, their snarls and moans echoing off the walls.

When she spotted me, Freya faked a whimper and curled against him. “Please, don’t misunderstand, Luna Rayven,” she sniffed. “Alpha Draven was just… relieving his stress, I was just helping him.”

I was so stunned, I forgot how to breathe. I opened my mouth to speak—to tell him he was going to be a father.

That I didn’t need anyone else to carry our bloodline.

But a sharp, brutal pain lanced through my womb.

By the time I collapsed, I was already bleeding out.

Draven Blackthorn never knew.

How would he know? When he was too busy growling at me, cradling Freya like a fragile pup.

“Ella, what the fuck is wrong with you?! You scared her! You can’t even keep a pup alive. You're useless, why don't you just fucking die already?!”

I felt his words had slashed deeper inside me than any claw.

Now, standing in that corridor, the smell of antiseptic and iron in the air, I nearly retched.

“Why are you here?”

That familiar growl snapped me back to reality.

Draven was there again—unannounced. Freya clung to his arm, her belly prominent.

I took a step back. “I’m just signing my discharge papers.”

“You look pale, Ella,” Freya said sweetly, her fingers toying with his ceremonial Alpha tie. “Draven, can’t we bring her home? She donated blood to me. She was so selfless.”

Alpha Draven pinched her cheek. “You’re always so compassionate.”

Then he turned to me, his voice cool. “Get in the car. Don’t make my Luna wait.”

I wanted to refuse.

But the marriage documents I needed were still in the packhouse's study, so I followed in silence.

The home that was once mine now stank of foreign magic and Freya’s cloying perfume—sickly sweet, like decayed lavender and lust spells.

In the study, I began to search the drawers. But beneath one set of scrolls, something caught my eye.

A torn lace strap of underwear. Black. Slick with old scent.

Freya appeared behind me, her cheeks flushed.

“Oh! How is that still here?” she gasped. “So embarrassing…”

Draven strolled in, saw the strap, and chuckled. “Must’ve slipped her mind.”

I stared at the desk.

I remembered the first year of our mating, when I made Draven a packed lunch, I left it there with a note.

He'd come home raging—furious that I’d “tainted” his sacred study space.

But now, Freya's girl juice was smeared across his desk, and all he did was smile like it was the most amusing thing.

Like she had already replaced me.

And maybe… she had.

But I was no longer the same she-wolf he’d once broken.

Now, I had nothing left to lose.

Not the pup he never knew about.

Not the love he threw away.

And certainly not my wolf, who had begun to stir inside me again, for the first time in months.

She was waking.

And this time, I know, we would rise together.

I winced as I saw how Freya playfully nudged Draven’s shoulder, her laughter delicate and falsely sweet—an act she wore like perfume.

The scent of lavender clung to her skin, unnaturally strong, masking something beneath. A human nose might not notice, but mine—sharpened by instinct and years of restraint—caught the bitter trace of wolfsbane hidden in her cologne.

Alpha Draven chuckled, the sound strained, almost mechanical. Then, as though remembering I still existed, he turned to me. “Ella,” he said, his voice dipping into a lower, colder register, “what were you doing barging into my study just now?”

“Retrieving my safe deposit box,” I replied calmly, holding it up. It was a small black case reinforced with silver trim—nothing remarkable. But inside it were the last pieces of the life I had shared with him: our marriage certificate, our household registry, the remnants of a bond that once meant something.

He frowned. His brows tightened the way they always did when his pride was wounded.

“What did you put in there?” he demanded. “You’ve been acting strange lately. Did you buy something behind my back?”

Before I could speak, he strode over and snatched the box from my hands. His hands were warm, but no longer familiar.

He stared at the combination lock, clueless.

That made me pause.

He couldn’t even remember the numbers we had whispered to each other under moonlight the night he claimed me—the night my wolf had stirred beneath my skin for the first time in years.

I met his gaze. “Our wedding anniversary,” I said softly.

His hands stilled.

That date had passed two weeks ago, unnoticed by him but etched in my bones like a scar. He tried again, inputting the wrong date—Freya’s birthday. My stomach turned. His jaw clenched. After another failed attempt, he threw the box back at me.

“I don’t care what you bought. Throw it out,” he snapped. “You don’t deserve to spend my money.”

No, I thought, I don’t deserve to be treated like this by a man who once swore he’d protect me through every full moon.

I wanted to tell him that, but I said nothing; instead, l clutched the box tightly to my chest as I retreated to the guest room. Behind me, Freya suddenly moaned dramatically and whimpered that she felt faint.

As if on cue, Draven rushed to her side, scooping her into his arms and carrying her upstairs.

The echo of her giggles faded, replaced by the heavy silence of the packhouse. Downstairs, I overheard him instruct the housekeeper, “Prepare something rich in iron tonight. The ones Madam used to like.”

Madam.

I wasn’t sure whether he meant me or her. The word had lost all meaning.

When I opened the guest room door, my breath caught.

My suitcase had been ransacked, clothes torn, and my journals ripped to shreds. Some of the pages were wet with something red, not blood, but something else. Perfume. It was Freya’s scent.

She’d marked my belongings like a wolf marking her territory.

I gathered what I could, placing the last of my documents inside the safe deposit box. My wolf stirred in my chest, restless, but too weak to rise.

Not yet.

As I zipped up my coat, the door creaked open. Freya leaned against the frame, her arms folded, her pregnant belly prominent under a sheer silk robe.

“Well, well,” she smirked. “Still pretending to be calm, even though I’ve pissed all over your place in this pack. Honestly, Rayven, you’re impressive.”

I clenched my fists, my nails digging into my skin.

She giggled.

“You know, Alpha Draven didn’t take you to the hospital last month when your father was dying after the rogue attacked your parents…”

Her lips curled wickedly. “Because I had a beauty appointment. He said my face was more important than that old man’s last breath.”

She waved her phone at me. A picture flashed—her and Draven wrapped together in furs, snow in the background. I slapped it out of her hand.

She gasped and shoved me. My body slammed into a bookshelf with a thud. Glass shattered beneath me, and pain spiked through my spine.

And then it started.

The ground trembled. The air thickened. Dust rained from the ceiling like ash.

“An… earthquake?” Freya shrieked, her bravado crumbling.

No. Not an earthquake.

A shift. A Moonfall's shift.

My pulse quickened. The ground was alive with something older than tectonics—magic, and it was primal and untamed.

Smoke unfurled like a living beast from the hallway. A fire sparked in the distance—an overloaded circuit or something darker. The scent of scorched fur and silver filled the air.

I tried to stand but collapsed, my weakened body giving in. Sharp pain lanced through my ribs. My wolf howled in the back of my mind, powerless.

“Ella!”

His voice. I heard Draven’s voice over the chaos.

“Alpha Draven, it’s not safe!” the housekeeper cried.

“Move!” he roared.

Footsteps thundered. Then I saw him, silhouetted against smoke and fire. He looked around, eyes frantic. He found Freya first, curled in a corner, sobbing.

She reached for him. “Draven! I’m scared!”

Without hesitation, he picked her up and turned to leave.

His gaze fell on me, sprawled and broken, glass glinting beneath my fingers.

Our eyes locked.

For a moment, I saw the man I once loved—the Alpha I once trusted.

But then he turned.

And left me.

The fire devoured everything.

The quake stopped, but the damage had already been done.

They searched the ashes. No one found me. No scent trail, no body.

Because I was already gone.

--

At the airport, I mailed off the last of my papers—my inheritance, the sealed documents, and something else… a blood-marked piece of fur that had once belonged to me and Draven.

A final rejection of the bond.

As I waited to board my flight under a new name, my phone vibrated.

It was Draven.

I pulled out the SIM card. Crushed it beneath my boot heel. Tossed it in the nearest trash.

The mate bond is now severed.

From this day forward, Draven Blackthorn, Alpha of the Blackthorn Pack, you and I are nothing.

Not mates.

Not partners.

Not even enemies.

Just strangers in the same cursed world.