The shirt slips from my grip as my knees buckle. All those lies, so deftly spun, and I… I believed.
Every suspicion I’d stifled for years razored open, raw and brutal.
I lurched to my feet, ribs cracking under the truth—her perfume cloying his collars, the bouquet he’d never brought me, the glacial distance between us. It wasn’t suspicion anymore. It was arithmetic.
I’d always been the third.
The mobile trembled in my grip, fingers slick with fury. How many times had we rowed over Yoan? How many times had he spun my pain into pettiness, made me grovel for daring to question his “loyalty”?
Not this time.
No more contorting myself into apologies. No more haunting my own bloody marriage.
I stabbed at the screen, dialling the number I’d ignored weeks prior—the one cryptic offer I’d dismissed, clinging to the delusion that Nathaniel might change. That I might still matter.
“Alpha Malcolm.” My voice was glacial, steady—a stark contrast to the fault lines fracturing my insides. “I’ve reconsidered your… proposal. I’ll be transferring back to the Black Widow Pack.”
A beat of silence. Then, deliberate, as though etching the words into the air itself, “Soon.”
Months prior, Alpha Malcolm had presented me with a prestigious opportunity: to serve as an agricultural strategist at Black Widow Pack’s academy farm. The same academy where I had once been a prodigy—where I’d first crossed paths with Nathaniel, and where I’d mastered critical techniques in communal survival and sustainable leadership.
My affinity for agriculture had bloomed early. As a child, I’d nurtured an unrelenting fascination for livestock husbandry and crop cultivation—a passion that hardened into academic obsession. By sixteen, I’d drafted pioneering methodologies to optimise harvest yields; by twenty, my research licences with Black Widow Pack had earned me a formal endorsement from their Leader himself. When Nathaniel proposed five years ago, I was being groomed for a coveted role in their Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs.
Yet love loomed over me like a scythe. In the delicate calculus of devotion, I chose Nathaniel. I forfeited my ambitions, dismantled my laboratory, and vanished into the shadows of Pearl Harbor Pack as its Luna.
Two years later, Alpha Malcolm reached out once more, urging me to reclaim the role. Black Widow Pack’s harvests had failed catastrophically; they needed expertise I could provide. Yet loyalty to Nathaniel anchored me. I declined again—though not without sending crates of our surplus grain to stave off their famine.
How could I, as Luna, abandon Pearl Harbor? My duty, I’d told myself, lay in the soil of these lands, in the pulse of this pack.
But yesterday’s ambush shattered that illusion. As Iona and I bled out on the forest floor, Nathaniel had raced to Yoan’s side first. Not mine. Not ours. My daughter’s death, my own brush with oblivion—they were mere footnotes to him.
A Luna in title. A ghost in practice.
Why linger where my Alpha—my husband—treated my existence as incidental?
The decision crystallised, cold and unyielding. I dialled Alpha Malcolm’s number, voice steady. “I accept your offer. I’m returning to Black Widow Pack.”
“Excellent news, Angie. Our pack’s doors remain open to you,” Alpha Malcolm replied, his voice brimming with a warmth that seemed to transcend the receiver. “I’ll expedite the transfer documentation and forward the requisite files once prepared. Ensure your affairs here are settled—we’ll prioritise a seamless transition.”
“Thank you, Alpha Malcolm,” I said, steadying the tremor in my words. “I’m grateful for this chance. You’ll have no cause to doubt my commitment.”
The call ended. I stood motionless, the weight of finality pressing down. There was no undoing it now, I would leave.
Yet duty lingered.
I assembled Nathaniel’s lunch—roasted pheasant, honeyed oats—and added extra portions for the labourers reconstructing the storm-ravaged eastern barracks. A habitual gesture, but today it felt ceremonial. A quiet farewell to the life I’d clung to for too long.
My thoughts drifted unbidden to my early days in Pearl Harbor Pack. I bore no hatred for this place. The pack members—generous, resilient souls—had shown me nothing but kindness, despite my outsider origins.
But their warmth couldn’t mend the fractures within my own walls. If my marriage had become a hollow pantomime, if my husband’s loyalties frayed at the slightest test… what solace was there in duty without devotion?
A home ought to be a sanctuary, yet for me, it had become nothing more than a vessel of solitude.
Lost in contemplation, I arrived at the Alpha's office and, as was customary, entered without requiring permission. The staff greeted me with their usual warmth as I made my way to the lounge to deposit the snacks I had prepared.
As I stood there, my mobile vibrated. An email from Alpha Malcolm appeared, containing the attached transfer documents. The reality of the situation struck me, and I resolved to print them in Nathaniel's office later.
Yet just as I prepared to leave, I caught wind of hushed gossip. I halted, my heart descending as I recognised the subject of their whispered exchange.
"You simply must have seen it," one pack member whispered with barely contained excitement. "At the clinic, Alpha Nathaniel presented Yoan with flowers and the most expensive chocolates for Hazel. It was absolutely romantic."
"Indeed? He's been terribly sweet to her. With everything Yoan's experiencing with her son after the attack, she must be utterly distraught."
Another voice interjected, "I wonder... if Beta Hazel is their biological child, surely our pack would grow stronger?"
"Perhaps. Some say they're already mates, you know."
A gasp escaped my lips before I could suppress it. Surely they couldn't be serious? My chest constricted as I stood, rooted to the spot.
"What? How could they possibly be mates? Yoan already has one," someone questioned, their voice laden with disbelief.
"Well, I've heard Beta Yoan's husband isn't actually her fated mate. Besides, it's hardly unprecedented for Alphas and Lunas to marry without being true mates, is it?"
They spoke the truth there—
