Breakfast was ashes on my tongue. At the butcher’s, I selected cuts with methodical cruelty, ribeye for Nathaniel, venison for Yoan. A culinary send-off laced with silent venom.
“We’ll need a proper carnivorous spread,” Sky remarked, her tone laced with grim levity.
“Naturally.” I pictured his face when he discovered the emptied wardrobes, the hollowed-out study.
On the walk back, I lingered at the training grounds. The newest recruits—puppies, really—drilled under the Gammas’ barked orders. My chest tightened. Last time you’ll play the dutiful Luna.
At the kiosk, I bought every Jammie Dodger and Penguin bar in stock. They swarmed me, all gap-toothed grins and grass-stained knees.
“Thanks a lot, Luna!” they chorused, one freckled boy clutching my sleeve. “You’re proper angelic, you are. Don’t let no one say otherwise!”
I knelt, smoothing his cowlick. “Mind your Gamma. And never apologise for second helpings.”
Their praise lodged like shrapnel in my throat. “Persevere,” I urged, forcing a smile. Did they sense the valediction beneath my gestures? The finality?
Back in the kitchen, I assembled two tiffin carriers—one for him, one for her. Once, I’d packed twin meals for our shared lunches in his office: debating policy over Coronation chicken sandwiches, stealing crisps from his plate. Now, I was little more than a courier for his indifference.
When did the erosion begin? I wondered, arranging samosas with surgical precision. After her mate’s death? Or earlier—when his eyes first lingered too long on her mourning black?
The walk to his office felt surreal, as though observing a stranger enacting this pantomime of devotion. Last lunch. Last compromise. Last shred of hope discarded.
The room stood empty, stale coffee crusting a mug emblazoned with World’s Best Alpha. Predictable. His new Beta shrugged: “With Beta Yoan. Her girl’s taken a turn.”
“I’ll wait,” I said, tone flat.
Alone, I approached his desk. The drawer slid open with a conspiratorial whisper. Beneath requisition forms lay the pack seal—a tarnished silver wolf’s head.
Hands steady, I stamped the transfer documents Alpha Malcolm had provided. No signature required.
A shuddering breath escaped me. One copy abandoned on the desk; the other secreted in my handbag. My visa to sovereignty.
“Now, the final…” My whisper died as Yoan’s voice slithered through the pack bond.
Angie, darling—Nathaniel mentioned you’re lurking in his office? Do be a love and bring lunch here. He’s ever so peckish.
Honeyed poison. My jaw clenched. The memory of last month’s “family dinner” surfaced—Hazel’s pointed silence, Yoan’s saccharine pity, Iona’s trembling lower lip.
Still, this would be my final grovelling act.
“Course,” I bit out, boots scuffing laminate.
Yoan’s terraced house reeked of bergamot and deceit. Jeremy answered, shirt half-buttoned, trousers misaligned.
“Who authorised this visit?” he snapped, jerking his belt buckle.
My gaze flickered past him to Yoan, swathed in a silk dressing gown. “Interrupting something?”
“Don’t be absurd,” she purred, a Butter-wouldn’t-melt tone. “I insisted you come. Nathaniel, darling—stop glowering.”
Nathaniel—shoeless, collar askew—collapsed onto her Chesterfield as if born to it.
“Do come in, Angie,” Yoan simpered, plucking the tiffin carrier from my grip. “Let’s make this civil.”
I trailed her through the cramped hallway, the air thick with jasmine and performative grief.
“How’ve you been coping?” I asked, the question ash on my tongue.
She arranged her face into a mask of martyrdom. “Oh, dreadful at first. But Carl’s sacrifice was the Moon Goddess’s design, wasn’t it? One mustn’t question divine will.” Her eyes remained arid.
Pity Carl died before learning his wife and child enjoy toying with another’s husband, I thought, spooning dal onto porcelain.
Yoan’s gaze snagged on the mating brand beneath my collar. “Nathaniel mentioned that… mark. Quaint, isn’t it?”
“A temporary brand,” I said, ladling rice with excessive care. “Yours with Carl was genuine, of course. Mine’s merely ink.”
Her mouth tightened. As I turned to set the table, my phone trilled—Allison.
Stepping onto the rain-slicked porch, I answered.
“Angie—Malcolm’s intel checks out?” My brother’s voice crackled with static and worry. “You’re not fleeing because he’s hurt you?”
My breath hitched. “Transfer’s underway. How’s Mum?”
“Pining. We all are. When?”
“Tonight. Tomorrow. Soon.”
Through the window, I watched Yoan feed Nathaniel a samosa, her fingers lingering near his lips.
“Soon,” I repeated, the word a vow.
The call disconnected. Nathaniel stood framed in the doorway, his collar still askew.
“Who was that?” A question sharp as a papercut.
“Allison,” I said, meeting his gaze unflinching. “Enquiring after my wellbeing.”
He nodded, a bureaucrat’s gesture. “Join us, then.” No apology. No acknowledgement of the obscenity. Merely logistics.
The sheer banality of his presumption stole my breath. No flicker of remorse—only the mild irritation of a man whose mistress’s lunch had gone cold.
“I’ll pass.” My smile could’ve carved glass. “Other obligations.”
“Suit yourself. Home later.” He turned, already halfway back to Yoan’s simpering laughter.
Not your home. Not anymore.
Drizzle stung my cheeks as I hailed a black cab. My destination is the Family Division of the High Court. Final affidavits. Dissolution of a marital contract signed in youthful delusion.
But first, a necessary detour is the hospital mortuary. A hollow-eyed clerk processed Iona’s burial permit when I presented the document embossed with Nathaniel’s seal. No condolences. No hesitation. The mortuary staff moved with unseemly haste, transferring my daughter’s precious burden to the Black Widow Pack’s morgue under cover of administrative efficiency.
As I approached the courthouse steps, uncertainty coiled cold in my chest. My hand lingered on the brass handle, the weight of finality pressing upon me. *Was this truly the path?*
Then it returned—the sting of that wretched evening, the hissed taunts, the spectacle of Nathaniel and Yoan’s entwined laughter while I faded into obscurity. Their bonded status, confirmed and celebrated, had seared through the pack like a brushfire, scorching the last fragile embers of our marital pretence.
I drew a sharp breath, knuckles whitening on the doorframe.
“Live joyfully with your mate, Nathaniel,” I hissed to the empty air.
“And I shall carve my own happiness from the ashes.”
The divorce papers bore my signature in swift, ink-black strokes. At home, I arranged the documents with clinical care—twin wedding bands gleaming dully beside them—and scrawled a note of glacial brevity, ‘Kindly arrange to sign.’
When I was done, I picked up my suitcase and left. This time, leave forever.
By dusk, I was speeding north, the Pearl Harbour Pack dissolving in my rearview. Relief coursed through me, sharp and bracing, yet beneath it thrummed a wire of tension. The transfer papers in my glovebox were stamped, lawful, irrefutable—but would border guards truly permit a Luna to slip quietly into exile?
I needn’t have doubted. News of Nathaniel’s bonded union had outpaced even my departure. The officers at the checkpoint merely inclined their heads—a gesture hovering between deference and pity—and ushered me through without a word.
Dawn found me crossing into Black Widow territory, the jagged silhouette of my old life crumbling behind me.
Fatigue had long since been incinerated by adrenaline. Twelve hours of nocturnal motorways had left me thrumming with restless purpose—to reclaim my birthright, to bury my daughter with the rites denied by Pearl Harbour’s soulless protocols.
The Black Widow’s border cut across the moor like a blade. A lean silhouette materialised from the mist, collar upturned against the dawn chill. Allison.
I braked, wheels crunching gravel. He pried open the driver’s door before I’d cut the engine.
“Welcome home, you absolute menace,” he drawled, though his gaze darted past me to the empty backseat. “Shift over. And where—” His voice fractured, just once. “Where’s the tiny terror who owes me five birthday piggybacks?”
"I—Iona..." The words withered in my throat as my eyes fixed on the small coffin perched on the passenger seat.
Allison’s face contorted—fear, rage, desolation—as if words had abandoned her entirely.
"What’s happened, Angie?" she whispered, brittle.
Before I could answer, Nathaniel’s voice ruptured through my mind—a mindlink frayed with terror, fury, raw and jagged as shattered glass.
"Angie! Why are you leaving?"
