He mated with me because of a political alliance. Nothing more.
As long as I remained obedient and stayed in my place, he would give me a title and a rank within the pack. But never his heart.
For five years after that arrangement, I waited.
Waited for even the smallest sign that something had shifted. That I mattered, even a fraction.
Now I understood the truth.
It wasn't that Dominic Ashford was incapable of love.
He simply never loved me.
Every moment I had endured, every humiliation I had swallowed, every night I had spent alone while my wolf keened softly in the dark — all of it had been a joke. A pathetic, drawn-out joke with no punchline.
I wiped the tears from my face and walked out of the enforcers' hall.
My fingers were steady as I pulled out my communicator and placed the call.
"Elder Grimshaw, I need you to draft a Bond Severance Accord."
The next morning, I arrived at the Ashford Pack Compound with the freshly prepared accord in hand.
The Beta stationed at the front gates stopped me before I could enter the Den.
"Luna, the Alpha hasn't been at the compound in quite some time."
The word hit like a needle driven between my ribs.
Quite some time?
Dominic Ashford — the same wolf who had once spent an entire moon cycle living inside the Den without rest, overseeing a critical territory dispute — hadn't been at the compound?
I swallowed the bitter ache rising in my throat. "Where is he?"
The Beta she-wolf at the gate shifted uncomfortably, dropping her gaze. Her voice fell to barely a murmur. "He's accompanying Miss Holloway to the Grand Pack Exchange."
The Grand Pack Exchange.
The rumors flooded back at once. How the Supreme Alpha of the Ashford Pack lavished treasures on his favored companion without hesitation. How he spent fortunes to make her smile. How the entire supernatural world whispered about it while I sat alone in an empty wing of the estate.
I drew a slow breath, turned on my heel, and drove straight to the Exchange hall.
The grand hall blazed with enchanted moonlight chandeliers. The air was thick with the mingled scents of dozens of powerful wolves — cedar and amber and old blood, silk and cold iron and territorial musk. Pack leaders and their entourages filled every row, draped in formal cloaks and ancestral insignias. The elite of the werewolf world, gathered in one glittering space.
I spotted him immediately.
Dominic sat in the front row. Beside him was Serena Holloway, bright-eyed and vivacious, her slender fingers resting possessively on his arm.
The auctioneer at the raised dais was presenting the final and most coveted relic of the evening — a blue diamond necklace once worn by a legendary Luna Queen of the old British Isles packs. The opening bid was already staggering.
The bidding turned fierce.
But each time a numbered crystal was raised from the crowd, Dominic lifted his hand with unhurried ease, his offer crushing the last without effort. His posture was languid, almost bored, yet his aura radiated an unmistakable certainty. The air around him pressed outward with quiet, absolute dominance. He would have that necklace.
No one in the hall doubted it.
In the end, he claimed it at a price that sent a ripple of stunned murmurs through every row.
Every eye in the room turned to Serena.
She laughed, bright and delighted, and threw her arms around his neck. Her lips pressed against his cheek in front of the entire gathering.
I stood only a few paces away. Close enough to catch the faint, sickening sweetness of her scent clinging to his collar. Close enough to see the way his hand settled briefly against the small of her back.
My chest ached so deeply it went numb.
In all our years of mating, Dominic had never once given me a gift. Not a moonstone. Not a wildflower. Not a single token that acknowledged I existed as anything more than a political convenience.
I had told myself he simply wasn't the kind of wolf who understood such gestures. That romance was foreign to his nature.
Now I understood. He was capable of all of it.
He simply never wanted to be that wolf for me.
My fingers tightened around the Bond Severance Accord until the edges of the parchment bit into my skin. I drew one more breath — slow, deliberate, forcing my wolf to stop trembling — and walked toward them.
He saw me first.
The faint trace of warmth that had softened his expression a moment ago vanished. His features turned to granite. His eyes, storm-dark and unreadable, went cold in an instant.
And then, almost before he seemed to think about it, his body shifted. He moved Serena behind him. Shielding her. Protecting her.
From me.
"What are you doing here?"
That single instinctive gesture cut deeper than silver. It drove into the center of my chest like a blade and twisted.
I held myself together. Barely. My voice came out level, though something inside me was fracturing along fault lines I hadn't known existed.
"I have a document that requires your signature." I extended the accord toward him.
At that moment, an Exchange attendant approached with a respectful bow, informing Dominic that they needed him in the back chamber to finalize the necklace transfer.
His tone was flat, dismissive. "I'm occupied. Whatever it is, it can wait."
Wait?
I didn't want to wait anymore. Not another heartbeat. Not another breath spent in this limbo where I was neither loved nor released.
"This is an important document. It will only take a few moments." I pressed forward, and despite every effort, my voice betrayed me — a fine tremor running through the words like a crack spreading through ice. "Dominic, I want to sever our bond. Sign the accord. After the moon cycle waiting period passes, we will have no connection to each other. You have someone you care about. I'm letting go — of you, and of myself. We each find our own path. Neither of us holds the other back any longer."
The words poured out of me in a single rush, and my heart hammered so violently I could feel the pulse in my temples, my throat, behind my eyes.
He barely reacted. A slight crease formed between his brows, nothing more.
After a long pause, he turned his head toward me as though I were an interruption he had already forgotten. "What did you say? I told you I'm busy. We'll discuss it later."
Then he was walking away, following the attendant toward the back chamber.
Just like the last five years.
My words meant nothing to him. They never had. I might as well have been speaking to the wind, to the stone walls of the compound, to the empty silence of our mating quarters where his scent had long since faded to nothing.
I started to follow.
But Serena stepped into my path.
She snatched the accord from my hands before I could react, her sharp eyes flicking over me with open contempt. A small, pitying smile curled across her lips.
"So you're Dominic's little arranged-mating Luna?"
She leafed through the pages of the accord with a casual, almost bored indifference. Her tone was light, careless, as if she were discussing something of no consequence at all.
"Whatever documents you need signed, you can leave them with me. Dominic gave me his Blood Seal. He said I have the authority to sign on his behalf for any and all official matters."
My breath stopped.
Everything stopped.
The Blood Seal. The Alpha's Blood Seal — the most sacred instrument of his authority, infused with his own blood, making any document it touched irrevocable under Moon Goddess law.
He had given it to her.
