Aveline’s Pov
“Evander—” I tried to speak, but Calista’s loud sobs tore straight across my words.
“Evander, please don’t blame Luna Aveline,” she cried. “You told me to wake her, and she got angry and shoved me.”
My eyes widened.
I was crumpled on the far side of the room, one arm wrapped around my lower belly, barely able to breathe through the pain ripping through me.
“That’s not true,” I gasped. “She pushed me, Evander!”
Evander let out a cold scoff while Calista shook in his arms like some fragile, wounded thing.
“You expect me to believe a pregnant she-wolf shoved you?” he said. “Why are you always so vicious toward Calista? Why must you keep playing these ugly games?”
“It hurts, Evander,” Calista whimpered, clutching her stomach. “Please don’t blame Luna Aveline. I’m sure she is only upset because she had to sleep in this chamber. If I were in her place, I would be upset too.”
Evander’s face hardened as he looked at me.
“How heartless can you be, Aveline?”
Tears spilled down my cheeks as the pain in my abdomen worsened.
“I swear I didn’t touch her,” I cried. “She pushed me, Evander. I’m bleeding. Why won’t you believe me? I’m your mate!”
“Evander,” Calista whimpered again, pressing her hand more tightly over her belly. “It hurts.”
At once, Evander bent and lifted her into his arms.
“You want the room, Aveline?” he said without even looking at me. “Fine. Keep the entire packhouse. I’ll have another place prepared for Calista, and I’ll stay with her until she gives birth. Pray nothing happens to her.”
My breath caught.
“No, Evander, please,” I begged. “Help me—”
“Deal with it yourself,” he snapped.
Then he turned and walked out with Calista in his arms.
As they passed through the doorway, Calista looked over Evander’s shoulder and gave me a slow, smug smile.
Her lips moved silently.
He’s mine.
Then they were gone.
I did not know how long I remained there on the floor.
Bleeding.
Crying.
Realizing, little by little, that Evander had not come back because he did not care enough to come back.
Three years of mating vows, and he did not trust me.
All it had taken was the return of his first love for every promise, every tenderness, every scrap of devotion he had once given me to disappear like mist beneath the morning sun.
By the time the pain eased enough for me to move, I had nothing left in me except one last, humiliating thread of hope.
I dragged myself to the bedside table, reached for the moonstone, and tried to call Evander through it.
The stone glowed.
Then dimmed.
Blocked.
I tried again.
And again.
Seven times I reached for him through the moonstone, and seven times he shut me out.
At last, trembling and half-blind with pain, I grabbed the emergency moonstone the pack kept for life-threatening danger.
By the time the healer’s transport arrived, dark spots were already swimming across my vision.
Hands lifted me.
Voices blurred.
The world tilted.
Then everything went black.
---
“How do you feel, Luna Aveline?”
The voice pulled me slowly out of the darkness.
I blinked, and the room finally came into focus.
Pale stone walls.
The bitter scent of crushed herbs and antiseptic.
The steady chiming of a pulse crystal beside the bed.
It was the same healer from before.
My ears rang.
“Healer,” I croaked, my throat raw, “what happened?”
“That is what we had hoped you would tell us, Luna,” he said, frowning slightly.
“What do you mean?” I asked, trying to push myself up.
The instant I moved, a sharp pain ripped through my body, and I cried out.
“Easy,” he said quickly. “You have only just woken from surgery.”
I stared at him. “Surgery? What happened?”
“You were brought here with severe damage to your womb,” he said carefully. “The bleeding would not stop. You had lost a dangerous amount of blood, and we had to operate at once. We reached your mate through the moonstone. He told us to do whatever was necessary.”
At the mention of Evander, bile rose in my throat.
I swallowed it down and said nothing.
The healer hesitated before continuing.
“After the surgery, you slipped into a coma. We continued sending word to your mate through his office and through the pack channels when he refused our calls. He told us not to disturb him. He said you were pretending.” The healer’s mouth tightened. “You remained in a coma for one full week, Luna Aveline. Your mate never came. Not once.”
A bitter smile touched my lips.
“So I’m alive?” I asked quietly.
The healer sighed. “For now, yes. But we still need to watch you closely, and there is something important I must tell you.”
I nodded once, though my heart already felt as if it were being crushed in an iron fist.
As I had lain on that floor in my own blood, I had already known, deep inside, that if help did not come, Evander would leave me there to die.
But hearing the healer confirm that he had ignored me for an entire week made the truth colder.
Far more final.
The healer studied me for a moment before asking, “Aveline... are you safe in your own home? Does your mate mistreat you? Do you need help?”
A dry laugh escaped me.
“Only a lawyer.”
He nodded solemnly.
“I will arrange it,” he said. Then his face grew graver. “But you must understand something. During the surgery, we had no choice but to remove your fallopian tubes. The bleeding would not stop. If we had delayed any longer, you would have died.”
For a moment, I could only stare at him.
My pulse began to race.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
He looked at me with open regret.
“If you had been brought here sooner, we might have avoided it. But as it is...” He paused. “The removal of both tubes greatly lowers your chance of conceiving. It is possible... that you may never carry a pup again.”
The room spun.
A bitter laugh broke out of me before I could stop it.
“First my pup,” I whispered. “And now this.”
“You are not barren, Luna Aveline—”
“Aveline,” I cut in sharply. “My name is Aveline. Not Luna.”
Silence fell for a beat.
Then I said, more coldly, “Get me a damned lawyer.”
For the rest of my stay in the healer’s den, I tried not to think about his words.
I focused on healing instead.
On eating when they told me to eat.
Sleeping when they forced me to rest.
Walking when my body screamed at me not to.
Evander never called.
He never came.
Not once.
By the day I was finally discharged, the lawyer the healer had arranged stood beside my bed, papers in hand and sympathy in her eyes.
“So once you leave, I’ll have these delivered to your mate’s office?” she asked.
I nodded. “Yes. And make sure he signs them.”
She hesitated. “Are you certain this is what you want, Luna— Aveline?”
A cold laugh escaped me.
“To dissolve the bond with the bastard who made me lose my pup and left me bleeding on the floor?” I said. “Yes. I’m certain.”
The lawyer nodded slowly.
“What will you do now?”
I looked toward the window.
“What I should have done three years ago.”
“Take care of yourself, Aveline,” she said softly before leaving.
A little while later, the healer returned.
“I take it you have finished your business with the lawyer?”
I nodded. “Thank you, Healer. I won’t forget what you did for me.”
He studied me for a long moment, then smiled faintly.
“Do not surrender all hope, Aveline. Nothing is impossible beneath the Moon Goddess.”
I looked away. “Thank you. Please call me a carriage to the airfield.”
He nodded and left.
A moment later, my moonstone lit up with an unfamiliar signal.
Unknown.
I accepted the call and listened in silence.
“Yes,” I said at last. “I’ve been discharged. I’m coming home today.”
I ended the call and looked slowly around the room.
Three weeks.
Three weeks of pain, grief, and healing.
Three weeks to finally accept what I had refused to see for far too long.
Evander had chosen Calista.
Not once.
Not by accident.
Not in confusion.
He had chosen her again and again while I bled.
I rose from the bed, slower than I once would have been, but steadier too.
For the first time in three years, I felt something close to fDuskbaneom.
I walked out of the healer’s den and toward the waiting carriage that would take me to the airfield—far away from Evander, far away from Calista, far away from the life they had poisoned.
They had changed me.
They had taught me exactly what love without dignity costs.
Now it was my turn.
And this time, they would pay for every piece of me they had destroyed.
