Behind me, a pair of familiar dark eyes came into view. Fenris Ashcroft stood there, watching me with an expression I couldn't untangle.
I clenched my fists on instinct, not wanting him to see me this way. I had stumbled through the forest like a wounded animal, branches catching at my hair and cloak. My once-careful braids had come loose and hung in wild tangles around my face. The silver moonflower pin sat crooked against my temple, and one of my red coral ear cuffs was gone, lost somewhere on the trail behind me. I looked like a she-wolf who had lost her mind.
My inner wolf cowered low in my chest, pressing herself flat against the floor of my ribs. She wanted to hide. She wanted to bare her teeth. She couldn't decide which.
I didn't know whether Fenris had seen me tear that mating promise token free from the ancient oak and hurl it into the river. Perhaps he had. But I doubted he cared.
I swallowed the grief rising like bile in my throat and told myself, over and over, that this was the last time I would ever shed tears for this male.
Something that looked almost like pity flickered across Fenris's face, and for one disoriented heartbeat, I thought maybe he still felt something for me. His scent, cedarwood and steel and moonlight, drifted toward me on the wind, and my wolf whimpered before I could stop her. But then he spoke.
"You heard everything just now." His voice was calm, matter-of-fact. "Seraphina, I can't let Ivy go. I intend to take her as my secondary mate in a Moon Ceremony. But don't worry." He paused, as if what came next should comfort me. "I'll still complete our mating bond. You'll still be my only true mate."
I stared at him. He stood there like an Alpha dispensing favors, magnanimous in his own eyes, his aura steady and unbothered while my entire world crumbled around me.
So this was the male I had loved for five years.
"I won't mate with you," I said.
Fenris's expression darkened instantly. His Alpha aura flared, pressing against my skin like a sudden drop in temperature, and his voice turned cold and cutting. "If you won't mate with me, who else will have you? Go ahead. Ask around the Capital Territory. See which Alpha dares to claim you after you've been promised to the Ashcroft bloodline. You're nearly at your third Blood Moon, Seraphina. If you don't mate with me, what's your plan? Bond with some packless rogue? Become the laughingstock of every pack in the territory?"
My eyes flew wide. I never imagined those words could come out of his mouth. My wolf snarled, low and wounded, deep in my chest.
But Fenris knew exactly where to strike. He always had. He knew how to flay me open with a single sentence.
Maybe my face went too pale, because even he seemed to realize he'd gone too far. He exhaled slowly, and his aura pulled back, the pressure lifting from my shoulders. "That was out of line."
"Seraphina." His tone softened, coaxing now. "Be good. I'll give you the grandest Mating Ceremony the Capital Territory has ever seen."
"Seraphina, don't be stubborn. Our ceremony is next moon cycle. When the time comes, you and Ivy will both be mine, and I won't favor either of you."
The words were so absurd I nearly laughed. I wanted to throw it back in his face. Hadn't he been favoring Ivy all along? But I supposed that was the thing about a biased heart. It never recognized its own tilt.
My mind drifted back to the night of the Blood Moon Festival, to what happened when Fenris stepped away to find me a moonstone blessing from the festival stalls.
Ivy had found me alone beneath the great bonfire. Gone was the trembling, timid she-wolf she pretended to be. Her eyes glittered with triumph, and her scent, something sour and sharp beneath the mask of wildflowers, pulsed with satisfaction.
"Seraphina, what good does it do you to be some pureblood lady? Fenris Ashcroft will be mine."
And then, without a second's hesitation, she threw herself into the river.
"Someone's drowning! A she-wolf fell in!"
I flinched, moving toward the riverbank to see, but a violent force slammed into me from the side. I hit the ground hard, the impact jarring through my bones. When I looked up, Fenris was already tearing through the crowd, shifting mid-stride as he plunged toward the water after Ivy without a backward glance.
She was pulled out quickly enough.
She stood there in her pale, thin dress, the soaked fabric clinging to her body until it was nearly transparent, her small frame shaking with theatrical perfection. The gathered wolves stared and murmured. Ivy clutched her arms across her chest, weeping prettily, every tear perfectly placed, her scent flooding the air with distress so potent that every Alpha within range tensed. Fenris didn't hesitate. He stripped off his outer cloak and wrapped it around her, pulling her tight against his chest. His scent enveloped her completely, marking her with his protection in front of every wolf present.
He swept the onlookers with a look so sharp it could draw blood, his eyes flashing amber, his Alpha aura crashing outward like a wall of force. Everyone knew he was the Supreme Alpha's son. No one dared hold his gaze. They dropped their eyes, one by one, throats bared in involuntary submission. And Fenris, in the middle of that grand festival, in front of every soul present, lifted the half-dressed Ivy into his arms and carried her away into the darkness.
He forgot I existed.
I sat on the cold ground. My ankle was twisted and swelling fast where I'd been knocked down. The skin on my palms was scraped raw against the stone. I was a wreck. My wolf lay silent inside me, too stunned to even whimper.
Before the festival, Fenris had sent my personal attendant away on some errand for him. I sat there alone for hours, the bonfire burning down to embers around me, the festival crowd thinning until the clearing was empty and cold. Deep into the night, my frantic parents finally found me. My mother's howl of anguish when she saw me crumpled on the ground carried across the entire territory.
I fell gravely ill after that. For days, I burned with fever, my inner wolf thrashing weakly inside me as if she too were fighting to survive. The pack healer said the shock had destabilized my wolf. My mother sat at my bedside and pressed cool cloths to my forehead and whispered prayers to the Moon Goddess, and my father paced outside my door with his fists clenched and his aura crackling like a storm.
Fenris never came to see me. Not once.
His scent never drifted through my window. No moon-sealed letter arrived bearing his name. Nothing. As if the five years of our bond had been a dream I'd conjured alone.
Ten days later, he appeared at our pack den again. The first words out of his mouth were a request to take Ivy Mossgrove as his secondary mate through a Moon Ceremony.
