I spent the entire afternoon preparing for tonight.
Three years. Three years since Malcolm marked me in front of the Ironvale Pack, since I suppressed my Lycan wolf and chose what I believed was the Moon Goddess's design. Three years of waking up beside a man whose scent I could never quite place, whose bond felt like touching glass—smooth, cold, and fundamentally wrong in a way I could never name.
But tonight was our Mate Ceremony anniversary. Surely tonight would be different.
I arranged everything myself. Candles lined the private ritual room—white ones for purity, gold ones for the moon. I wore the ceremonial gown, deep blue silk that left my mark exposed. The fabric felt heavy against my skin. I'd spent an hour in front of the mirror, brushing my hair until it shone, telling myself that this time, when I approached him, his wolf would finally surface. That the bond would finally feel like the stories said it should.
Malcolm arrived late. He always did.
He stopped in the doorway, still wearing his training clothes. Dirt streaked his jaw. He looked at the candles, at me, and something flickered across his face—not warmth, but irritation.
"What's this?" His voice was flat.
I stepped forward, careful to keep my tone gentle. "Our anniversary. I thought we could renew the bond. It's tradition—"
"I don't have time for this."
My wolf stirred uneasily. I kept my smile in place. "It won't take long. Just a few minutes. I made sure the room was private, and I thought—"
I reached for his hand.
He jerked back so hard I stumbled. "Don't be desperate, Sabrina."
The words landed like a slap. I froze, hand still extended between us, the candles throwing shadows across his disgusted expression. His wolf didn't surface. It never did, not for me. Three years, and I had never once felt his wolf acknowledge mine.
Footsteps in the hallway. Voices lowering. Two Ironvale wolves had heard everything.
Malcolm walked past me without another word. The door clicked shut behind him.
I stood there in my ceremonial gown, surrounded by candles I'd lit for a ritual that would never happen, and pressed my fingertips to the mark on my neck. The scar was smooth under my touch, slightly raised. I'd developed this habit over the years—pressing against it, trying to feel something, anything, through a bond that gave me back nothing but silence.
My wolf released a low sound in my chest. Not quite a whine. Just wrongness given voice.
I blew out the candles one by one and went to bed alone.
---
I couldn't sleep.
At three in the morning, I gave up and reached for my phone. The blue light hurt my eyes. I scrolled through pack social media without really seeing it—photos of training sessions, updates about border patrols, someone's new pup taking their first shift.
Then I saw it.
A post from one of the border guards, uploaded two hours ago. The photo showed the checkpoint at the edge of Ironvale territory, night-vision quality but clear enough. Malcolm stood beside a woman with dark hair and a red coat. His hand rested on her waist. His expression was... alive. Present. More focused and warm than anything I'd seen in three years of marriage.
The caption read: "Welcome back, Eliana! Ironvale missed you!"
My wolf howled.
It wasn't loud. It wasn't dramatic. It was a single, low sound that came from somewhere so deep I felt it in my bones—pure wrongness, cellular-level alarm, the kind of warning your body gives when it knows something is broken beyond repair.
Then silence.
I stared at the screen until the candles I'd forgotten to extinguish in the ritual room finally burned out. The smoke alarm didn't go off. Nothing did. The house stayed quiet, and I sat in our bed—the bed Malcolm hadn't slept in for the past week—and watched my phone screen dim.
Eliana was back.
Malcolm's ex-chosen mate. The woman he'd ended things with before he marked me. The woman whose name he sometimes said in his sleep during the first year of our bond, before he learned to keep that particular truth locked away.
I should have confronted him. Asked questions. Demanded answers.
Instead, I set the phone down, lay back against the pillows, and pressed my fingertips to my mark one more time.
Still nothing.
Just glass.
---
The next few days blurred together.
Eliana appeared at pack gatherings. Malcolm offered no explanation. When I asked—careful, measured questions designed not to sound jealous or territorial—he gave me dismissive answers that weren't really answers at all.
"She's visiting."
"It's pack business."
"Don't make this complicated, Sabrina."
I noticed he'd started wearing high collars. Shirts that covered his mark. I told myself it was consideration, that he didn't want to flaunt the bond in front of his ex-mate. I told myself a lot of things in those days.
The pack's atmosphere shifted. Wolves who used to defer to me at gatherings began glancing toward Eliana instead, reading hierarchy in ways I refused to see. I maintained my Luna duties with the same disciplined grace I'd practiced for three years. Planning meals. Mediating disputes. Managing the household.
But my wolf had gone quiet. Not dormant—I could still feel her—but watchful. Waiting.
Something was coming. I just didn't know what.
Then my wolf growled, low and insistent, until I finally listened.
Late one night, alone in the pack office, I accessed the travel logs. They were within my Luna clearance—administrative records I'd never needed to question before. I told myself I was just checking dates. Making sure I remembered correctly.
I cross-referenced the night three years ago when I nearly died in Ironvale's birthing room. The night Malcolm told me he'd been trapped by a territorial dispute, unable to return in time.
His travel clearance showed Europe.
Eliana's birthday celebration.
His Beta had signed the clearance. The healer's birth report listed Malcolm as "unavailable due to pack emergency."
I closed the file.
My hands were shaking so hard I had to grip the edge of the desk.
For the first time in three years, my wolf didn't just growl.
She snarled.
