Elara POV:
My eyes turned as cold as glacial ice.
Deep within my soul, my Inner Wolf let out a vicious, territorial growl, pacing furiously against the confines of my mind.
I stared at Kael, watching the way his body instinctively shifted to shield Selene.
"Did you bring her to my territory?" I asked, my voice dangerously low.
Kael avoided my gaze, looking suddenly guilty.
"She was scared of the thunder in the estate," he muttered, trying to reach out to pacify me. "Elara, be reasonable."
I threw my head back and let out a harsh, humorless laugh.
"Reasonable?" I spat the word out. "Let's talk about reason. Yesterday, I went to the war room. My records were destroyed."
Selene flinched, her eyes darting to the floor.
"And my 'Full Moon Defense Plan,' the one I stayed up for two weeks to draft, is missing from my desk," I continued, stepping closer to the Omega. "Care to explain why your scent is all over my destroyed files, Selene?"
Selene's lower lip began to tremble violently.
Tears welled up in her large, innocent eyes, spilling over her cheeks in a perfect display of misery.
"I did not do it!" she sobbed, clutching Kael's arm. "Elara is always bullying me because I am an Omega! She hates me because you are nice to me, Alpha!"
With a dramatic gasp, Selene dropped to her knees on the wooden floor, bowing her head.
"I am sorry for breathing your air, Warrior Elara," she cried out. "Please do not hurt me!"
The sight of the submissive Omega crying on the floor triggered every protective instinct in Kael's Alpha blood.
His eyes flashed golden yellow, the mark of his beast rising to the surface. His pride could not tolerate a warrior who met his gaze as an equal—not when he had a pet willing to worship the very ground he walked on.
He blindly believed her performance.
"Enough, Elara!" Kael roared, his voice vibrating with power.
He unleashed the Alpha's Command, aiming it directly at my mind.
Apologize to her, now! his voice thundered in my head, a suffocating weight that tried to force my body to bow.
I planted my boots firmly on the ground, biting the inside of my cheek until I tasted copper to keep myself standing. The command clawed at my will, but I had spent four years bleeding for this pack while she had spent one month batting her lashes. I would not break for this.
Looking at my Fated Mate, the man who was supposed to protect my soul, I felt absolutely nothing but a terrifying emptiness.
The cord of tension I had held taut within my chest for so long did not snap. It simply went slack, leaving behind a hollow quiet where feeling once lived.
"I refuse your protection as my Alpha, and I refuse your judgment as my Mate," I said, my voice eerily calm and steady. "Get out of my cabin. Both of you."
Selene shrank behind Kael's massive frame, continuing her fake whimpering.
Kael stared at me, his chest heaving with anger.
He clearly thought I was just using our Mate bond as a threat to throw a tantrum.
"You are acting like a spoiled pup," Kael sneered, grabbing Selene's hand. "When you calm down and remember your place, you can come find me."
He turned around and dragged Selene out, slamming my heavy oak door so hard the hinges cracked.
The moment they were gone, my knees gave out.
I collapsed onto the floor, gasping for air as the residual pressure of the Alpha's Command faded from my lungs.
With trembling fingers, I reached into my mind and violently severed my connection to the Silver Moon Pack's Mind-Link.
The constant hum of pack voices in my head vanished, leaving behind a deafening silence.
My phone rang on the nightstand.
It was my mother, calling from the Bloodborne Pack, my ancestral home far to the north.
"Elara, my brave wolf," my mother's warm voice flowed through the speaker. "I felt a disturbance in your energy. What is wrong?"
My mother was an Elder of the Bloodborne Pack, a keeper of ancient laws and a woman of immense power.
"Mother," I whispered, my voice cracking for the first time. "I am leaving the Silver Moon Pack. As soon as I hand over my defense duties, I am coming home."
There was a brief silence on the other end.
"And Kael?" she asked gently.
"I am going to perform the Rejection ritual," I stated, staring blankly at the wall.
The Rejection was a sacred and brutal act, severing the soul tie given by the Moon Goddess, a pain worse than breaking bones.
"Good," my mother said firmly, her voice filled with fierce pride. "You carry the noble blood of our ancestors. I will not let my daughter suffer humiliation. Come home, my child."
Tears of gratitude burned my eyes.
I hung up the phone, and a strange peace settled over me. It did not mend the fractures in my chest—it filled them with a cold, quiet finality.
I planned to spend my last two days quietly packing my things.
But out of habit, I opened the pack's public community network on my phone.
The main channel was exploding with thousands of comments.
Selene had just dropped a video file into the public feed, and the title made my blood freeze.
