“I’m not jealous,” I whispered, the words barely slipping past my lips. “I’m just trying to understand what’s really happening.”
Alpha Damon turned sharply, his voice cutting like a whip through the tension thickening the room. “Maybe if you weren’t always buried in your duties to the council and your relentless training schedule, you’d see that nothing is happening. Damn, Lyra, this is madness.”
And that was the end of it. He didn’t raise his voice again, didn’t offer a second glance.
And I, like the fool they all took me for, chose to trust him over the gnawing instincts curled deep in my gut.
That was before the weekend runs started.
Alpha Damon. Beta Malric. And Nina Frost.
“We just needed a break,” Beta Malric said one evening, pulling on his boots, not even glancing at me. “You’re always busy anyway, buried in the paperwork, patrolling the outer ridge, cleaning up every pack mess like it's your life.”
“You could’ve invited me,” I replied, the words tasting like rust.
He shrugged, the motion lazy and cold. “You would’ve said no.”
And then Nina, bold enough to speak while wearing one of my old leather jackets, chimed in without shame. “Yeah, you’re always exhausted. We didn’t want to bother you. We thought it’d be better this way.”
I remember staring at her for ten long seconds, trying to pinpoint the exact moment she’d stopped pretending to be grateful and started plotting her ascension.
“I don’t remember asking what you thought,” I said, my voice flat as moonlight on snow.
She smiled, soft, sweet, venom in silk. “Just trying to help.”
I laughed under my breath now, alone in the half-dark room of the Alpha’s house. A house I built from the inside out.
I had defended her so many times, to myself, to Damon, to Beta Malric.
“She’s grieving,” I had told them. “Her bond family’s gone. She’s lost. She needs to be grounded.”
But she didn’t need grounding. She needed a kingdom. And she was building it with every crumb of power I fed her.
I pulled out the last photo I hadn’t deleted, one taken on the cliffside during our last full moon retreat.
Alpha Damon’s arm wrapped around my waist. Nina was in the background, her eyes locked on him like a predator waiting for the wounded mate to fall behind.
Smiling too widely. Too confident.
“You needed shelter,” I whispered to the photo. “I offered you my house. You needed a life, and I gave you mine.”
The silence didn’t answer.
As if even that was tired of watching me lose.
**
The dawn came slowly, the forest outside the windows still wrapped in mist and cold hush. I woke up before the sun had a chance to get smug about it.
The ache on my side was still there, the wound from the attack that night that never fully healed, sharp and rhythmic, like it had learned the beat of betrayal.
I sat on the edge of the bed for a long time. Just breathing. Just… listening.
And something in me was quiet.
Still.
They made a mess in a house I built. Let them clean up the bones.
I stood. Walked to the closet. Pulled out the envelope hidden beneath ancient maps, rejected bond petitions, and dried wolfsbane.
Inside was the deed to the Alpha’s estate. My name. Not his. Not the Beta. Not the little saboteur whose fake sobs still clung to the walls.
I stared at it for a long time, not blinking.
The ink had faded a little, but not the truth.
“Of course it’s mine,” I murmured. “I claimed it. I bled for it.”
I called the pack’s landkeeper. She answered in the third ring.
“Lyra! You’re up early—everything okay?”
I looked out the window. The once-vibrant herb garden below was dead now, frostbitten and gray. I hadn’t tended it in weeks.
Maybe because I knew there was no one left in the house worth healing.
“List the estate,” I said. “Today. No delays. No howls of concern.”
She hesitated, like she thought I was bluffing. “Are you sure? We could stage it, clean up the wards, re-inscribe the—”
“No. Just get it done before sunset. No calls. No updates. No questions.”
“Understood.”
I hung up.
**
By the time the first silver beams of light touched the treetops, I was already knee-deep in packing.
But I didn’t pack like someone who was leaving home. I packed like a commander retreating from a battlefield littered with betrayal.
Documents. Records. The blade my mother gifted me the day I was named future Luna.
And one photograph of Zeke, my wolf companion. His fur wild, tongue out, eyes full of trust.
Nina said she hadn’t seen him in the garage that night.
“I swear, Lyra, I didn’t know he was under the truck. I—I didn’t see him—”
“Of course not,” I’d said. “You never see anything unless it benefits you.”
She cried harder, like grief was something she could steal, too.
Now, I slipped the photo onto the side of my pack, careful not to bend it.
The rest, her perfumes, her robes, her velvet collars, everything goes into trash bags.
I didn’t even tie the bags shut. Just dragged them to the driveway like the memories they were, unwanted and stinking.
They didn’t even live here anymore.
Alpha Damon and Beta Malric had pulled their resources and bought her a new home, a white cottage with blue shutters, barely three blocks from the pack house.
“It’s an investment,” they’d said. “Temporary. You’re reading too much into it, Lyra.”
I picked up my phone and called the Elder’s counsel scribe.
“Lyra,” she greeted, voice warm, as if we still believed in kindness.
“Send notice to the Alpha and Beta,” I said. “Three days to vacate the premises. Anyone not listed on the deed forfeits their claim. No appeals. No dramatics. Just get it written and served.”
“Understood. I’ll have it delivered by dusk.”
Beta Malric tried to call first. And then sent me a message that simply reads, 'can we talk?' I blocked the number.
Then Damon’s name lit up my screen. I let it ring once. Then I answered.
“Lyra?”
“Eviction,” I said flatly.
“What?”
“Three days. After that, the locks change and the sigils burn.”
“Lyra, wait, what the hell is this? You’re overreacting.”
I stared at the dent in the kitchen door. The one he made during a fight we never resolved.
“I’m done reacting,” I said. “I’m moving forward. You should try it.”
I hung up before he could answer.
By sunset, the house didn’t feel like a home anymore. It felt like a mausoleum.
I walked through it one final time, bare walls, empty frames, silence full of ghosts.
In the kitchen, the mug he once gave me sat on the counter. The one that said “Luna of my Heart.” The paint was chipped.
I picked it up.
Held it.
And let it fall.
The crash wasn’t loud, just a soft, brittle shatter that seemed to echo louder in my chest than in the room. A broken mug. Nothing more. But somehow, the way the porcelain split against the tile floor felt... final. Like a quiet ending. Like a door clicking shut that no one would open again.
And that was enough.
