Chapter 1
It was already dark when I returned to the Nightbane Packhouse and found Alpha Darius in the kitchen-cooking.
The scent of roasted venison, sage, and firewood filled the air. He moved with practiced grace his large hands slicing meat with deadly precision as if he were gutting rogues, not preparing
dinner.
He’d always been obsessed with cleanliness-hated clutter, hated chaos, hated… mess.
I still remember the first year of our bond. I was trying to make stew. He walked in, wrinkled his nose, and muttered, “Is this place doubling as a landfill?”
But when my younger sister, Lexie said she liked his cooking? He enrolled in a culinary course taught by the best chef in the Packlands. For her. Always for her.
“Didn’t you say the patrols were quiet today?” He asked, placing a steaming bowl in front of me. “Why are you home so late?”
Even now, dressed in an apron, Darius Nightbane- the Alpha of Nightbane Pack- looked like he ruled empires with a single growl. That square jaw, those storm-gray eyes, the dark energy that clung to him like a second skin.
The Goddess helped me. He was magnetic. But I’d long since stopped letting that illusion fool
I smoothed over my expression. “The new recruits arrived early. I was finalizing their lunar transition briefs.”
He didn’t ask questions. Never did. To him, I was useful, an extension of the pack, not a partner. Not a mate. Not a wife.
“Alright,” he said. “Dinner’s ready. Come eat.”
I sat. He placed a slice of bitter moonroot on my plate. “I remember you like this,” he said with a rare smile. “Made it just for you.”
My throat tightened. A dull, familiar ache pulsed in my chest.
Lexie liked Moonroot.
I was allergic to it.
Three years. We’ve been bonded for three long years. And he still didn’t know. Or worse-he never bothered to remember.
If he’d looked beyond my body-beyond the markless bond we shared-he’d have known I couldn’t eat this without my wolf getting sick. But no. Alpha Darius never looked at me.
Only through me.
“Avelyn? Why aren’t you eating?” he asked, frowning.
I gently pushed the dish away and reached into my bag. “Dinner can wait. There are two agreements I need you to sign.”
His expression darkened. “You know I don’t discuss pack business over meals.”
“I know that… Only this is not pack business… I-it’s personal,” I said simply.
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Just as he reached for the papers, his phone buzzed.
He tried to hide it, but too late, I had already seen the name.
Lexie Moonveil.
་་
He stood abruptly, knocking his wine glass off the table. It shattered into sharp pieces. One shard nicked my finger.
Blood dripped onto the stone tiles-quiet, unnoticed.
He didn’t look back. He stepped onto the balcony and answered the call.
I sat there, bleeding, alone, while he spoke softly to the woman who once left him for a foreign Alpha… The same woman he took back with open arms when she returned.
Fifteen minutes later, he walked back in, grabbed his coat, and headed for the door.
“I’ve got something tonight. I won’t be home for dinner.”
“You haven’t signed the papers,” I said, still calm.
He sighed, irritated.
Like I was the one being difficult.
With a flick of his wrist, he scribbled his name across both papers-one rejecting our bond before the Pack council, the other dissolving my ties to the Nightshade Pack as their Luna.
“There. Happy? Can I go now?”
I looked down at his signature. Cold. Final.
“Yes,” I said softly. “You can go.”
And he did.
Without a glance at my hand, it was still bleeding. Without asking what those papers were.
Without a word of hesitation.
As the door closed behind him, a bitter laugh slipped from my lips.
He didn’t even know what he signed.
Divorce. Rejection. Freedom.
I watched the blood dry on my fingertips and let the silence swallow me.
He’d always loved Lexie. The golden girl. My younger sister. The real daughter of our parents. Twenty-five years ago, my mother, Myra Moonveil, and a Beta nanny gave birth in the same hospital. A mix-up switched the infants. I-Avelyn Moonveil-was the true-born daughter of the Moonveil Pack. But I was raised among servants, while Lexie was draped in silks and praised like royalty.
The truth came out five years later. And still, my parents refused to cast her out.
“Avelyn,” Myra Black, my mother, once told me, “hearts are made of flesh. We raised Lexie as our own. Let the world think she’s the heiress. Don’t take that from her.”
So I stayed hidden. An unwanted truth. The secret Luna.
While Lexie was always seen., I was always necessary.
When she fled to Paris chasing some omega-born aristocrat, the Moonveil Pack asked me to
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take her place. Marry Darius Nightbane in her stead. A political union. A placeholder Luna of the Nightshade Pack.
Alpha Darius agreed-heartbroken and indifferent. And I… I was naive. I thought I could earn him Thought I could make him love me.
Then she came back.
And he betrayed me with her in the most humiliating way-leaking videos and images of thei intimacy to the High Council. A calculated scandal.
I saw the footage. I heard his voice when he said-
“Avelyn never did anything wrong, but if I just ask for a divorce, neither family will accept it. W need to ruin her reputation so our parents can’t argue.”
And I heard Lexie… She asked, “Did you ever love her?”
His answer?
“She’s just a stand-in. I married her to shut everyone up.”
I should have shifted then. Should have torn the Nightbane down to ash. But I didn’t.
Instead, I pulled out the small leather-bound notebook I’d kept hidden since our wedding night.
99 chances, I had written. If I’m disappointed 99 times, I will leave.
Tonight was number ninety-nine.
I walked to the safe and placed three things into a carved obsidian box, my wedding band, my Luna pendant, and the sealed rejection rune, a bond severance etched in my own blood.
My last anniversary gift.
He wouldn’t open it.
But when he did… he’d understand what he lost.
With trembling fingers, I picked up my phone. I hadn’t called him in three years, but I knew he’d
answer.
“Riven,” I whispered.
His voice on the other end was a growl of recognition. My mate. The one I should have chosen.
“My divorce cooling-off period ends in one month,” I said. “Come for me. Then.”
Outside, the wind howled. Inside, my wolf finally stirred, her eyes glowing in the dark reflection of the window.
Chapter 1
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