Chapter 1

The news hit me like a physical blow, knocking the breath from my lungs as I sat in the pack house kitchen, my hands instinctively moving to cradle my swollen belly. Alpha Barnes of the Crescent Pack was dead.

James stood frozen in the doorway, the messenger's words still hanging in the air between us. I watched his face transform—the color draining from his cheeks, his jaw clenching so tight I could hear his teeth grinding. His Alpha aura, usually a steady presence I'd grown accustomed to, flickered like a candle in the wind.

"James?" My voice came out smaller than I intended, barely a whisper. Our mind-link, already weakened over the past few months, felt like trying to shout across a vast canyon. I reached for him through the bond, but met only cold emptiness.

He didn't look at me. Couldn't, it seemed. "I have to go," he said, his voice hollow. "The funeral—I need to be there."

"We need to be there," I corrected gently, struggling to rise from my chair. At seven months pregnant, every movement required careful planning. "I should come with you. Show our respects to the Crescent Pack."

"No." The word cracked like a whip, sharp and final. His eyes finally met mine, and what I saw there made my wolf, Lyra, whimper in distress. Panic. Guilt. Something else I couldn't name but that made my stomach churn. "You're too far along. The journey would be too much."

But it wasn't concern for my condition that made his hands shake as he reached for his keys. It was something else entirely—something that made our already fragile bond feel like spider silk in a storm.

Hours passed after he left. I paced the pack house, my wolf restless and anxious, sensing what my human mind refused to acknowledge. The other pack members gave me sympathetic looks, assuming my distress was simply pregnancy hormones. But Lyra knew better. She could feel it—the way our mate bond stretched thin, threatening to snap entirely.

When I couldn't stand it anymore, I made a decision that would change everything.

The drive to the Crescent Pack cemetery felt endless, my hands gripping the steering wheel as another wave of nausea rolled through me. Not morning sickness this time—something deeper, more primal. My wolf was in agony, clawing at my chest as if trying to escape.

I found them at the far edge of the cemetery, beneath an ancient oak whose branches seemed to weep with the gray afternoon light. James knelt on the grass beside a fresh grave, his powerful frame somehow diminished, vulnerable in a way I'd never seen.

And there, collapsed against his chest, was Kennedy Barnes.

My breath caught in my throat. I'd seen her before, of course—at pack gatherings, formal events. The daughter of Alpha Barnes, beautiful in that ethereal way that made other she-wolves feel clumsy and plain. But I'd never seen her like this, broken and sobbing, her fingers twisted in James's shirt as if he were her lifeline.

What destroyed me wasn't her grief. It was his response to it.

James's Alpha aura, that commanding presence that could make entire rooms fall silent, had softened to something I'd never experienced. Tender. Protective. Devoted. His large hands moved through her dark hair with a gentleness that made my chest ache, his voice a low murmur of comfort that I couldn't quite hear but felt in my bones.

"Shh, Kenny. I'm here. I've got you."

Kenny. The nickname hit me like a physical blow. In three years of marriage, James had never spoken to me with such raw tenderness. Never held me like I was something precious that might shatter. Never looked at me the way he was looking at her now—like she was his entire world.

My wolf howled in anguish, the sound trapped in my throat as I watched my mate comfort another woman with a devotion I'd spent years believing was mine by right.

Then the wind shifted, carrying my scent directly to them.

James's head snapped up, his eyes meeting mine across the cemetery grounds. The transformation was instant and devastating—the tender devotion vanishing, replaced by guilt so stark it made him look like a stranger. Kennedy followed his gaze, her tear-stained face turning toward me with something that might have been defiance.

"Sylvia." My name fell from his lips like a confession, heavy with shame and something that sounded almost like regret. He didn't move away from Kennedy, didn't release his protective hold on her. If anything, his arms tightened around her, as if I were the threat.

I stood there, seven months pregnant with his child, watching my mate choose another woman right in front of me. The mate bond, already weakened, felt like it was dissolving entirely, leaving nothing but raw, bleeding emptiness where love should have been.

"We need to talk," I managed, my voice surprisingly steady despite the way my world was crumbling around me.

James finally stood, helping Kennedy to her feet with careful hands. When he looked at me again, I saw the truth written in his eyes—the truth I'd been too blind, too hopeful, too desperate to see.

This was never really mine. He was never really mine.