Chapter 2

I awoke to a splitting headache and the sound of drawers opening and closing. My eyes fluttered open to find myself in our bedroom—our massive master suite with its vaulted ceilings and floor-to-ceiling windows that Alexander had once proudly called "fitting for an Alpha's mate." The morning light streamed in, harsh and unforgiving, illuminating my husband methodically folding designer shirts into an expensive leather suitcase.

For a moment, I watched him silently, memories of last night's humiliation washing over me in sickening waves. The scent-marked cufflinks. Lilith's cruel words in the bathroom. The crushing weight of Alexander's Alpha dominance forcing me to my knees before collapsing entirely.

"You're awake," Alexander noted without turning to look at me. His voice was detached, clinical—the voice he used with subordinates who had disappointed him.

I pushed myself up against the headboard, ignoring the pounding in my temples. "What are you doing?"

"Packing." He continued folding a charcoal suit with precise movements. "I'll be staying at the downtown penthouse for a while."

The words hung in the air between us, heavy with implication. I'd known this moment was coming since I'd seen him with Lilith last night, but the reality of it still felt like a physical blow.

"Why?" I asked, though I already knew the answer.

Alexander finally turned to face me, his expression carefully neutral. "Lilith is pregnant."

Two words. Just two simple words that shattered what remained of my world.

"I see." My voice sounded strange to my own ears—hollow, distant.

"It's a temporary separation," he continued, as if discussing a minor business inconvenience. "To handle family matters appropriately."

Family matters. As if I wasn't family. As if three years of marriage meant nothing.

"When did you plan to tell me about her?" I asked, surprised by the steadiness in my voice when everything inside me was crumbling.

Alexander closed the suitcase with a decisive click. "This isn't a conversation I care to have right now, Ava. The situation is what it is."

"The situation," I repeated, a bitter laugh escaping my lips. "That's what you call betraying your wife? A situation?"

A flash of annoyance crossed his face. "Don't be dramatic. You know as well as I do that our marriage was always an arrangement. The Silver Moon family needs an heir—something you've failed to provide."

Each word was a knife, precisely aimed at my deepest insecurities. My hand instinctively moved to my stomach, remembering the child I'd lost last year—our child. The miscarriage that Alexander had dismissed as "unfortunate but not unexpected given your Beta lineage."

"I lost our baby," I whispered. "I didn't fail."

"The result is the same," he replied coldly, checking his watch. "I have meetings all day. We'll discuss the details of our arrangement later."

He lifted his suitcase and headed for the door without another glance in my direction. No goodbye. No apology. Nothing.

As the door closed behind him, I sat frozen in our bed—no, his bed now—trying to process how quickly my life had unraveled. The silence of the room pressed in around me, broken only by the ticking of the antique clock on the mantel, counting down seconds of a life that no longer existed.

I was still sitting there, staring at nothing, when the bedroom door swung open again without a knock. Eleanora Silver Moon, Alexander's mother, swept in like a winter storm—elegant, cold, and devastating.

She surveyed me with critical eyes, taking in my disheveled appearance with obvious distaste. "Still in bed at this hour? I suppose I shouldn't be surprised."

I pulled the silk sheets higher, suddenly conscious of my vulnerability. "Eleanora. I didn't expect you."

"Clearly." She moved to the windows and threw the curtains wider, flooding the room with even more light. "The board meeting has been moved forward. Alexander thought you should be informed."

The board meeting. The quarterly gathering of Silver Moon Corporation's major shareholders—a meeting I was technically entitled to attend as Luna but had always been subtly discouraged from participating in.

"When?" I asked.

"Tomorrow." Eleanora turned to face me, her silver hair perfectly coiffed, her posture regal. At sixty, she was still striking, with the same piercing blue eyes as her son. "Though I don't see why you'd bother attending."

I forced myself to meet her gaze. "I'm still Luna of this pack."

A cold smile curved her lips. "For now."

The threat in those two words was unmistakable.

"What does that mean?" I asked, though dread was already pooling in my stomach.

Eleanora moved around the room with proprietary ease, running her finger along the dresser as if checking for dust. "After three years of failure to produce an heir, your position as Luna is under review."

"Under review," I repeated. "By whom?"

"The family council, of course." She picked up a framed photo of Alexander and me on our wedding day—both of us smiling for the cameras, neither of us truly happy—and set it face-down. "I'm sure you remember the marriage contract you signed. Section twelve, paragraph four specifically addresses the contingency of an unproductive union."

I remembered. The contract had been fifty pages of legal jargon that my father had insisted was "standard for marriages into Alpha families." I'd been twenty-two, naive, and desperate to please my parents by making a good match that would save our family from financial ruin.

"That clause requires five years of marriage before it can be invoked," I said, grasping at the one detail I remembered clearly.

Eleanora's smile widened, showing too many teeth. "Unless there are extenuating circumstances—such as evidence of genetic incompatibility or the presence of a more suitable mate who has proven fertility."

Lilith. Pregnant with what should have been my child.

"You can't do this," I said, but the words sounded weak even to my own ears.

"We already have." Eleanora moved toward the door, pausing with her hand on the knob. "The family clause will strip you of both your title and your company shares. I suggest you start considering your options. Your father's debts haven't magically disappeared, after all."

The mention of my father was the final twist of the knife. My parents had pushed for this marriage, desperate for the financial security it would bring after my father's business collapsed. Alexander had paid off their debts as a wedding gift to me—a gesture I'd once thought generous but now recognized as a calculated purchase.

"I'll see you at the board meeting, Eleanora," I said, summoning what dignity I could. "As is my right."

She gave me one last pitying look. "Do as you wish, Ava. It won't change the outcome."

The door closed behind her with a soft click that somehow sounded like a prison cell locking.

I sat motionless for several minutes, my mind racing through options that didn't exist. I had no money of my own—Alexander had insisted I didn't need to work. I had no home outside this mansion. And now, it seemed, I would soon have no position, no security, and no future.

My phone lit up on the nightstand—a message from my father asking when the next investment payment would arrive. He didn't know. No one in my family knew that my perfect Alpha husband had been having an affair, that he had impregnated another woman, that I was about to lose everything.

Something stirred inside me—that same strange feeling from last night, when Lilith had taunted me in the bathroom. A heat that didn't feel entirely like my familiar Beta wolf, something wilder and more dangerous.

I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirrored closet doors—pale, disheveled, eyes glowing with an unfamiliar light. For a second, I didn't recognize the woman staring back at me.

Then the glow faded, leaving only my reflection—a Beta wife about to be discarded, alone in a house that had never been a home.

But as I reached for my phone to call my father, I felt it again—that strange heat coursing through my veins, my body releasing a scent I'd never produced before. Something was happening to me, something beyond the betrayal and humiliation.

Something that frightened me far more than losing my place as Luna of the Silver Moon pack.