Chapter 1

The moonwine summit was supposed to last three days but I came home after one.

I’d spent the whole ride back with my trade scrolls pressed to my chest, rehearsing how I’d tell Damon: two eastern territories signed, a faster route through the mountain pass, a rival pack talked down on tariffs. The kind of numbers that could carry our estate for years. I wanted him to be proud of me. That was the part that shamed me most — that after two years of being treated like a guest in my own marriage, some stubborn piece of me still wanted my husband to look at me and see something worth keeping.

I pushed open the doors to our chambers.

“Damon, I’m—”

The words caught in my throat.

Through the archway, the firelight threw two shadows across the stone floor, tangled into one shape. Damon was on the velvet sofa with Mirella folded into his lap, his arm around her shoulders, his hand moving slowly through her hair. Her face was pressed to his chest. He was murmuring something I couldn’t hear.

Mirella was Evangeline’s younger sister — the dead Luna’s blood, the one person who still had an unchallenged claim on the man who was supposed to be mine.

I stepped back without thinking but my heel caught the iron stand by the door, and the vase on it went over — a half-second of nothing, then it hit the floor and broke into more pieces than something that size should.

Damon’s head moved up first. Then Mirella lifted hers off his chest, and for one second something in her eyes looked almost pleased before it smoothed away into distress.

“Nora.” Damon’s voice had no give in it at all.

“Oh — Luna Nora!” Mirella was on her feet, smoothing her skirt, a strand of hair tucked behind her ear like she’d rehearsed it. Her mouth trembled just enough. “You’re back early. I didn’t know.”

She always knew. She kept our schedule better than I did.

“Please don’t be upset.” Her voice cracked right on cue. “I had a dream about Evangeline again. I dreamed she was calling for me. I miss her so much.” She turned her wet eyes on Damon. “Alpha Damon was only helping me through it.”

I knew this script by now. Evangeline’s name was the one thing Mirella could say that made her untouchable — the grieving little sister when I objected, the dead Luna’s blood when she wanted an excuse to be exactly where she shouldn’t be. And Damon fell for it every time, or wanted to. Scenes like this had become ordinary in the home that was supposed to be mine.

“Damon.” I made myself steady. “Can we talk? Alone. In the study.”

“Whatever you have to say, you can say here.” He settled back into the sofa like the conversation was already over. “Mirella is family. We don’t keep secrets.”

Family. The word had covered for everything for two years now — every night she stayed too late, every excuse that put her exactly where a wife should stand.

“It isn’t appropriate for her to be in our private rooms at this hour,” I said. “Especially not wrapped around you like that.”

The room went quiet. Mirella’s eyes widened like I’d struck her.

“She’s traumatized, Nora. She’s under my protection.”

“Protection doesn’t mean she gets to live inside our marriage. She uses her sister to manipulate you, Damon, and you let her.”

“Enough.” His Alpha voice rolled through the room and my wolf cowered under it before I could stop her. He stood, and the room felt smaller for it. “You’re accusing a grieving woman because you’re jealous.”

“Jealous?” My eyes burned

“I’m asking my husband to respect the boundaries of our marriage.”

“And I’m telling you there’s nothing here to be jealous of.” His eyes didn’t soften. “Evangeline was my first mate. Mirella is her sister. I won’t push her away because you’re insecure.”

Two years I’d been his second Luna. Two years trying to build something with a man whose heart was still buried with someone else. I had never once asked him to forget her. I’d only wanted room to exist in the present tense.

Instead I was always compared to a dead woman I could never compete with.

My eyes filled.

“You’re right,” I said, and the tears came before I could stop them. “I’m jealous of a dead woman. Because somehow she still has more of you than I ever will.”

Mirella stepped in before he could answer. “Please, don’t fight over me.” Her voice was gentle, almost angelic. “You must be exhausted from your journey. Let me make tea — it’ll help.”

She went to the kettle warming on the side table. Her hands were steady the whole time she poured, which is the detail I keep coming back to. She carried a cup to me with both hands.

“Please I never meant to come between you and the alpha.”

I looked at the cup. Then at her face, and the hair on my arms rose before I understood why.

Her fingers closed tighter on the kettle handle and her eyes flicked once to my bare wrist. Then it tipped, scalding water went across my skin — silver-laced, biting deeper than plain heat, fighting my wolf’s healing before it could even start. The cup hit the floor.

“Oh!” Mirella dropped the kettle and it cracked against the stone, water spreading toward her own feet. “My hands — I burned my hands!”

She staggered back clutching them to her chest. I was still staring at the welts rising across my forearm when Damon crossed the room — past me, to her.

“Mirella. Are you hurt?”

“I don’t know.” She trembled into him.

He lifted her like she weighed nothing. “Guards! Get the healer. Now.”

“Damon.” My arm was on fire. “My arm is burned.”

He glanced at me over her shoulder, and there was nothing in his face at all. “I heard you. You were standing right there — you should’ve been paying attention instead of crowding her. The healer will come when he’s done with Mirella.”

He didn’t move to help me. No servant, no guard. I stood in the wreckage of the kettle and watched my husband carry another woman out of the room without looking back, and understood, finally, exactly how much space I took up in my own home.

By morning the burn had settled into a dull ache. The rest of it hadn’t.

I sat at the window in my dressing room, looking out over the vineyards — silver-green rows running toward the hills, the same rows I’d spent years learning by name, by yield, by what each slope needed that the last one hadn’t. I’d helped drag Carter moonwine out of decline and into the region’s best export. None of it had bought me a single look from Damon last night.

The communication crystal on my desk lit with an unfamiliar silver pulse. Only senior Alphas had access to this channel.

A projection resolved above the desk: Alpha Ryker Solberg, of the Solberg territory. He had been quiet during the negotiations, speaking only when necessary and listened carefully to every territory representative. “Luna Nora. I trust you made it home safely.”

“I did.” I straightened up

“Thank you, Alpha Ryker.”His gaze moved briefly to the scrolls stacked on my desk.

“I read your trade proposal. Personally.” His expression didn’t change, which somehow made it land harder. “You found three weaknesses in the eastern routes my own advisors missed.”

I didn’t have an answer ready. It had been a long time since anyone handed me a compliment I didn’t have to fight for.

“I don’t make offers out of courtesy,” he said. “I want you at Solberg territory, as Master Cellarer. Full authority over production, trade, and vineyard expansion. Your own staff, your own budget.” A pause. “No one standing over your shoulder.”

I looked down at the bandage on my wrist.

“Why me?” I finally asked.

“Because you’re good at the work.” He said it like it needed no further explanation, which was somehow more convincing than if he had explained it.

“I need time to think.”

“Take it. Send word if you decide, and I’ll have the offer drawn up formally.” The projection began to fade. “Alpha Ryker—” He paused. “Thank you,” I said.

He inclined his head, and the light went out.

I sat with the silence for a long time. Yesterday I’d thought my life was falling apart. This morning, for the first time, I wondered if it was cracking open instead.

I didn’t know if I’d leave. I didn’t know what would be left of my marriage if I did, or if there was anything left to lose in the first place. But I knew I couldn’t do another year of this.

I touched the dead crystal, though Ryker was long gone.

“Tell me more about the position,” I said to the empty room, and looked out at the vineyards one last time.

Because the thought of leaving Damon didn’t feel like betrayal.

It felt like survival.