Chapter 2

The three of us stood frozen in the doorway of what had once been my sanctuary, the air thick with unspoken truths and fresh betrayal. My phone felt heavy in my pocket, still recording every word, every breath, every damning piece of evidence.

Kade stepped further into the room, his presence filling the space like a storm cloud. "You shouldn't have come here, Wren."

"To my own home?" The words came out sharper than I intended, but I was past caring about appearances. "To the room that belonged to my grandmother for sixty years?"

Selene shifted against the doorframe, her hand making slow, protective circles over her rounded belly. The moonstone pendant caught the light again, and I had to force myself not to stare at it. Not to remember the night Kade had placed it around my neck with trembling fingers, promising me forever.

"This is going to be the nursery," she said softly, her voice carrying that same honey-sweet tone that made my skin crawl. "Kade thought it would be perfect. All that eastern light in the mornings."

I turned to face my husband—if I could still call him that. "When did you start planning this, Kade? Before I lost our baby, or after?"

Something flickered in his amber eyes. A shadow of guilt, maybe, or just annoyance at being questioned. But he didn't answer, and that silence told me everything I needed to know.

The sound of heels clicking on hardwood announced Marta's arrival before she appeared in the doorway. She took in the scene with the calculating gaze of a woman who'd orchestrated far more complex situations than this one.

"Wren," she said, her voice carrying the authority of someone who'd never been denied anything in her life. "You should be gracious about this. This house needs a Luna who can actually fulfill her duties."

The casual cruelty of it hit me like a physical blow. I'd spent three weeks blaming my body, my wolf, my own inadequacy for the miscarriage. Now I realized they'd all been blaming me too.

"Marta," I said, surprised by how steady my voice sounded. "I didn't realize you were part of the decorating committee."

Her laugh was sharp as broken glass. "Darling, who do you think paid for all this? The Ashford account, of course. Your money, but our decisions. That's how it works when you can't produce an heir."

Selene pushed herself away from the doorframe, moving deeper into the room with the easy confidence of someone who belonged there. She ran her fingers along the crib's railing, and I noticed her nails were perfectly manicured—soft pink, like the walls she'd chosen for my grandmother's room.

"I didn't want it to happen this way," she said, not looking at me. "I never wanted to hurt you, Wren. But your body... your wolf already knows, doesn't she? She's been silent for weeks now."

The observation hit its mark with surgical precision. My wolf had indeed gone quiet after the miscarriage, retreating so far into the depths of my consciousness that sometimes I wondered if she'd abandoned me entirely.

"A Luna without her wolf is just a woman playing dress-up," Selene continued, her voice gentle but relentless. "The pack needs strength. They need certainty. They need to know their future is secure."

Kade moved to stand beside her, his hand coming to rest on the small of her back in a gesture so intimate, so protective, that it felt like watching him touch another version of myself. The version he'd wanted me to be.

"She's carrying my heir, Wren," he said, his voice flat and matter-of-fact. "You couldn't. That's not cruelty—that's nature."

The words hit me like a dull blade, sawing rather than cutting clean. I stood there in the center of the room that had been stripped of everything that made it mine, surrounded by evidence of their careful planning, their methodical replacement of me.

But I didn't cry. I didn't scream. I didn't give them the satisfaction of seeing me break.

Instead, I laughed.

The sound surprised all of us, echoing off the pink walls like something wild and uncontained. Kade actually took a step back, his eyes narrowing as if he couldn't quite place the woman standing before him.

"You're absolutely right, Selene," I said, my voice carrying a lightness that felt foreign on my tongue. "I don't deserve this position. How foolish of me to think otherwise."

I reached behind my neck, my fingers finding the clasp of the silver chain that marked me as Luna of the Volkov pack. The weight of it had become so familiar over the past two years that I'd forgotten it was there. Now it felt like a collar I was finally allowed to remove.

The chain pooled in my palm like liquid moonlight, the Luna's mark catching the afternoon sun streaming through the nursery windows. I walked to the crib—that perfect, expensive symbol of everything I couldn't give them—and draped the chain over the railing.

"There," I said, stepping back. "Now it's official."

Kade's relief was palpable, radiating off him like heat. He'd been afraid—not of my tears, but of my fight. Afraid I might make this difficult, messy, public. The realization should have hurt more than it did.

"I'll be gone by tomorrow," I continued, moving toward the door with my shoulders straight and my chin high. "I assume you'll want to make the transition as smooth as possible."

Marta smiled, the expression sharp enough to cut glass. "How mature of you, dear. I always knew you had more sense than most of your generation."

I paused in the doorway, turning back to look at the three of them standing in what had once been my grandmother's sanctuary. Kade with his hand still protective on Selene's back. Marta with her satisfied smirk. Selene with her glowing skin and her rounded belly and my grandmother's moonstone pendant resting against her throat.

"Just one question," I said, my voice carrying across the pink-painted space. "When the pack finds out about this arrangement, will you tell them it was mutual? Or will you let them think I abandoned my duties?"

Kade's jaw tightened. "The pack doesn't need to know the details."

"Of course not," I agreed. "Details can be so inconvenient."

I walked away then, leaving them to their perfect nursery and their perfect plan and their perfect future heir. But as I moved down the hallway toward my bedroom, I could feel Selene's eyes following me, and I wondered if she was beginning to realize that removing a Luna wasn't quite as simple as redecorating her room.

I locked my bedroom door behind me and leaned against it, finally allowing myself to breathe. The recording on my phone had captured everything—Kade's casual cruelty, Marta's admission about the money, Selene's calculated manipulation. But evidence was only useful if you had somewhere to take it.

I didn't go to my closet to pack. Instead, I walked straight to the fireplace, to the portrait of my grandmother that had watched over this room for decades. Eleanor Ashford had been a formidable woman, the kind of Luna who commanded respect rather than demanding it.

I reached up and turned the ornate frame, feeling for the hidden mechanism she'd shown me when I was twelve years old. The soft click echoed in the quiet room, and the portrait swung aside to reveal the wall safe behind it.

The combination was my grandmother's mating date—numbers I'd memorized long before I understood their significance. The safe opened with a whisper, revealing the documents that made the Ashford name more than just a memory.

At the bottom of the stack, wrapped in oiled leather, lay the blood-oath scroll that bound the Volkov and Ashford packs together. The document that made Kade's claim to alpha status legitimate. The paper that, without my signature and my bloodline's consent, rendered him nothing more than a rogue with delusions of grandeur.

I slipped the scroll into the hidden compartment of my leather jacket, feeling its weight settle against my ribs like a secret heartbeat. Then I closed the safe, returned the portrait to its proper position, and walked toward the door.

It was time to leave the Ashford ancestral home. But I wasn't leaving empty-handed.