Chapter 1

"Sign it."

Kane didn't even look at me when he slid the divorce agreement across the table.

His eyes were locked on the woman at the far end of the banquet hall. Lucia—a high-ranking she-wolf, his childhood sweetheart, the one the entire Bloodmoon Pack called the "true Luna."

And me? Eleanora. The nobody in the corner who hadn't even awakened her wolf.

"What are you waiting for?" Kane's voice cut like ice. "You've been sitting in that seat long enough."

Every pair of eyes in the hall turned to me. Hundreds of them.

Some mocking. Some pitying. Most wearing an expression that said, *About time.*

I looked down at the parchment. The words were simple: *Voluntary dissolution of the mate bond. Forfeiture of all rights as Luna. No further ties to the Bloodmoon Pack.*

My fingers were shaking.

Not from fear. From relief. One year of this contract marriage, and I was done.

I couldn't even eat a proper meal—the bastard-born ranked lower than the lowest wolves, and at every feast I picked at whatever scraps were left.

I couldn't sleep in peace—my room was a storage closet in the farthest corner of the keep, cold as an icebox in winter.

And every single day, I endured the pack's ridicule: *She doesn't even have a wolf. How dare she call herself the Alpha King's mate?*

But I'd never had a choice. My clan elder sold me to the Alpha King in exchange for a shipment of military supplies.

Kane never touched me. Never spoke to me. He married me only because pack law required the Alpha King to take a mate by the age of majority—and I happened to be the one woman cheap enough to trade like cargo.

"I'll sign."

I bit my fingertip and pressed a crimson blood seal onto the parchment.

Kane finally glanced my way. A slight frown creased his brow—he hadn't expected me to agree so easily.

"Remember," he said, rising to his full height and looking down at me, "from this day forward, you have nothing to do with me or the Bloodmoon Pack."

As the words left his mouth, something fragile inside my chest cracked apart.

The mating bond. Faint, barely there—but real.

Every wolf had one fated mate in a lifetime. Kane had been fighting the bond since day one. He refused to believe the Moon Goddess would pair him with someone so worthless.

Now he had severed it with his own hands.

"As you wish," I whispered.

I turned to leave—and caught a glimpse of Lucia curling her arm around his.

The hall erupted in applause and cheers.

No one looked at me.

No one knew the backlash of a severed mating bond was already tearing through my body.

They threw me out of the keep without even letting me grab a coat.

The November wind sliced across my face like a blade. I hugged my arms to my chest and trudged through the snow toward the border forest. There was an abandoned ranger's cabin out there—the only place left for me.

Behind me, the pack howled in celebration.

They were toasting Lucia's return. Toasting the fact that the "fake Luna" was finally gone.

I walked slowly.

Not because I was tired. Because something inside me was being ripped apart.

When a mating bond is forcibly severed, both sides suffer the backlash. They say the pain is like being flayed alive. But Kane seemed untouched—his power was strong enough to suppress it.

And me?

I was a wolfless nobody. Would the backlash kill me?

Maybe.

But dying out here was more dignified than dying in front of them.

The snow fell harder.

It took me two full hours to reach the cabin. The door was half-rotted, the roof leaked, and the only furniture was a dust-covered wooden cot.

I curled up on it, shivering.

Pain.

Blinding, crushing pain.

It felt like an invisible fist had clamped around my heart, wringing my organs inside out. I clenched my jaw and refused to make a sound.

No one was coming to save me.

No one cared whether a nobody lived or died.

My vision blurred. Through the haze, I heard a voice—gentle, ancient, as if it drifted down from the moon itself.

"Child, you have waited long enough."

*Who…?*

"Your inner wolf has been sleeping… waiting for the right moment."

*What inner wolf? I'm wolfless. I've never—*

"The moment is now."

Warmth surged from my heart and flooded every limb.

My body burned.

A shaft of moonlight pierced the broken roof and fell across me. Not silver—golden. Blazing, radiant gold.

I opened my eyes.

My pupils had turned silver.