The words echoed in the corridor like poison dripping from stone—She'll never satisfy you—and the silence that followed was sharper than any blade.
My chest constricted until each breath felt like swallowing glass. Rage and humiliation tangled inside me, coiling tighter until I thought it might strangle me. The mate bond screamed in my chest, carrying his emotions like acid through my veins—relief, desire, satisfaction at being away from me and in her arms.
Before rational thought could stop me, I was moving. No longer a shadow lurking in doorways, no longer the meek little Luna hiding behind walls. I stepped into the golden circle of firelight, bare feet silent on stone.
Serenya's hand still rested on Jasper's chest, her honey-blonde curls spilling over her shoulder. Those emerald eyes—so like our mother's, yet filled with cruelty our mother had never possessed—snapped to me first. I saw the moment she registered my presence, saw her lips curve in a smile that belonged on a predator cornering wounded prey.
"Well, well," she purred, not bothering to step away from my husband. "Our wandering Luna graces us with her presence. How delightfully unexpected."
The mockery in her tone was a physical blow, but it was nothing compared to what came next. Jasper's storm-gray eyes found mine, and in them I saw not surprise, not guilt, not even basic shame. Just cold calculation, as if he were weighing the inconvenience of my discovery against the pleasure of her touch.
He didn't push her away.
Didn't step back.
Didn't even have the courtesy to look embarrassed at being caught in another woman's arms minutes after claiming his mate.
Heat scalded my cheeks, but this time it wasn't shame—it was fury, pure and bright, burning away the last bits of the naive girl who'd walked down that aisle hoping for dignity.
"Get your hands off him." My voice cracked, but I forced the words out anyway, each one sharp enough to cut.
Serenya's laugh was like silver bells dipped in poison. "Oh, sweet sister. Surely you don't believe that pretty vows spoken before witnesses have any power over the heart?" Her fingers trailed upward, mapping the contours of Jasper's chest like she owned him. "He came to me because he wanted to. Because you could never make him forget his duty long enough to feel truly alive."
The mate bond pulsed with his emotions, and I nearly doubled over from the force of them. Desire. Longing. The kind of desperate, consuming need I'd dreamed of inspiring, only to discover he felt it for someone else entirely.
My blood roared in my ears as I turned on Jasper, every fiber of my being trembling with the effort of holding myself upright. Through our connection, I could feel his irritation at being discovered, his resentment at having his private moment interrupted by his inconvenient wife.
"Say something," I demanded, my voice steadier than I had any right to expect. "Deny it. Tell me this isn't what it looks like."
His jaw worked, muscles jumping beneath his skin as if he were physically biting back words. When he finally spoke, his voice was harsh as steel scraping stone.
"Enough."
The single word cracked between us like a whip, sharp enough to make even Serenya fall momentarily silent, though her triumphant smirk never wavered.
I stepped closer, bare feet whispering against the cold stone. My hands shook—with rage, with humiliation, with the desperate need to make him see me as something more than an obligation—but I held his gaze like my life depended on it.
"I am your mate," I said, each word carefully carved from the shattered remains of my dignity. "Your Luna. Chosen by Selene herself to stand at your side. And you let her touch you as if I were nothing. As if our bond meant nothing."
For the first time since I'd entered this nightmare scene, his eyes flared with genuine emotion. But it wasn't regret or shame.
It was anger. Cold, furious rage directed entirely at me.
"You are weak, Araya." The words struck like physical blows, each one designed to find the softest, most vulnerable parts of my soul. "Wolf-less. Fragile. A burden I accepted because the pack elders demanded it, not because you had anything of value to offer."
The mate bond carried the full weight of his contempt, and I felt something vital shatter inside my chest. Not just my heart—something deeper. The part of me that had still believed, despite everything, that he might come to care for me eventually.
"Jasper—" My voice splintered like ice cracking.
"You should be grateful," he continued, stepping forward now, using his height and the crushing weight of his Alpha presence to loom over me. The scent of him—storm and steel and the lingering perfume of my sister's skin—filled my lungs until I could barely breathe. "Grateful I bothered with the ceremony at all. Grateful I gave you my name. Grateful I allowed you into my bed, even for a moment."
Power rolled off him in waves, the kind of crushing dominance that could bring entire packs to their knees. My wolf-less body had no defense against it, no inherent strength to draw upon. Every instinct I possessed screamed at me to bow my head, to submit, to beg his forgiveness for daring to question my betters.
Instead, I lifted my chin and met his furious gaze.
"Grateful?" The word tasted like ashes, but I forced it out with all the steel I could muster. "You speak of gratitude as though I begged for this marriage. As though I threw myself at your feet and pleaded for the honor of your bed."
His lips pulled back in something that was more snarl than smile, revealing teeth that looked sharp enough to tear flesh. Through the bond, I felt his wolf stirring—proud and ruthless, radiating the kind of predatory interest that made prey animals flee.
"Fate bound us," I continued, my voice gaining strength. "Not my choice. Not yours. The threads that tie our souls together were woven by forces older than either of us, and yet you treat me like a stain upon your honor. Like something dirty you stepped in and can't scrape off your boots."
The air seemed to thicken with his rage, power lashing through the corridor like invisible claws. My body trembled under the assault, but I held my ground even as my knees threatened to buckle.
"You dare raise your voice to me?" His words were barely human now, more growl than speech. "You dare question my decisions? Challenge my authority in my own keep?"
Behind him, Serenya watched our confrontation with fascinated delight. Her green eyes glittered with malicious joy, and I realized with sick certainty that this was exactly what she'd wanted. Not just to steal my husband's affections, but to watch me break completely under the weight of his rejection.
I forced myself not to flinch as Jasper leaned down, bringing his face level with mine. His breath scorched my skin, carrying the scent of wine and fury and something darker that spoke of violence barely leashed.
"I dare," I whispered, the words scraping my throat raw, "because you humiliated me. Because you dishonor our bond with her." My gaze flicked to Serenya, who practically glowed with satisfaction. "If you cannot keep the vows you spoke before Selene herself, then you are the one who should bow in shame."
The silence that followed was deafening. Through the mate bond, I felt his shock at my defiance, his disbelief that his meek little wife had grown teeth. But beneath that, darker and more dangerous, I felt something else.
Respect. Grudging, unwilling, but real.
It lasted exactly three heartbeats before the fury returned, ten times stronger.
Power exploded outward from him like a shockwave, slamming into me with enough force to drive me back a step. The very stones of Ironfang Keep seemed to tremble under the weight of his dominance, and somewhere in the distance I heard guards stirring, responding to their Alpha's distress.
"If you cause trouble for me," he snarled, his voice dropping to a register that bypassed my ears entirely and spoke directly to the most primal parts of my brain, "if you dare humiliate me before the pack, I will end this bond myself."
My breath hitched as the true meaning sank in. Rejection. Public, brutal, absolute. The kind of shame that would strip away not just my title and position, but my very identity. I would become nothing—less than nothing. A cautionary tale whispered around pack fires about what happened to females who forgot their place.
"Do you understand me, Araya?" His storm-gray eyes burned with the kind of cold fire that froze rather than warmed. "I will reject you. Publicly. Utterly. And when I do, not even the gods themselves will pity what's left of you."
The threat hung in the air between us like a blade poised to fall. Through the mate bond, I felt his absolute certainty that this would be enough to break me completely, to send me scurrying back to our marriage bed with my tail between my legs.
And perhaps, if I'd still been the girl who'd walked down that aisle hours ago, it would have been.
But that girl was dead. Murdered by cold hands and colder words, by the sight of my husband's passion reserved for someone else, by the crushing realization that I would never be enough.
In her place stood someone harder. Someone who had already lost everything that mattered and therefore had nothing left to fear.
I looked up at this male who wore my husband's face, this Alpha who commanded absolute obedience from everyone around him, and felt the first stirrings of something that might—if I was very lucky—eventually grow into hatred.
"I understand perfectly," I said, my voice steady as stone. "The question is—do you understand me?"
And in that moment, as his eyes widened with the first flicker of uncertainty I'd ever seen in them, I realized something that would have terrified me hours earlier.
I was no longer afraid of him.