Isla's POV
My son is calling another woman Mommy.
The world tilts sideways. My vision blurs. The mate bond in my chest doesn't just hurt—it's shouting, like someone's taking a knife and carving out pieces of my soul. "Kieran." My voice comes out broken. "Baby, I'm your mother. I'm—"
"No!" He sinks his face deeper in Serena's neck. "You're the mean lady. Mommy told me you're mean."
Mean girl.
I carried him for nine months. Felt him kick inside me. Almost bled to death on a hospital table because my body tried to reject the pregnancy, but I fought to keep him alive. I sang to him every night even when Dante told me I was "coddling" him. I kissed his scraped knees and chased away his dreams and loved him with everything I had.
And he thinks I'm the mean lady.
"Isla, this isn't what it looks like." Dante's voice cuts through my shock. He's finally stepped away from Serena, adjusting his clothes like he's been caught doing chores instead of—instead of—
"Really?" My laugh sounds hysterical even to my own ears. "Because it looks like you're sleeping with your school friend while our daughter's birthday party happens without you. It looks like you've been playing house with my son and your woman. It looks like I've been the world's biggest fool for seven years."
"Don't be dramatic." Serena's voice drips with false sweetness. "Dante and I have been friends forever. What we do is none of your business."
"None of my business?" The anger feels good. Clean. Better than the crushing pain. "He's my mate. My husband. The father of my children."
"A title means nothing without love behind it." Serena strokes Kieran's hair, and my son—my baby—leans into her touch like it's normal. "Dante comes to me because you're not enough. You've never been enough. You're just a packless nobody who got lucky with a mate bond."
The words hit like silver bullets. Because isn't that what I've always feared? That I'm not good enough for him? That the Moon Goddess made a mistake picking me for an Alpha like Dante Blackthorn? "Serena, that's enough." Dante's command voice rumbles out, but it's too late. The poison is already spreading through my veins.
"How long?" I force myself to look at my husband. Really look at him. "How long have you been sleeping with her?"
"I'm not—" He stops. And that pause tells me everything.
"Six years." The number falls from my lips. "The bank statements. The property payments. They started six years ago. Right after Kieran was born."
Dante's face goes carefully blank. "Those payments are for pack protection. Serena handles private information that requires—"
"Stop lying!" The shout tears out of me. "Just stop! I almost died having your son, and you visited me twice in the hospital. Twice! I thought you were just cold, just broken, just raised wrong. But you weren't visiting me because you were too busy with her!"
"Mommy, you're being scary," Kieran whimpers, and the word Mommy—directed at Serena—breaks something basic inside me.
"You poisoned him against me." I stare at Serena, seeing her clearly for the first time. "You've been playing mother to my son while I thought... I thought he just didn't bond with me properly. I thought I was doing something wrong."
"You were." Serena's smile is wicked. "You were trying to keep something that was never yours. Dante and I were meant to be together. The Moon Goddess made a mistake with you. We're just fixing it."
"The Moon Goddess doesn't make mistakes." But my voice wavers. Because if She doesn't make mistakes, why did She give me a mate who can't love me? " Isla." Dante steps toward me, and I see something flash in his steel-gray eyes. Guilt? Regret? Or just anger that his affair is finally exposed? "Let's discuss this quietly. You're making a scene."
I'm making a scene.
I catch him cheating, find out my son has been brainwashed into loving his mistress, discover seven years of lies, and I'm making a scene.
Something inside me simply... stops.
The pain. The hope. The urgent need for Dante Blackthorn to finally, finally see me as something worth loving.
It all just... dies.
"No." The word comes out ice-cold. Calm. Dead. "We're done discussing anything."
"Don't be ridiculous." Dante's command voice rolls over me, that Alpha order that makes pack wolves follow without question. "You're my mate. My Luna. You will go home, and we will handle this sensibly."
The order hits me and... slides off.
Like water off glass. Like it has no power over me at all.
Dante's eyes widen. He tries again, putting more dominance into his voice. "Isla. Go. Home."
Nothing. I feel nothing.
For the first time in our seven-year marriage, my husband's Alpha order doesn't work on me. And based on his shocked look, this has never happened before.
"What—" He stumbles back. "How are you—"
"I'm leaving." I'm already turning away. "You want her? Have her. She can be Luna, mother to Kieran, everything I obviously failed at. I'm done."
"You can't just leave!" Serena's voice rises, losing its sweetness. "You're bound by the mate tie. You're tied to this pack. You have nowhere to go!"
"Watch me."
"Isla, wait." Dante grabs my arm, and the mate bond flares—but not with love or connection. With pain. Pure, burning pain that makes us both gasp. "What's happening?"
I look down at his hand on my arm. At the place where my husband is touching me for the first time with real feeling, even if that feeling is just panic.
"I think," I say softly, "the mate bond is dying. And I'm going to let it."
His face goes white. "You can't reject the link. It'll kill—"
"You?" I pull my arm free. "Good."
I walk away from the clearing. Away from the guy who never wanted me. Away from the kid who thinks I'm mean. Away from seven years of trying to be enough for a man who was never going to love me anyway.
Behind me, I hear Dante's wolf howl—a sound of pure suffering that would have broken my heart yesterday.
Today, I feel nothing.
I'm halfway through the forest when my wolf suddenly speaks in my mind for the first time in years: We were always strong enough to leave. We just had to stop hoping he'd give us a reason to stay.
My phone buzzes. A text from an unknown number: Isla Morven. It's time you learned who you really are. Come to Silver Moon City. Your grandmother is watching.
Grandmother? I don't have a mom.
But as I look at those words, something ancient stirs in my blood. Something that explains why Dante's Alpha orders don't work. Why I've always felt like I was playing small in a life too tiny to hold me.
I text back one word: When?
The answer is immediate: Now. Before he tries to stop you.
I look back toward the clearing one last time. I should get Lyra. Should pack our things. Should do this the right way.
But seven years of doing things the "right way" got me a cheating husband and a son who doesn't know me.
So I do the wrong thing.
I run.