"The bond is one-sided!" I shouted, and my wolf surged forward, lending her voice to mine. My eyes flashed amber, my own Alpha blood dormant for so long rising to meet his challenge. "You can't demand loyalty you never gave! You can't claim a bond you never honored! I gave you everything, and you gave me nothing but scraps and second place to a woman you actually wanted!"
"That's not" Dominic started, but Kael cut him off.
"I think you should leave, Steele." His voice was quiet, but power thrummed beneath it. An Alpha protecting his pack. "Elara has made her position clear. You have no claim here."
"She's my mate." Dominic's eyes locked on Kael with open hostility. "She bears my mark. She"
"She bears a mark you never honored," Kael said, moving to stand beside me. Not in front of me beside me. An equal, not a protector. "A bond you broke long before she walked away. You want to talk about pack law? Fine. Let's talk about Luna rights. The right to be cherished. The right to be respected. The right to leave an Alpha who's violated the mate bond through neglect and public disrespect."
"You don't know what you're talking about"
"Don't I?" Kael's smile was all teeth. "I know Elara spent three years trying to be enough for you. I know she attended every pack function alone because you couldn't be bothered to show up. I know your mother verbally abused her at every opportunity while you stood by and did nothing. I know you paraded your relationship with Vivian in front of the entire region while your wife pretended not to notice."
He stepped forward, and the temperature in the room seemed to drop ten degrees. "And I know that if you had a single shred of love for her, you would have never let her get to the point where leaving was better than staying. So don't come into my territory demanding rights you never respected in the first place."
Dominic's hands clenched into fists. His wolf was right at the surface now, his eyes fully amber, his Alpha dominance crashing through the room like a tidal wave.
Kael didn't even flinch.
"You want her." Dominic's voice was flat, dangerous. "That's what this is really about, isn't it, Thorne? You're using pack law as an excuse to steal another Alpha's mate."
"I'm not stealing anyone," Kael said calmly.
"Elara chose to leave you. She chose to come here. She chose sanctuary under my protection. If you have a problem with her choices, take it up with her. But know this" His voice dropped to something lethal. "If you try to force her, if you try to manipulate her, if you do anything to harm her, I will consider it an act of war. And Dominic?" He smiled. "You really don't want to go to war with me."
The threat hung in the air, visceral and real.
Dominic's eyes cut to me, and I saw something I'd never seen before in three years of marriage.
Fear.
Not of Kael. Of me. Of the fact that I'd actually left, that I'd meant it, that I wasn't coming back no matter how hard he pushed.
"You'll regret this," he said quietly, and I couldn't tell if it was a threat or a prediction.
"When you're alone in some backwater pack with no status, no power, no protection you'll remember what you gave up."
"What I gave up?" I laughed again, this time with genuine amusement. "Dominic, I gave up nothing but pain. I traded invisible for seen. Ignored for valued. A husband who couldn't stand to touch me for" I caught myself, but not before everyone in the room saw where that sentence was going.
Dominic's eyes widened. Then narrowed. "For what, Elara? For him?" He jerked his chin toward Kael. "You've known him for what, two days? And you're already"
"Careful," Kael warned, his voice dropping to a growl. "Very careful how you finish that sentence."
"She's my wife!" Dominic roared, his control finally snapping. "My mate! Mine!"
"I WAS NEVER YOURS!" I screamed back, and the windows rattled with the force of my Alpha voice. Power I didn't even know I had surged through me, my father's bloodline finally waking up after years of being suppressed by Dominic's dominance. "You made sure of that every single day! You wanted Vivian? Fine! Take her! Marry her! Make her your perfect Luna! But let me go!"
Silence crashed through the room.
Dominic stared at me like he'd never seen me before. Like the docile, eager-to-please Elara had been replaced by someone he didn't recognize.
"Sign the papers," I said quietly, all the fight draining out of me. "Please. If you ever had any feeling for me at all, any respect, any shred of care just let me go. Let me have this one thing. My freedom."
Something flickered across his face. Regret, maybe. Or just wounded pride.
"Fine," he said finally, each word like ground glass. "You want your freedom? You have it. But don't come crawling back when you realize what you threw away."
He turned on his heel and stalked toward the door, Beta Marcus scrambling to follow. Vivian paused, her eyes meeting mine with something that might have been respect.
"For what it's worth," she said quietly, "you deserved better than what he gave you."
Then she was gone too, following Dominic out into the sunlight.
The doors closed behind them, and the tension in the room finally broke. Pack members started murmuring, Maya rushed forward to hug me, and I just… stood there.
Numb. Shaking. Free.
"You did it," Maya whispered fiercely. "You stood up to him. You were magnificent."
"I don't feel magnificent," I admitted. "I feel like I'm going to throw up."
Kael was suddenly there, his hand on my elbow, steadying me. "You need to sit down. You just went head-to-head with one of the strongest Alphas in the region. Your adrenaline's crashing."
He guided me to a chair, and I collapsed into it, my legs suddenly unable to hold me. My hands were shaking, my breath coming in short gasps.
"Breathe," Kael murmured, crouching in front of me. "In through your nose, out through your mouth. You're okay. You're safe."
I focused on his voice, on his blue eyes anchoring me, and slowly the panic receded.
"He's really going to sign them," I whispered. "He's really letting me go."
"Yes."
"I thought… I thought he'd fight harder. I thought" My voice broke. "Why didn't he fight for me, Kael? If he cared at all, even a little, why was it so easy for him to let me go?"
Kael's expression softened. "Because he's a fool. Because he took you for granted and convinced himself you'd always be there. Because men like Dominic Steele don't understand the value of something until it's gone." He reached up, brushing a tear from my cheek. "But that's his loss, Elara. Not yours."
"Then why does it hurt so much?"
"Because you loved him. Even when he didn't deserve it, even when he broke you piece by piece, you loved him. And grief doesn't care about logic or fairness or who was right. It just hurts."
I let myself cry then, ugly tears that I'd been holding back since the moment I'd walked out of Dominic's office. Maya held me from one side, Kael stayed crouched in front of me, and I finally let myself mourn the death of a marriage that had been dead for years.