Chapter 1Nine years into my mating, I finally discovered the truth my Alpha had buried.
He had given away our pup - the child I'd carried and nearly died birthing - to his first love to raise as her own.
By the time I found out, our boy was already seven years old.
And desperately needed to be registered under a guardian's name for enrollment in the pack school.
Kane came to me wearing what he probably thought was an apologetic expression, proposing we dissolve our bond. Temporarily. Just on paper.
"Look, switching the pups back then... it wasn't like I had a choice," he said. "Nicole couldn't carry. Her mate's family was making her life a living hell."
He reached for my hand.
"I swear on the Moon Goddess, babe - the second we get him enrolled, we reforge the bond. Like nothing ever happened."
I looked at my son - the pup who'd grown up calling another she-wolf "Mother" - staring at me with pure hatred burning in his young eyes.
Something inside me died in that moment.
Without a word, I nodded. We went to the Pack Hall and signed the severance papers.
While they were celebrating their new mating certificate, giddy as newly bonded wolves, I was boarding a one-way flight to the other side of the world.
This pack? This life?
I was done with all of it.
...
We'd just walked out of the Pack Hall - bond freshly dissolved - when Kane stopped mid-stride.
"So, uh..." He scratched the back of his neck. "When Nicole and I go back in there to complete the mating rites, you don't have to stick around if it's gonna be awkward. You can just take off."
He said it like he was doing me a favor.
"We're doing dinner tonight though. All of us. Pack family thing."
He paused, then actually had the nerve to add:
"You know that venison roast you do? Nicole and Dean are obsessed with it. And since it's both their birthdays today, maybe make a double batch? It'd really help smooth things over."
I just stared at him.
He wanted me - his rejected mate of literally thirty minutes - to cook a birthday celebration dinner for his new female and the pup she'd stolen from my arms.
I didn't have the fight left in me anymore.
"Yeah, sure. Do whatever. I'm out."
Relief washed over his face, like I'd just agreed to cover patrol shift or something.
I'd barely turned to leave when I heard them - little feet pounding across the gravel lot.
"Dad! Father! We're here!"
A small blur crashed straight into Kane's arms.
Dean. Seven years old.
"Does this mean you're gonna live with us now?"
The kid was practically vibrating with excitement.
"Can you both come to Pack Field Day? All the other pups have both parents there for the hunt."
Kane dropped to one knee, and his entire voice changed. Soft. Patient. Like warm honey.
My flight was in four hours, but I couldn't stop myself from looking back one more time.
At the boy I'd almost bled out delivering seven years ago.
Dean stood there gripping Kane's hand, a perfect miniature version of his father - same strong jawline, same Alpha bloodline features that made other pack members do double-takes as they walked past.
Then Nicole glided over in her fucking mating dress.
Not some over-the-top ceremonial gown, but a sleek, body-hugging number that screamed "I'm becoming Luna and I'm effortlessly untouchable about it."
That's when it clicked.
Kane wasn't wearing his usual casual flannel. He had on a custom-tailored ceremonial coat in the exact silver-gray to complement her dress.
They'd coordinated. Like actual fated mates.
He was looking at her now with this expression - somewhere between longing and relief, like he was finally getting something he'd been denied his whole life.
Dean grabbed Nicole's other hand and stood between them, his whole face lighting up as he swung their arms.
Picture-perfect pack family. Moon-blessed.
My mate. My pup.
And me, standing there like some pathetic rogue who'd wandered onto the wrong territory.
The pain wasn't clean or simple. It was the kind that burrowed into your chest and nested there, sharp and suffocating with nowhere to go. Even my wolf had gone silent days ago.
I turned to walk away, forcing my legs to move.
Then someone slammed into me from behind, and I went stumbling forward, arms flailing to catch myself.
Chapter 2
"Get away from my father, you crazy bitch!"
Dean's voice echoed through the Pack Hall lobby, bouncing off the stone floors and vaulted timber ceiling.
Every conversation stopped. Every head turned.
"My Alpha's mating my real mother now! Why don't you just leave them alone and stop being a homewrecker?"
Heat flooded my face so fast I thought my wolf might surface from sheer humiliation.
I wanted the ground to open up and swallow me whole.
The fucking irony of it all.
I'd spent months losing my mind over this exact situation - crying myself hoarse, screaming at Kane in our den, begging him to explain why I had to be the one to surrender everything.
We were mated. Bonded under the Moon Goddess. Why did I have to dissolve our bond so he could claim her?
Why couldn't Dean just come live with me, his birth mother?
The Lowell pack could fund an entire academy without blinking. Getting one pup enrolled couldn't possibly be that complicated.
But Kane had his answer ready every single time:
"Dean won't budge on this. He refuses to be registered under your name. As far as he's concerned, Nicole's his mother."
Then he'd pile on the guilt:
"Nicole wants him in the pack school so he learns what real life is like outside the estate walls. She's not even his blood mother, and she's already thinking about his character as a future Alpha. Meanwhile you're stuck obsessing over our relationship status. Freya, you need to focus on what's actually best for him. That's what real mothers do."
I'd just stood there, completely blindsided.
Focus on what's best for him?
My pup was ripped from my arms the moment he took his first breath. I never held him. Never saw his tiny face.
They told me I'd delivered a stillborn and I believed them for seven years.
Nobody gave me the chance to focus on anything.
And now because I wouldn't play along with their deranged little theatrical production, I was the selfish one? The rogue she-wolf trying to break up their happy pack?
"Dean Matthew Lowell!"
Kane's Alpha voice cracked across the lobby like a thunderclap.
"You do not speak to your birth mother that way! Where did you even learn that language? That's it - I'm restricting your tablet for a full moon cycle."
He glared at the boy with this manufactured paternal fury that would've been convincing if I hadn't known him for nine years.
Nicole swooped in immediately, pulling Dean behind her skirts like I was about to slash him across the face.
"Oh Goddess, I'm so sorry - " She kept bowing her head, almost folding herself in half, baring her throat in submission. "He's only seven, he doesn't understand what he's saying. I should've been monitoring what he watches on the pack network. Please, please don't be upset with him."
Each apology came with another little bow, another tremble in her voice.
The whole performance screamed helpless devoted mother wolf protecting her pup from the monster.
Like I was the unhinged rogue who'd shown up to terrorize a child at his parents' mating ceremony.
Nicole Green - the pack's former ice princess, the she-wolf who once made grown warriors nervous at inter-pack gatherings - now practically prostrating herself in public to protect her stolen son.
It was actually a brilliant performance.
I could see people's expressions softening.
Kane's certainly did.
His Alpha anger evaporated into pure sympathy as he watched her grovel on Dean's behalf.
He cleared his throat and turned that familiar patronizing frown on me.
"Freya. Come on. You're stronger than this. It's supposed to be a celebration of new bonds, not a pack dispute. Can you just... not make this harder on Nicole than it already is?"
I literally hadn't said one word, and somehow I was the one drawing blood.
Amazing how once someone decides you're the villain, reality just bends itself into knots to prove them right.
I opened my mouth, ready to finally defend myself -
"Nicole, what are you doing?"
The new voice cut through the lobby.
Joanna Lowell strode across the stone floor in heeled boots and a silver-gray ensemble that screamed old pack money, her iron-colored hair not moving an inch.
Kane's mother. The pack's elder matriarch.
"I will not stand here and watch my grandson apologize to anyone."
She looked at me like I was something foul she'd stepped in during a territory run.
"Especially not to a she-wolf who clearly doesn't know when she's overstayed her welcome."
Without missing a beat, Joanna pulled Dean flush against her side, one manicured hand gripping his shoulder.
Grandmother and grandson stood there in perfect solidarity, both looking at me like I was something rabid that had wandered in from unclaimed land.
The absurdity of it would've been funny if it didn't hurt so much.
The Lowell pack built their entire identity around bloodlines and Alpha legacy, yet they'd tolerated my presence for nine full years without ever pushing for an heir.
Turns out they'd had their insurance policy the whole time.
The real kicker? When I delivered Dean, the birth ripped me apart so badly that my body just... gave up. No more pups. Ever.
Joanna knew that but it never stopped her from turning my "failure" into pack dinner entertainment.
Every solstice, every family gathering, she'd find some way to bring up how I couldn't even manage the one role the Moon Goddess gave she-wolves, how I'd trapped her son in a barren mating, how Kane could've claimed so much better.
Kane's response was always the same:
frown, get uncomfortable, leave the den. He never once used his Alpha authority to tell her to stop.
Later he'd find me crying in our quarters and hold me while he explained it away:
"She's just frustrated about grandpups. It's not personal. She doesn't really mean it."
Then he'd tip my chin up and look at me with those earnest Alpha eyes:
"I claimed you, not your womb. I don't need pups. I just need you to be happy."
I'd believed every word.
I'd actually felt grateful that he loved me despite my broken body.
Eventually I stopped thinking about pups altogether.
For seven years, that was our truth.
Then they casually informed me that my son had been alive this entire time.
Breathing, growing, learning to shift - just not with me.
But by then he was seven years old with a whole life I wasn't part of. He had a mother. She just wasn't me.
And he made it clear he wanted to keep it that way.
What was I supposed to do? Drag him back by his scruff? Force a traumatized pup to accept the stranger who shared his blood?
I shut my eyes hard, blocking out the sight of the three of them standing there like the perfect pack unit.
I'd barely taken two steps toward the heavy oak doors when Kane's voice followed me across the lobby.
"Freya."
"Just go to the den and wait for us. We'll be done here in twenty minutes."
I didn't slow down.
Behind me, Joanna's voice cut through the murmur of the gathered wolves with that particular brand of matriarchal disdain.
"Wait for what, exactly? Tonight is a Lowell pack dinner. She's not pack anymore. Her presence would be... uncomfortable."
A pause, then slightly quieter but still audible, sharpened for my ears:
"And frankly, Dean doesn't want her there. It's the pup's birthday - let's not ruin it by making him uncomfortable in his own territory."
My walk turned into something faster.
The afternoon sun hit my face, and I kept moving.
Chapter 3
Outside the Pack Hall, the sun was doing that thing where it's almost offensively bright and cheerful, like the Moon Goddess herself was mocking me.
Perfect day to burn your whole damn life down and start over.
I stood there gulping air until my lungs stopped feeling like they were caught in a trap.
It was just a severed bond.
Wolves dissolved matings all the time. The packs kept running.
I hadn't told anyone I was leaving - only my closest friend Ava knew.
The Lowell pack had grown powerful enough over the years that even my own birth pack tiptoed around them now.
If word got out that I was planning to vanish, I'd be drowning in mind-link pings from wolves trying to convince me to stay and "work things out for the good of the alliance."
Ava was currently wrestling three enormous suitcases onto a luggage cart, her face red from exertion as she navigated through the airport crowds while I finished checking in.
"When you land, promise me you'll actually give a shit about yourself for once."
She shot me a look that was half concern, half protective fury.
"No more wasting energy on those two selfish bastards."
She squeezed my hand hard enough to bruise.
"Nobody's getting your location out of me. I don't care who sends their trackers. I'll lie to the Alpha Council itself if I have to."
For the next five minutes she launched into an increasingly creative and profane character assassination of Kane, her voice climbing loud enough that a human family nearby hurried their pups past us. Finally she grabbed me by both shoulders and got right in my face.
"Your one job now - your only damn job - is to be obnoxiously, insufferably happy. You got that?"
Before I could answer, she'd already turned and bolted toward the exit.
Running away before I could see her wolf break.
She was too late. I was already falling apart.
The second she'd turned around, something cracked open in my chest and now I couldn't make it stop. My wolf, silent for weeks, let out a low, wounded whimper somewhere deep inside me.
Happiness.
What a fucking joke that word had become.
Maybe only someone who'd been there through all of it - who'd actually watched what was happening to me - could see how completely happiness had been starved out of my life.
At seventeen, when I first saw Kane across an inter-pack youth gathering and felt my wolf sit up and take notice, I thought I'd found it.
At eighteen, when we randomly crossed paths at a café in Paris during my solo territory travels and he not only remembered me but asked for my contact, I was sure of it.
At twenty-two, walking toward him in that stupid expensive mating gown while the whole pack shed happy tears, I believed the Moon Goddess had blessed me for life.
At twenty-three, throwing up every morning and feeling like death but glowing because I was carrying his pup - his future heir - I actually thought I'd somehow earned everything I'd ever wanted.
Looking back now, the whole thing felt like one of those fever dreams where you're desperately trying to hold onto something precious and it just keeps dissolving through your claws.
None of it had been real.
All that happiness had only ever existed in my imagination.
From day one, Kane had kept Nicole in first place. Even when she belonged to another pack. Even when he'd sworn vows to me under the full moon.
He'd been willing to take our pup and hand him over to her like a fosterling she'd wanted to nurse.
Goddess, I'd been so fucking stupid.
I don't know how long I stood there in the middle of the terminal with tears running down my face. My wolf had retreated again, too wounded to surface. Eventually the boarding announcement jolted me back to the present.
My phone lit up. Several notifications in a row.
Kane.
