Chapter 1
In our eight-year marriage, Alpha Charles had nearly seduced every female wolf in my Luna advisory circle—even the ceremonial attendant who once crowned me with moonlight blossoms during our marking ritual hadn’t been spared.
I pretended not to see any of it. Just like always, I carried my eight-month-pregnant belly to the Pack Healing Camp for my prenatal soul resonance scan.
It was the fifth year after our mating ceremony.
That night, under the full-moon altar, he pressed the Alpha silver-engraved ring against the curve of my neck and whispered,
“By the bones of my wolf soul, by moonlight I vow, to link you as my fated mate.”
I thought our spirits had already connected.
But every time I tried to awaken the bond... there was only silence.
“He has never answered us.”
Chloe’s voice—hoarse, furious—growled in my mind.
“You’ve been trying to light ice on fire, Rachel. His soul never once resonated with ours.”
Then came the day. On the way to the Pack Healing Camp, Thalia—his new flame—drove straight into me.
Covered in blood, pain ripping through my abdomen, I begged him to take me to the Sacred Healing Temple.
But Alpha Charles only stood by the roadside, eyes full of contempt.
There was no sign of the golden flare that should shine in an Alpha’s gaze.
“Rachel,” he sneered, “pulling the tragic act again?”
“You fainted at the council meeting last month, now it’s a fake miscarriage? Rachel, don’t you have any new material?”
“Please,” I clutched his sleeve, my palms slick with cold sweat, “it’s a lunar surge day—the pup’s heart rate is unstable. I need the sacred moonstone from the ward—”
“Enough!”
He yanked my hand away. The edge of his silver cufflink sliced my palm.
“From the day your grandmother took three million from Frost Pack’s medical fund, you should’ve known your place—”
He leaned close, his breath hot against my lashes.
“You’re just a surrogate womb we bought. And you dare say the word sacred?”
He left without looking back, Thalia clinging to his arm.
“Rip his throat out.” Chloe snarled deep in my chest, the wolf within clawing at my ribs.
I bit down the urge, holding the fury back.
He’s not worth it. He doesn’t deserve to drag us into Blackmoon Wrath.
Chloe went silent.
When the patrol wolves finally brought me to the Healing Camp, the pack doctor told me—
the Alpha pup inside me had already suffocated to death.
Even my grandmother, who had fought so hard to live, collapsed at the Ancestral Soul Altar from heart-vein rupture after hearing the news.
Three days earlier, she had clutched my swollen hand, her cloudy eyes staring into the hospital lights.
“Little Rae… let’s stop, okay? I saw him bring that female wolf home yesterday. She stepped on the scarf I knitted you… tore it to shreds.”
When I woke, I was lying on a moonstone-crystal healing bed, beneath a glowing sapphire dome.
The Elder of Frost Pack—Alpha Charles’ grandfather, Timothy Frost—stood beside me, his back hunched with age and guilt.
I opened my mouth, voice hoarse:
“Let me go. Whatever I owed Frost Pack… I’ve already paid with my life.”
My phone vibrated.
Message after message flooded in—videos and photos of Charles and Thalia tangled together at a five-star Alpha palace resort.
“You were drowning in your own blood while they celebrated the Holy Moon?”
Chloe’s voice was like frost splitting through bone.
Something inside me snapped.
Thalia’s neck was covered in bite marks as she leaned against Charles, laughing triumphantly.
She even posted:
“Rachel is just an old Luna rotted by silver poison.”
I turned away, suppressing the nausea rising in my throat.
“I want him buried in the Frost Pack’s Moonbone Grove,” I said coldly. “I’ll take my grandmother’s ashes and leave.”
Timothy trembled. “I was wrong. I should never have forced you to stay in Frost Pack. Go… You deserve a land bigger than any pack’s walls.”
He bent to pick up the lifeless, not-yet-shifted pup and left the room in silence.
And I—
for the first time in years—
cried without restraint.
Charles and I were mated by Timothy’s order.
He had hoped I would calm the feral Alpha Charles had become.
I… just wanted to save my grandmother.
After the link, I learned of his past—how his parents died by silver bullets.
He used to scream for his mother in his sleep.
I still hear it sometimes.
I thought two broken souls could heal one another.
To be a good Luna, I trained with the healing witches, learned defense tactics, and spent months trying to recreate the dishes his mother once made.
I gave him everything.
And he gave me the abyss.
