Chapter 1

I never thought my Alpha, Dominic Grey, would bring me a cup of honeyed water and tell me, sweet as anything, to take a vacation.

Eight years. Eight years of him never once giving me a day off, keeping me in the herb room brewing medicine to hold the whole pack's defenses together, using our mate bond to pull healing straight out of my body so his silver poisoning wouldn't kill him. And now here he was, playing the caring mate.

"Elara, you've run yourself into the ground for eight years." Dominic put a hand on my shoulder, his eyes doing that soft, wounded thing he thought passed for sincerity. "Ashvale just opened up their retreat down south. Take Finn, go rest for a couple months. Don't worry about the pack."

If this had happened a year ago, I probably would have teared up. Grateful that a busy Alpha still had time to think about me.

After all, for eight years, I'd hidden who I really was, a Frostcrown princess who'd walked away from her own inheritance, just to help him claw his way up from a nobody Alpha to what he was now. I'd stayed in the background the whole time and never asked for credit.

But today I felt nothing. I didn't even blink.

Because half an hour earlier, my maid Maren, who'd come with me from Frostcrown, found a letter while cleaning his study. He'd left it sitting in a pile of paperwork instead of locking it away like he usually did.

It was from his Beta, Marcus.

The whole thing was laid out, plain as day. Alpha, Camille and her daughter Rosie have been brought back from the border camp and settled in the west wing. Once the Luna and the boy are gone, the main house will be free. Preparations for your formal mating ceremony with Camille are underway. Everything's being arranged to the highest Luna standard. Camille won't be shorted on a single thing.

So that was it.

His sudden concern for my wellbeing was just a polite way of getting rid of me and Finn. Clear the house so his old flame could move in, take my place, and enjoy everything I'd spent eight years building.

"What's wrong, Elara? You look cold." Dominic reached for the handkerchief on the table, smiling, moving to wipe my face. "Did brewing that cold-weather batch wear you out last night?"

I turned my head before his hand got close. That was the hand that had just been wrapped around another woman.

"I'm fine." I looked straight at him, my voice flat. "I was just wondering. Two months without me around, if the cold weather sets off your silver poisoning, will you actually hold up without the bond?"

Something flickered in his eyes. Panic, gone almost as fast as it showed up. Then he straightened, all confidence again. "I'm at the top of my strength as an Alpha. I don't need to lean on a mate bond for healing anymore. Just worry about you and Finn. I've got my own plans."

His own plans.

Right. I knew exactly what those plans were. Bring his old flame home without a title, then throw her a full mating ceremony to make it official. And me? The tired, boring wife who never left the herb room. Hand her a travel pass and send her off like she was begging on the street.

"You don't want to go?" Dominic's patience was already running thin. "I'm trying to be considerate here. Don't act like this is nothing. Plenty of women in this pack would kill for a trip like this."

"I didn't say I don't want to go."

I reached out and took the pass from his hand. Closed my fingers around it.

If he wanted to bring Camille into the home I'd built with my own hands and do whatever shameless things he wanted, that was his business.

And I had every right, right now, to take back the years of dignity I'd thrown away. To cut this fake marriage off clean.

I straightened my sleeves and kept my voice even. "Packing for Finn's going to take a while. You've got enough on your plate as it is. The warriors out front are probably waiting on you."

The second he heard I was agreeing to leave the main house, his whole face relaxed. He clapped my shoulder like a weight had lifted off him. "Then hurry up and pack. The sooner the better. Spend whatever you need from the pack account. You don't have to check in with me for two months — I'm sealing off the border to run drills. Don't bother me unless it's an emergency."

He didn't even bother keeping up the act anymore. He walked out fast, boots hitting the floor hard, and even a three-year-old pup could have picked up on the excitement in his step.

I looked down at the honeyed water sitting untouched on the table. Picked it up. Poured it into the cold ash of the fireplace.

"I won't bother you again," I said, to no one, watching the gray sky outside the window. "But Dominic, I hope when I'm finally gone, you don't come crawling back begging for your life."