The Alpha's Regret: Rejected Billionaire Luna

Seraphina's POV

I wasn't supposed to be there that night.

I'd told myself I was just picking him up — Kaston had texted around nine saying the guys were wrapping up, and I'd driven over without thinking twice, the way I always did, the way I'd been doing for three years. Pull up, wait, smile when he walks out. That was the routine.

The private club sat two blocks from Ravencrest, tucked behind a row of black iron gates. I parked and walked toward the entrance, and that's when I caught it — Kaston's scent drifting through the gap under the side door, cedar and cold rain, unmistakable. My feet stopped moving before my brain told them to.

And then I heard Rex's voice through the wall.

"So Violet's back." A pause. "What are you gonna do with the white tea girl?"

I should have walked away. I know that now. But I didn't.

Kaston didn't answer immediately. I heard the clink of a glass, the low sound of someone shifting in a leather chair. Then: "She smells right. She's easy to be around. But she's not Violet. I don't know how to say it to her — I don't want to let her go, but I can't let Violet go either."

Rex didn't miss a beat. "So what you're saying is she was always a stand-in. Scent matched, so you kept her around. Never actually about her."

Another pause. Kaston didn't deny it. "She's compliant. She won't cause trouble."

Someone else in the room — I didn't recognize the voice — laughed and said, "Why not keep both?"

Kaston made a dismissive sound. Not a no. Just not a yes out loud.

I stood in that hallway for maybe ten seconds. My hands were completely still. That surprised me — I expected them to shake. Instead I just stood there, doing the math on three years, adding it all up in my head, and somewhere in the middle of that calculation I felt something in my chest go very, very quiet.

Then I smiled. I don't know why. It just happened.

I turned around and walked back to my car.

I drove to Shattered Edge Cliff. I don't remember deciding to. I just ended up there, engine off, windows fogging up, listening to the water somewhere below. I sat in the car for a long time.

Three years. I'd come to Port Sterling to disappear, and I had — I'd taken my wolfsbane drops every morning like vitamins, pressed down every instinct that wanted to surface, turned myself into someone soft and quiet and easy to be around. White tea. Compliant. Won't cause trouble.

And it worked. He stayed. He kept me close. I thought that meant something.

It didn't mean anything. I was a scent memory. That's all.

I picked up my phone and called my father.

He answered on the second ring. I didn't give him time to say anything. "Dad. The treaty union. I'll do it. I'm in."

Silence. Two full seconds of it. Then Orion's voice, careful, like he was handling something breakable: "You're sure?"

"Yes. I'll wrap things up here first. Then I'm coming home."

I hung up before he could say anything else, pushed the car door open, and walked to the edge of the cliff. The wind hit me immediately, cold and sharp, pulling at my hair. I stood there looking at nothing, and then something rose up from somewhere deep in my chest — not grief exactly, not anger exactly — and I tipped my head back and let it out.

The howl broke from my throat low and long, rolling out over the water and the rocks below.

For just a second, the wolfsbane loosened. I felt it — a thin thread of fir and ice moving through the white tea, real and cold and entirely mine.

Then I pressed it back down, got in my car, and drove home.

Ravencrest was quiet when I got back. Ella met me in the kitchen with a bowl of congee she'd kept warm on the stove, and told me Kaston hadn't come home yet. I thanked her, sat down at the kitchen island, and ate it alone.

I'd made that congee for him almost every week for two years because he'd said once, offhandedly, that it was the only thing that didn't bother his stomach. One sentence. I'd built a whole habit around it. That's kind of messed up, even by my standards.

I rinsed the bowl, put it back in the cabinet, and went upstairs.

My phone buzzed. Cassius.

[When are you coming back]

I stared at the message for a moment. Five words, no punctuation, typical him. I typed back: [Soon. Just need to handle a few things here.]

Three dots appeared. Then: [Okay.]

I set the phone down on the nightstand. Cassius had called me Phina since we were kids — never my full name, never anything formal, just Phina, like I was someone worth shortening a name for. He never said much. He didn't need to. Every time something went sideways for me back in Blackridge, he'd just appear somewhere in my line of sight, steady and quiet, and somehow that was enough. I never knew what to call that. I still don't. But that single word — okay — settled something in me that the howl at the cliff hadn't quite reached.

Kaston didn't come home that night.

I was still half-asleep when Nadine called the next morning, bright and loud, inviting me to her birthday party. I said yes mostly to end the conversation. After I hung up, I went out and found her a necklace — silver chain, simple, the kind she actually wears — and was heading back when my phone pushed a notification from the Hunters' Moon forum.

Public channel. New post.

The photo was Port Sterling International. Arrivals exit, fluorescent light, the familiar grey of the terminal. Kaston was standing near the barrier with a woman beside him, close enough that their shoulders were touching. She was smiling at the camera like she'd arranged the shot herself.

The caption read: Finally home.

Posted by: Violet Rosso.

So that's where he was last night. Not working late. Not stuck in traffic. He was standing under those arrivals signs with his first love on his arm, and I was at home eating congee alone like an idiot, rinsing his bowl, putting it back in the cabinet.

I looked at the photo for a few more seconds. My hands were steady. My face didn't move. But inside, something was already tearing itself apart.