Chapter 2

They didn't even let me stay for the celebration.

The moment Chase rejected me, one of the elders was already at my side, his hand hovering near my elbow. "Belle, you need to leave."

I stared at him while behind his shoulder the ceremony carried on without me. Music swelled through the clearing. Wolves crowded around Chase and Kacie, offering congratulations as though my heart hadn't just been torn out of my chest in front of every one of them. I looked at Chase one last time. He was already deep in conversation with Kacie, his head bent toward hers, and he didn't glance my way. Not once.

"Of course," I managed, the word barely surviving the trip past my lips.

I turned and walked. I didn't run — I refused to give any of them the satisfaction of watching me break into pieces. But every step away from that clearing felt like leaving parts of myself scattered behind me in the grass. The whispers followed anyway.

Poor Belle. She really thought she'd be Luna. At least the Alpha made the right decision.

I kept walking, my face burning, and beneath all of it one thought grew louder than the rest until it drowned out everything else: He never meant to choose me.

By the time I reached the edge of the territory, I had to stop and simply breathe. Home was behind me, but I couldn't go there tonight. I couldn't face my mother after she'd watched me leave that morning glowing with a happiness I no longer deserved to feel, and I couldn't survive hearing a single person tell me they were sorry.

So I stepped into the trees instead, let my bones rearrange themselves, and gave the night to my wolf.

We ran without a destination, chasing nothing but distance, until the lights of the pack disappeared behind the tree line and there was nothing left in the world but bark and moonlight and the drum of my paws against the earth. Every time I slowed, the memory caught up with me — Chase's hand closing around Kacie's, his voice flat and final. I have chosen my Luna. The ice in his eyes when he'd said the rest. I reject you as my mate.

So I ran harder, and let the forest take it from me for a little while.

I don't know how long it was before exhaustion won. I shifted back beside a stream and sank onto the damp ground, my whole body trembling, and stared at a broken, moonlit version of my own face staring back up at me.

"Why wasn't I enough?" I whispered.

The stream didn't answer. It just kept moving over the stones, the way the world apparently intended to keep moving without me.

I closed my eyes and thought of the clearing Chase had shown me when we were eighteen — the place where we used to sit for hours and talk about a future I now knew he'd never planned to give me. I remembered him turning to me there once, dead serious for a boy who rarely was. This will always be ours.

My chest tightened around the memory. I knew I shouldn't go there. But tonight I needed one place Chase hadn't yet ruined — somewhere I could remember him as he used to be, before he became the man who had just rejected me in front of an entire pack.

So I stood, and I walked deeper into the forest, toward the place that had once belonged to us.

---

The clearing opened up between the trees exactly as I remembered it, and for one brief, foolish second, my heart eased. The old oak still stood sentry at its center. The stream still curved lazily along the edge of the grass. The moon still poured down through the branches in the same silver light it always had, as if nothing tonight had happened at all.

Then I heard voices, and my heart slammed against my ribs. I knew one of them immediately.

Chase.

I slipped behind the nearest tree before I'd even decided to hide, and looked out—

—and froze.

They were already half-undressed.

Chase had Kacie pressed back against the trunk of the old oak, the same oak where he had once held me. Her dress was shoved up around her waist. His shirt hung open, his belt undone, his hands gripping her thighs hard enough to leave marks. She had one leg hooked high around his hip, the other braced against the bark, and he was buried inside her with deep, deliberate thrusts that made the wet sound of skin on skin carry clearly across the quiet clearing.

Kacie's head was tilted back, mouth open on soft, satisfied moans she didn't bother to muffle. One of Chase's hands slid up under her dress to palm her breast, thumb circling her nipple until she arched into him with a sharp little gasp.

I couldn't move. Couldn't breathe. Couldn't look away.

Then Kacie's eyes opened.

She saw me.

And she smiled.

Slowly. Deliberately. Holding my gaze while Chase continued to fuck her against the tree that had once been ours. She didn't startle. Didn't push him away. She simply watched me over his shoulder, lips parting on another moan as he drove into her harder, and the message landed with perfect, vicious clarity:

You lost.

She wanted me to see every inch of it.

My fingers dug into the bark of the tree I was hiding behind until they ached. Heat flooded my face — shame, rage, something darker and uglier that made my stomach turn. I watched the way Chase's hips snapped forward, the way Kacie's nails scored down his bare back, the way her body took him like she belonged there. Like she had always belonged there.

A low, rough sound left Chase's throat. "Fuck—Kacie—"

"Harder," she whispered, still looking straight at me. "Show her."

He didn't even turn around. Didn't seem to notice anyone else was there. He simply obeyed, thrusting deeper, the wet slap of their bodies growing louder, more urgent. Kacie's smile widened as she locked eyes with me again, then deliberately tipped her head so I could see the way her mouth fell open when he hit the right spot inside her. A soft, broken cry escaped her. Her fingers tangled in his hair and pulled.

I stumbled back a step.

A branch cracked beneath my foot.

Chase's head snapped toward the sound. His eyes found mine across the clearing. For a split second something flickered across his face — surprise, maybe even the ghost of guilt — but it vanished almost immediately. He didn't pull out of her. He simply kept her pinned against the tree, still buried to the hilt, while Kacie looked at me with calm, triumphant satisfaction.

"Belle."

I flinched at the sound of my own name in his mouth. Kacie didn't so much as blink. One of her hands stroked slowly down Chase's chest, possessive and unhurried, as if reminding me exactly who he belonged to now.

Chase finally eased out of her and turned, fastening his pants with practiced indifference. Kacie straightened her dress with the same unhurried grace, not bothering to hide the flush on her cheeks or the marks already blooming on her thighs.

"What are you doing here?" Chase asked.

The absurdity of the question nearly startled a laugh out of me. "I could ask you the same thing."

His jaw tightened. Kacie moved to stand beside him, unhurried, entirely at ease. The scent of sex still hung heavy in the air between them.

"She came here because she thought this place still belonged to her," she said.

My eyes cut to her. "It was ours."

Her smile sharpened into something close to cruelty. "Was."

One word. It hurt more than it had any right to.

"Did you bring her here?" I asked Chase.

He didn't answer.

"Chase."

"Yes." He said it so easily. No shame. No hesitation. Something in me cracked a little further.

"Tonight?"

His silence lasted a beat too long before he finally said, "Yes."

I closed my eyes. Four years of believing I mattered. Four years of believing his whispered promises meant something at all.

"How long have you been planning this," I asked, my voice starting to shake.

"Belle—"

"No." The word came out sharper than I intended. "You don't get to say my name like you still know me."

"Did you know before tonight?" I asked Kacie directly.

"Of course," she answered, before Chase could speak.

My breath caught. "You knew?"

"I knew Chase was going to choose me."

The ground seemed to shift under me. "How long?"

A faint, satisfied smile touched her mouth. "Long enough."

I turned back to Chase. "You let me believe I was going to be your Luna."

He looked away, and that silence told me everything his voice wouldn't.

Kacie stepped closer, her tone almost gentle now, which somehow made it worse. "You really believed that?"

I said nothing. I couldn't.

She let out a soft laugh. "Belle, he didn't keep you around because he loved you."

My eyes burned. "Then why?"

"Because you were convenient." The word sliced clean through me. "He needed time to secure a better alliance. And you were happy enough to wait for him while he found one."

"Is that true?" I asked Chase.

His silence answered before he did.

"Say something," I whispered.

Finally, he spoke. "I was never going to marry you."

The breath went out of me. "Never?"

"I told you what you wanted to hear."

Tears blurred my vision. "Why?"

His answer came without a flicker of hesitation. "Because you were never suitable to be my Luna."

There it was. The truth he'd kept buried for four years, finally surfacing in the one place I'd thought was safe from him.

"You knew my wolf was weak," I said.

"Yes."

"You knew?"

"Of course I knew."

My lips trembled. "Then why didn't you just tell me?"

His expression didn't soften even slightly. "Because I didn't want to deal with your tears four years ago."

That admission hurt worse than the rejection itself had. Not because he didn't love me — I think some part of me had already accepted that. But because he had known exactly what he was doing the entire time. He had watched me build an entire future out of a lie, brick by brick, and he had simply let me.

I wiped the tears from my face with the back of my hand. "You could have told me."

"I didn't owe you a Luna crown."

"No," I said quietly. "Apparently you only owed me the truth. And you couldn't even manage that."

Neither of them answered.

Something inside me settled into place with a terrible kind of clarity. "Now I understand."

"Belle—" Chase started.

"Don't," I cut in, stepping back out of his reach. "Don't say my name like you still have the right to."

I let my eyes move over the clearing one last time. The trees. The stream. The moon hanging low and silver above us. The place where I had once believed my future was safe. The place where I had just watched him fuck another woman against the tree that used to be ours.

"Four years ago, you brought me here and told me this place would always be ours."

His eyes stayed fixed on mine, and I smiled through the tears now falling freely down my face — not a happy smile, but the last remnant of the girl who had loved him, spending itself one final time.

"You were right," I said. "It was ours."

I took a step back toward the trees.

"Until you gave it away."

Then I ran. I didn't wait to hear him call my name, and I didn't look back — there was nothing behind me left worth returning to.

Tonight, Chase Sterling hadn't just rejected his mate.

He had taught me that the person you trust the most is often the one who knows exactly where to cut.