I, Chloe, reject you (Chloe's POV)

"Click. Click."

The sound of high heels echoed through the Pack Council hall.

I rested my hand lightly against my hip, where the Luna Seal—the supreme emblem of Pack authority—hung at my side. I couldn't explain it, but from the moment I'd stepped through those doors, the seal had been radiating an unsettling heat against my palm, as though something beneath its surface had come alive.

On either side of the aisle, the elders instinctively stepped back to clear a path, their eyes dropping to the floor with the unmistakable weight of guilty consciences.

The Third Elder's jowls quivered. He drew himself up with practiced indignation. "Chloe! The Council is in session. How dare you kick those doors open? Where is your dignity?"

I stopped walking. A tearing pain moved through my chest, sharp and familiar, but I clenched my jaw and forced it back down.

"My dignity," I said, my eyes stinging at the corners, "is reserved for people who deserve it. Not for a pack of leeches who've spent six years feeding off me."

"Enough!"

Caleb's palm cracked against the armrest of his throne. He rose and descended the steps toward me, those gray-blue eyes I had spent countless sleepless nights aching for now carrying nothing but Alpha arrogance and poorly concealed impatience.

"Chloe. Watch your tone. The Third Elder is a core member of this Council."

"Since you were clearly listening at the door," I said, "I'll save us both the recap."

"Selena saved my life," he continued, as though I hadn't spoken, "and she bore me a child with exceptional bloodline potential. Her contributions cannot be dismissed. My proposal to name her Co-Luna was not made lightly. You remain my wife. You remain the Luna of Blood Moon Pack. Your position hasn't changed—I'm simply asking Selena to share the burden with you. Equal standing. This is about what's best for the pack."

"What's best for the pack."

Equal standing.

I looked at his face for a long moment. This was the man I had loved for six years. The fated mate I had given everything to sustain.

"Caleb—" My voice came out with a tremor I hadn't intended.

Six years of waiting. Countless nights waking from nightmares with his name on my lips, praying to the Moon Goddess to keep him safe. I had believed that love like mine could earn something real in return. Instead, every sacrifice I had ever made had been quietly filed away under a single, weightless phrase: the good of the pack.

The heat behind my eyes threatened to spill over. I drove my thumbnail into my palm, using the sharp bite of pain to hold the tears back.

"You spent my money," I said, my voice steadying, "to fund your mistress and your bastard child. And now you want to use the authority I bought and paid for to crown her beside you?" I let the silence sit for exactly one breath. "I've funded the most fortified territory lines this pack has ever had. I've stockpiled wolfsbane antidotes that cost more per vial than most wolves earn in a year. I have never once, in all of that, paid to share what's mine with someone else's garbage."

The entire hall went still.

Selena's hand flew to the silver-tipped dagger at her hip. She leveled it at me, her expression twisting with fury. "Chloe. You dare insult the Alpha?"

"Go ahead," I said, meeting her eyes without blinking. "Try it."

"The specialized blade you're pointing at me right now—I funded that commission. You're threatening me with a weapon I paid for."

The color that had flooded her face drained just as quickly. She didn't move.

"Chloe!" The last of Caleb's composure collapsed. His pride, that fragile, ridiculous thing, had finally been pushed past its limit. "I am the Alpha of Blood Moon Pack! Selena will be named Co-Luna. That is final. You can accept it, or you can accept it."

The words had barely left his mouth when his Alpha aura detonated outward—a crushing, suffocating pressure that slammed through the hall like a physical force.

Two low-ranking guards buckled. A servant hit the floor on both knees. The weight of it rolled over everyone in the room, but the full, unrestrained force of it landed squarely on me—every ounce of it, deliberately aimed.

He was my mate. And he was using his bloodline dominance against a woman he knew couldn't fight back.

"Kneel." His eyes had gone red at the edges, his voice dropping to something that was more animal than human.

The pressure bore down on my shoulders like a collapsing ceiling. I could hear the faint grind of joints pushed past their tolerance. Every breath felt like inhaling broken glass.

"Why," I whispered, closing my eyes, and one tear finally escaped—sliding down along my cheekbone, slow and quiet and utterly defeated.

My knees began to give. Ten centimeters. Five. The cold breath of the stone floor rose up to meet me. I was going to kneel. In front of every person who had ever wronged me, I was going to fold like I had always folded.

And then, in the deepest part of my mind—the place the pack's high priest had declared permanently dark, permanently dormant—something laughed.

It was not a kind sound.

"Crying over this? You think trash like him is worth your knees?"

The wolf soul that had slept for eight years opened its eyes.

A cold, absolute power shattered through its own seal and tore along every nerve in my body, flooding my limbs with something I had never felt before and somehow recognized completely.

At my hip, the Luna Seal flared—scorching hot now, resonating with the force rising inside me as though the two had always been waiting for this exact moment to find each other.

The mountain on my shoulders vanished.

Caleb's aura didn't fade. It shattered—like something vast and certain colliding with something older and colder, and losing.

My knees locked. My spine straightened.

Every eye in the hall was on me. Caleb stared as though he were watching the dead stand up.

"You—" He took a half-step backward. "How is that possible—"

A wolf with no wolf, standing upright under a full Alpha aura. His mind couldn't process it. I could see that plainly on his face.

Selena's smirk had gone rigid. The hand gripping her dagger was trembling.

The elders who had been waiting to enjoy the spectacle looked as though the floor had dropped out from under them.

Inside me, the wolf soul went quiet again—one cold laugh, and then stillness.

I held Caleb's gaze.

"I'll ask you one last time," I said. "You're certain you want this woman named Co-Luna?"

He swallowed. Then, visibly forcing himself back into the posture of authority, he lifted his chin. "Surrender the Luna Seal. The financial authority and the Luna power it represents. Let Selena carry what you clearly cannot."

"Fine."

The word landed in absolute silence.

I reached down and closed my fingers around the seal. Around the hall, no one breathed. Caleb's shoulders dropped a fraction—the relief of a man who believed he had won. Selena leaned forward, her eyes locked on my hand with a hunger she wasn't bothering to conceal, one foot already shifting to close the distance.

Then, the moment my grip tightened—

A sound. Faint, precise, and deeply wrong.

A crack ran across the surface of the seal the instant it met my palm—blood-red, branching outward like frost on glass until it had mapped every inch of the face. The sound it made was almost delicate.

Caleb's smile died. The color left his face in a single wave, and he stumbled backward two steps with one hand pressed hard against his chest, a low, involuntary sound escaping him.

The mate bond. My newly awakened wolf was tearing it apart from the inside out, severing the connection with a violence that sent the backlash straight into him.

I stood holding the fractured seal, looking at the two of them—his face gray with shock, hers frozen somewhere between greed and terror—and felt the last of the pain leave my chest. In its place was something clean and sharp and entirely without mercy.

You wanted the Luna's power. You wanted my money, my resources, my years. You wanted me to fund my own replacement and smile while I did it.

I raised my hand and brought the seal down against the stone floor with everything I had.

The crack of it split the silence wide open.

Fragments scattered across the floor. A shard caught Selena across the cheek—a clean, stinging line that welled red immediately. She screamed and clapped both hands to her face.

"You want the Luna's authority?" I said. "Get on your knees and pick it up. Every piece."

I turned to Caleb. He had sunk to one knee, still clutching his chest, his face the color of old ash.

"I, Chloe, formally and irrevocably reject the mate bond with Caleb."

I let that settle for exactly one second.

"And effective immediately, Silver Pack withdraws all financial support from Blood Moon Pack. Every fund, every contract, every line of credit—gone. By tonight, you'll have nothing left to rule."