Rejected by My Mate, So I Became the Enemy Alpha’s Luna

Chapter 8 – The Alpha’s Goodbye

They scheduled my departure for dawn of the third day.

Of course they did. Easier to pretend it was just another patrol going out, not the beta’s daughter being handed to a rival alpha with a bow on top.

The night before, the house hummed with a strained, false quiet. Doors shut a little too carefully. Voices dipped when I walked by. The scent of cooking clung to the air, heavy and wrong; no one was really hungry.

I escaped to my room and pretended to sleep until the moon dipped low enough that even my wolf went still.

A soft knock broke the silence.

“Come in,” I said, already knowing who it was.

Alpha Marcus Hawke didn’t often knock.

He filled the doorway, his broad frame somehow diminished by the lines etched deeper into his face. He’d left his formal jacket undone, sleeves rolled up, throat bare—a rare vulnerability for an alpha.

“Can I?” he asked, nodding at the chair by my desk.

I shrugged. “Your house.”

He huffed something that wasn’t quite a laugh and sat. For a moment he just looked around, gaze lingering on the photos, the worn quilt, the duffel by the bed.

“I remember when you were born,” he said finally. “Rowan brought you to the alpha house in a towel. You screamed loud enough to wake half the pack.”

“Sounds like me,” I said.

He smiled faintly. “Even then you were… more.”

My throat tightened. Compliments from Marcus Hawke were rare enough to bottle.

“You should have been our Luna,” he said, blunt as a blade. “You would have been a good one.”

I stared at him. “Is that supposed to make this better?”

“No.” He shook his head. “It’s supposed to make it clear that what happened isn’t about you being lacking. My son’s choices are his own.”

Silence stretched between us.

“Kael will test you,” Marcus went on. “He tests everyone. But he doesn’t play the same games we do. If he respects you, it’ll be for what you do, not who your parents are.”

“I figured,” I said. “He didn’t look like the ‘beta’s daughter’ type.”

Marcus’s mouth twitched. Then his expression sobered again.

“If he… if Blackpine mistreats you,” he said, each word dragged out, “you send word. To Jace, to Rowan, to me. This is a political solution, not a death sentence. I won’t pretend I can march an army into his territory, but I won’t sit on my hands, either.”

It was the closest I’d ever hear him come to promising war for me.

“Thank you,” I said quietly.

He rose, hesitated, then reached into his pocket and drew out a small, flat object. A metal disk, worn at the edges, stamped with the Moonridge crest.

“My father gave me this when I left for my first war,” he said. “Said it was a reminder that I carried the pack with me, whether I wanted to or not. Consider it… on loan.”

I took the disk, cool and heavy in my palm. “I thought I was leaving the pack behind.”

“You’re leaving the territory,” he said. “Not the wolves who were smart enough to love you.”

It landed somewhere deep, next to the place where Jace lived.

“Get some sleep,” Marcus added. “Dawn comes fast.”

He turned to go.

The house shuddered.

It was subtle at first, a tremor underfoot like distant thunder. The glass on my nightstand rattled. Marcus froze, head snapping up.

A heartbeat later, the pack bond screamed.

A surge of fear and confusion slammed into me from a dozen minds at once. Jumbled images—trees, firelight, teeth—flashed against my skull.

“Rogues?” I gasped, gripping the bedpost as the floor lurched again.

“No,” Marcus said, eyes gone alpha-bright. “That’s inside the border.”

Shouts rose in the corridor. A young wolf skidded into view, half-shifted, eyes wild.

“Alpha!” he panted. “It’s the Council compound—something’s wrong with their wards—”

The bond shrieked again. Not fear this time.

Pain.

A single, sharp spike that made my vision white out for a second. Someone on Moonridge land had just bled. Hard.

Marcus swore. “Stay here,” he ordered. “Aria—”

But my wolf was already surging to my skin, every instinct snapping into place.

Because under the chaos of the pack, a thinner, colder thread brushed against my mind. Not Moonridge.

Blackpine.

Kael Blackthorn.

For a fraction of a heartbeat, I felt his presence like a hand on the back of my neck—sharp alarm, a flash of iron and smoke, the psychic equivalent of a snarl—

—and then it cut out.

Clean.

Like a line severed.

I staggered, grabbing the doorframe as Marcus lunged past me toward the stairs, barking orders.

“Dad!” Jace’s voice roared from somewhere below. “The wards—”

“Stay back!” Marcus snapped. “No one crosses the Council perimeter without my command—”

Another jolt rocked the house. Somewhere, someone screamed.

My heart hammered against my ribs, not from the pack’s fear now, but from the sudden, yawning emptiness where that sharp Blackpine thread had been.

I clutched the metal disk so hard the edges bit into my skin.

Kael was supposed to be in his own territory. Safe. Solid. Waiting for my arrival so he could test me, judge me.

Instead, all I could feel was nothing.

If he died before I even set foot in Blackpine, this entire “solution” would explode.

If he lived—and something was attacking both Council and borders at once—

I wasn’t leaving in three days.

I might be leaving now.