MY LUNA, MY CHOICE

Chapter 1— Rejected

Kaima’s POV

Henry's voice cut through the hall, cold and deliberate, meant to be heard by every wolf gathered for the ceremony.

"Kaima, I reject you as my mate. Two years, and you've given me nothing. No heir, no pup, nothing but a wasted bond."

"Henry—" My voice cracked before I could finish his name.

"Don't."

He said, raising a hand as though my voice offended him.

"I, Henry Voss, reject you, Kaima, as my mate. You came into this pack as a debt paid in flesh, and you'll leave it the same way you arrived. Worthless."

The room seemed to tilt beneath me and somewhere behind him, I heard Marcus, his beta, laughing softly, the sound sharp enough to cut through whatever was left of my composure.

I could feel the weight of every pair of eyes in that hall, pack members who had never once looked at me with kindness, now watching my humiliation like it was entertainment they'd been waiting years to see.

I forced my spine straight, even as my wolf howled inside me, wounded in a place deeper than skin. Two years of silence, of coldness, of being treated like furniture in my own home, and this was how it ended. Not with mercy. Not even with the decency of privacy.

"I, Kaima, accept your rejection, Henry Voss." I said.

The words felt like swallowing glass, each syllable scraping something raw on its way out.

The bond between us, thin and joyless as it had always been, snapped somewhere in my chest as it didn't hurt the way I expected.

It hurt worse, a hollow, echoing ache where something should have been but never truly was.

Henry didn't flinch neither did he even look at me one last time but turned, his expensive coat sweeping behind him like he was shedding something distasteful, and walked away without a single glance back.

I pressed my hand flat against my stomach, hidden beneath the folds of my dress, and forced my breathing to stay even. He couldn't know at all, not ever, if I had any say in it.

The child I carried wasn't his, and the shame of that truth was mine to bury, along with everything else Henry had never bothered to notice about me in two long years of marriage.

Marcus stepped closer once Henry was gone, his smirk widening like he'd been saving it just for this moment.

"Pack up your things tonight. The Alpha doesn't want to see your face in his territory by morning."

"I wasn't planning on staying."

I said, surprising myself with how steady my voice came out, even as my knees threatened to give beneath me.

"Good."

Marcus said, leaning in just enough to make sure only I could hear him.

"No one here will miss you. You were never anything more than a debt he paid off with his own dignity."

I didn't wait for him to say anything else as my legs carried me out of that hall on instinct alone, past the pack members who watched me with a mixture of pity and satisfaction, some of them not even bothering to hide their smiles.

I kept my eyes forward, refusing to give any of them the tears they were hoping to see.

By the time I reached the room that had never once felt like mine, my hands were shaking so badly I could barely grip the handle of the door.

I packed quickly, methodically, the way I'd learned to do everything in this house, quietly, so as not to draw attention. Though there wasn't much to take.

Two years as Henry's mate, and I owned less now than I had the day I arrived. As I shoved the last of my belongings into a worn bag, my mind drifted back, unwillingly, to how all of this began.

FIVE YEARS AGO

My family owed a debt to Henry's pack, one my father had drowned in for years before I ever understood what any of it truly meant.

I was twenty when the debt finally came due, and there was only one way left to pay it. Me.

I remember standing in front of my parents the night they told me, my mother's eyes wet with tears she refused to let fall, my father's jaw tight with a shame he never once said out loud.

I didn't cry either because I had already learned by then, that crying changed nothing, not the debt, not my fate, not the quiet desperation that had followed my family for as long as I could remember.

Carlmax found me that same night, sitting outside beneath the old oak tree where we'd spent half our childhood, hiding from chores, from expectations, from everything the world seemed determined to weigh us down with.

He didn't say much at first. He never needed to. He simply sat beside me in silence, the way he always had, until the silence became easier to bear than the truth waiting for me in the morning.

"You don't have to do this."

Marcus said finally, his voice low, careful, like he was afraid saying it too loudly might make it less true.

"I don't have a choice."

I told him, staring straight ahead at nothing.

"You know that better than anyone."

He doesn't argue with me, not when it came to things neither of us could change. He simply took my hand, the way he had since we were children too young to understand what a mate bond even meant, and held it until the sun rose over the trees, painting everything gold in a way that felt almost cruel given what waited for me.

I never told him how much that night meant to me. I never told him a lot of things, how often I thought of him during the empty years that followed, how many nights I lay awake in Henry's house wondering if I'd made the right choice in staying silent about everything I felt.

Two months ago, that silence finally broke.

Henry had left for a pack summit in the north, gone for a week, and I'd slipped away one evening to the border, unable to stay inside walls that never once felt like home.

Carlmax found me there, the way he always seemed to, like some part of him still knew exactly where to look.

We didn't plan what happened that night. It simply happened, two people who'd spent years pretending the other didn't still matter, finally admitting otherwise in the dark.

I told myself it changed nothing and I was wrong.

Back in the present, I zipped my bag shut and looked around the room one final time, there was nothing here worth remembering, no warmth, no comfort, nothing that had ever truly belonged to me.

Whatever Henry believed he was throwing away tonight, he had no idea what he'd actually lost.

He had no idea what I was carrying out the door with me, a secret that would one day become the very thing that unraveled everything he thought he'd built.

By the time the moon rose fully over the trees, I was already deep into the forest, running from the only home I'd known for the past two years, toward a future I didn't yet understand, but somehow already knew, with a certainty I couldn't explain, was mine to build.