The severing
"I can’t marry her," Silas said.
The words cut through the silence of the Moon-Stone Clearing like a physical blade. He stood at the center of the ritual circle, the crimson light of the Blood Moon painting his skin the color of rust. He didn't look like a man who had just found his fate. He looked like a man who had found a curse.
I stood ten feet away, my heart hammering against my ribs. The golden thread of the mate bond was visible to everyone. It shimmered in the air, a glowing bridge connecting my chest to his. It hummed with a warmth that promised safety and belonging. It was the first time in my life I had felt like I wasn't an outcast.
"Silas," the Elder Cassian whispered, his voice trembling. "The moon has spoken. The bond is fated. You cannot deny the choice of the ancestors."
"The moon is wrong," Silas snapped. He turned his gaze toward me. His eyes were flint gray and full of a cold, sharp hatred. "I will not take Thorne as my Luna. I will not bring the daughter of a murderer into my bed and call her my equal. Look at her. She carries the blood of the man who slaughtered my family."
The three hundred wolves of the Blackthorn Pack stood in a silent semi-circle. No one spoke. No one defended me. I saw my neighbors, people I had served and worked for, looking at me with disgusted agreement. To them, I was just a debt that had never been paid.
"I am not my father," I said. I kept my voice steady, even though my hands were shaking.
"You have his eyes," Silas growled. He took a predatory step toward me. His presence was a heavy, suffocating weight. "Every time I look at you, I see the blade he held to my father’s throat. You are a stain on this pack, June. I tolerated your presence here out of a misguided sense of mercy. That mercy ends tonight."
He raised his hand toward the red sky. The air in the clearing turned freezing. His inner wolf surfaced, turning his eyes a glowing, vengeful gold.
"I, Silas Blackthorn, Alpha of the Blackthorn Pack, reject you, June Thorne, as my mate and my Luna," he roared.
The bond didn't just snap. It exploded.
A white-hot agony ripped through my chest. It felt like my ribs were being crushed from the inside out. The golden light shattered into a thousand jagged sparks and vanished. The physical recoil sent me to the ground. My knees hit the stone with a sickening thud. I tried to breathe, but my lungs felt like they were filled with broken glass.
I looked up through the haze of pain. Silas stood over me, his face a mask of indifference. He didn't reach down. He didn't offer a spark of comfort for the soul-deep wound he had just inflicted.
"Get up," he commanded. His voice was icy. "Your life in the main house is over. You will move your things to the storage shack by the smokehouse. You are no longer an Omega of this pack. You are a ghost."
He turned his back on me and walked away. The high-ranking warriors followed him without a second glance. One by one, the rest of the pack turned and left the clearing. They moved in a silent wave, leaving me alone in the dirt under the dying red moon.
I stayed on the floor until the burning in my chest turned into a dull, hollow ache. I forced myself to stand. I didn't go to the pack house for help. I walked toward the dark, drafty shed where they kept the salt and the old crates.
I sat on the edge of a narrow wooden cot and clutched my chest. The bond was gone, but the hole it left behind was screaming. Silas wanted me to run. He wanted me to flee the territory so he could forget I existed.
"I am not running," I whispered to the dark.
I didn't cry. I had survived ten years of hatred from this pack, and I would survive this too. I would make him look at me every single day until he realized that I was not the ghost of his past.
