ALWAYS THE LUNA

Chapter2

ADA

My hands trembled, and I struggled to draw a proper breath. How had we ended up here? I knew things hadn’t been going well over the past two weeks, but I had never imagined this would happen. Not now. Not when everything was finally about to change for the better.

“This… how could you…?” I stammered, swallowing the thick lump lodged in my throat.

My entire body quivered, and I could barely form a coherent sentence.

“Why…?” I whispered, my lips trembling.

“Sarah is back.” He scoffed. “Why am I even telling you? I’m sure you already know.”

I knew?

How was I supposed to know that his former lover, the woman who had left five years ago after our marriage, had returned?

My lungs seemed incapable of drawing enough air, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t stop shaking.

“Sign the papers, Ada.” His voice was utterly devoid of warmth. A solitary tear slipped down my cheek.

What had gone wrong? Everything had seemed fine before then. Yes, he had acted strangely over the past two weeks, but surely that wasn’t enough to justify ending our marriage.

I couldn’t believe that, after all these years, he still loved Sarah. I had thought he had finally moved on after discovering that we were fated mates. I had believed I had finally won his heart.

Had I been living in Sarah’s shadow all this time?

“I’m your Luna. Your mate.” I struggled to keep my voice steady, desperately fighting the urge to break down in front of him. “We’ve been married for five years.”

“You know the truth, Ada. Our marriage only happened because of one drunken mistake. I never intended to marry you. Sarah has always been the only woman I wanted.”

“But I’m your fated mate!”

A few months after our wedding, shortly after I turned eighteen, we discovered our mate bond during the Blood Moon. That revelation became one of the reasons Adrian’s attitude towards me changed. He began treating me with more affection, and for a while, I believed we were genuinely happy. Or perhaps I had been the only one who felt that way.

“Fated mates don’t matter anymore, and you know it. Our bond means nothing.”

My heart contracted painfully. I pressed a hand against my chest, struggling to breathe as my other palm instinctively settled over my stomach. More tears streamed down my cheeks.

“I don’t need you, Ada. I don’t need a fated mate to give me a powerful heir. Plenty of formidable Alphas have parents who were never fated mates.”

I had never experienced pain this excruciating. Every breath felt like a battle, and I struggled to comprehend how the man I loved could look me in the eyes and say such cruel things.

I searched his face, desperate to find some indication that he didn’t mean a single word. Perhaps a flicker of regret, a hint of hesitation—anything that might convince me this was all a terrible misunderstanding. But his eyes remained vacant, utterly devoid of emotion.

“She doesn’t love you more than I do,” I whispered, my voice trembling. “She isn’t the person you think she is.”

Sarah was my cousin. I had known her practically my entire life because we had grown up together. Beneath her beautiful face and captivating eyes lay something darker. Something sinister. Something I knew all too well.

“What about you?” he retorted. “Were you really the person we all thought you were? You knew I loved Sarah. You knew I intended to make her my Luna, yet you found your way into my bed and got pregnant. You blackmailed and manipulated me into marrying you. Now, I finally see who you truly are, Ada. I see the person hiding behind that innocent face.”

“You know nothing about me,” I whispered through my tears.

I didn’t want to remember the insults and humiliation I had endured after being found in bed with Adrian. Like him, I had been drunk that night. I had also been a teenager hopelessly in love with him, and I could hardly resist when he made advances towards me.

In everyone’s eyes, I had been the villain. The shameless slut who had stolen another woman’s man. No one knew how desperately I had tried to prevent what happened between us. But I had been just a young girl, while he had been a grown man. He had been stronger than me, and I had eventually borne the blame for our drunken mistake because he was the Alpha every girl desired, while I was nobody.

“Exactly. I know nothing about you,” he declared sternly. “You got everything you wanted. You became my wife and Luna. That should have been enough, but no. You still went out of your way to make Sarah’s life miserable. You were the reason she left.”

That wasn’t true. Sarah had left of her own free will. I had absolutely nothing to do with her decision.

But why should I bother explaining myself?

The contempt in Adrian’s eyes made it painfully clear that nothing I said would change his mind. He had already lost trust in me or perhaps he had never truly trusted me in the first place.

If Sarah could so easily come between us, then perhaps there had never been anything strong enough to begin with. Maybe I had merely been a temporary distraction, a woman he tolerated while waiting for his beloved to return.

“Have you ever loved me, Adrian?” I whimpered, searching his face as I clung to the last fragile thread of hope.

The way he had treated me after discovering our mate bond, the affection he had shown me, the intimacy we had shared. Surely, those things meant he loved me, didn’t they?

He avoided my gaze. I watched his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed, and for one fleeting moment, something resembling emotion flickered across his face. My heart cling on that tiny change.

Maybe he did love me. Perhaps this was all a misunderstanding, and there was still a chance to salvage our marriage.

“Answer me, Adrian.” My voice cracked as I stepped directly into his line of sight, forcing him to face me. “Look me in the eyes and tell me you’ve never loved me. Tell me that everything we’ve shared has been nothing but a lie. If you can look me in the eyes and say that, I’ll sign these papers and walk out of your life forever.”

I searched his eyes desperately, hoping to find something. Anything that would give me a reason to hold on, but there was nothing.

His gaze remained cold and distant, as though I were nothing more than a stranger standing before him. Even before he spoke, my heart sank.

“I never loved you, Ada.”

My breath caught in my throat. My entire body trembled as unbearable anguish tore through my chest. I could feel my wolf suffering alongside me, her pain mirroring my own as the mate bond seemed to twist inside me.

It hurt. Goddess, it hurt so much.

With a trembling hand, I reached for the pen on the table and signed the divorce papers. I tried. I tried so desperately to hold back my tears, but they continued streaming down my cheeks, each one a painful reminder of everything I had just lost.

“You can stay here tonight, and you’re also welcome to remain in the pack house,” he said before turning and walking away.

He left me behind, alone with the devastating wreckage of my heart. A pain so profound that it shattered me into a thousand pieces.