He Humiliated His Luna, So I Left His Pack to Die

The sacred moonstone glowed silver on the altar. Cold had already crept into my hands. "The ceremony is postponed." Kael's voice carried across the clearing. He did not look at me, though I was standing at the altar in my coronation robes. He was watching Selene. The Omega he had brought home from the borderlands six weeks ago clung to his arm. Her shoulders shook, and her whisper reached every elder in the front row. "Kael, I'm so sorry. The energy is too much for me. I didn't mean to ruin Elara's special night." "It's not your fault." I had not heard that softness from him in months. When he faced me, it disappeared. "This jealousy has gone too far, Elara. You're upsetting her." Jealousy. I had spent a hundred nights in the infirmary, mixing my own life force into medicine for his warriors. The pale scar above my hip came from a cursed dagger meant for him. For three years, the barrier around Blackmoon had drawn power from my soul. I had gone to bed tired and woken up tired because I believed I was protecting our pack. Selene had needed six weeks and a few tears to erase all of it. The elders shifted in their seats. Their disapproval settled on me. Kael had given them a jealous, unstable woman to blame, and they accepted her without question. Some looked confused, but none challenged him. The Luna candidate had been left alone at her own altar, yet I was the one they judged unfit. The ache in my chest stopped. I looked at the man beside Selene and saw no place worth fighting for. I stepped away from the altar. "Stop making a scene," Kael hissed. I walked past him to the moonstone. It linked the Alpha and Luna to the spirit of the pack, and tonight it would serve one last purpose. From the pouch at my belt, I took a silver ritual dagger and a crushed sprig of Wolfsbane Root. The root smelled bitter and damp. Healers used it for poison. Old rites used it to kill mate bonds. "Elara, what are you doing?" Kael said. "Get back here. Now." I ground the root along the dagger's edge, then drew the blade across my palm. Blood filled the cut at once. That blood had sealed healing spells for his people. This time, it was mine. I pressed my palm to the moonstone. White light flooded the clearing. The pack recoiled, and black cracks raced across the stone. The moonstone had glowed gently through every ceremony in living memory. Now its broken surface threw hard strips of light across the elders' faces. Kael grabbed his chest. His knees buckled as the tether between us tore apart. The place where I had always felt him went empty. My balance slipped for a second, but the exhaustion that had followed me for years loosened with it. For the first time since our bond formed, I could not feel his temper, his hunger, or the constant pull of his authority. The silence hurt. It also belonged to me. I took my hand off the fractured stone and walked toward the forest. "ELARA!" Kael's roar followed me into the trees. "End this tantrum and come back! The Luna title is still yours if you learn your place!" He still thought I wanted the title. Behind him, the barrier gave its first weak flicker.