Lies Beneath the Moonlight

Chapter 3 Severing the Soul

The moon had not risen when I left my chambers. I took a plain cloak and used the side stairs, though secrecy proved unnecessary.

The guards at the inner gate barely glanced at me. Kaelen had stripped my title so thoroughly that a former Luna could walk out alone.

I followed the worn path to the Elders' Temple from memory. Night-blooming moonpetal used to mark the last bend by scent, but that sense was gone.

I counted the flat stones instead and felt the cold night air through my thin slippers.

The path remained clear beneath my feet. Everything beyond it had begun to lose its edges: trees, temple walls, even the pale steps ahead.

Three Elders sat in nightly meditation around the sanctuary. They opened their eyes as I entered.

Their attention moved first to my face, then to the empty place on my shoulder where the Luna's sigil had been.

The eldest, Lyra, hurried to her feet.

“Luna?”

The vibration of her voice reached me through the floor. I pointed to my ear, then went to the Vow Stone in the center of the sanctuary.

Its surface carried the vows of a thousand generations. The stone felt cool and smooth beneath my palm, but the power inside it hummed through nerves the curse had nearly killed.

“I, Elara of the Bloodmoon Pack, wish to sever the soul bond between Alpha Kaelen and me.”

Lyra caught my wrist. “Child, no mate has done this alone. The bond is sacred and fated.”

“A unilateral severing goes against every law we keep, and once the stone accepts it, the change is irreversible.”

The other Elders had already left their seats. One reached for the formal parchment while the second stared at the dark veins rising beneath the skin of my hand.

“I am aware.” I kept my hand on the stone. “I renounce my claim as his mate, my title, and every tie between us. I ask for no land or protection. I ask the ancient magic to witness my freedom.”

The Elder began recording the renunciation. I closed my eyes, pushed my will into the Vow Stone, and felt our damaged bond draw tight inside my chest.

“Let the tie be severed.”

The temple shook before the last word left my mouth. Pain pulled through our bond, rough and hot. Kaelen had felt the stone take hold.

The doors burst inward and struck the sanctuary floor. Kaelen stood in the opening with his chest heaving and his eyes lit red by his wolf.

He crossed the sanctuary in seconds. The Elder tried to shield the half-written parchment, but Kaelen tore it from his hand.

He ripped it into smaller pieces until scraps covered the floor around his boots.

Kaelen shouted inches from my face. The tendons in his neck stood out, and his mouth moved too quickly for me to read more than pieces: *mate*, *order*, *mine*.

He pointed at the ruined parchment, then at the doors, commanding me to leave with him. The three Elders drew back from the force of his Alpha voice.

His authority never reached me in that silent room. I saw his fingers closing around empty pieces of paper and the confusion that followed when I did not obey.

My declaration remained inside the Vow Stone. The severing still needed time to work through the bond, but no order from Kaelen could tear the words out now.

I lifted my hand from the stone, stepped around him, and walked into the cold night.

He turned after me yet did not follow at once. For the first time, his command had failed while the whole temple watched.

Sienna waited beneath the old archway. Her smile was gone.

She watched me cross the courtyard with one hand over Kaelen's moonstone pendant and the other clenched beside her belly. The hatred in her face stayed fixed on me until the dark swallowed the arch.