The Rejected Luna’s Forbidden Obsessions

Chapter Two

Chapter Two

The Weight of a Broken Bond

The big gathering clearing did not empty out quickly.

I stood in the exact same spot long after the ceremony was over. The blood on my collarbone was drying and sticking to my skin, and the torn mark on my neck throbbed in time with my fast pulse. Wolves walked past me in small groups. Some of them whispered to each other, while others carefully looked anywhere except at my face. A few of the older female wolves gave me tight, pitying smiles that did not reach their eyes at all. No one touched me. No one asked if I needed help.

Rejection had a smell of its own. It was sharp, metallic, and completely wrong. It poured off me in strong waves that made even the kindest wolves keep their distance.

My husband—I could no longer call him my mate—left the clearing with his new Luna holding his arm. She looked back over her shoulder just once. There was no cruel victory on her face, only a calm, settled satisfaction that somehow cut much deeper than meanness would have. She was already wearing the title that had just been stripped away from me. The pack had accepted her without a single question.

I walked back to the main pack house all by myself.

The hallways felt much longer than they usually did. Every single step I took sent a sharp, fresh spike of pain right through the ruined bond, as if something deep inside my chest was still being slowly torn into pieces. My inner wolf had gone completely quiet after her first scream. She had curled herself up into a tight, shivering ball somewhere deep in the dark corners of my mind and refused to answer whenever I reached out to touch her. I understood why she hid. There was nothing left for us to say.

I walked straight to the Luna suite—the rooms that were no longer mine.

The door was already unlocked. Whoever was in charge of the rooms had moved very quickly. All of my clothes had been pulled out of the large closet and stacked in neat piles right by the door. My books, my hairbrushes, and the small wooden box holding the few precious things I owned from my mother—all of it was waiting to be carried away to some other place. The scent of the new Luna already lingered faintly on the bedsheets, as if she had rushed in to claim the space before my scent had even faded.

I did not cry. I simply gathered up what I could easily carry in my arms and walked down the hall to the guest wing.

The room they gave me was small, clean, and faced the dusty training grounds outside. I set my belongings down on the narrow bed, sat on the edge with my hands neatly folded in my lap, and stared blankly at the wall until the dark sky outside the window began to turn gray with the morning light.

Sleep never came to me. The broken bond would not allow my body to rest. Every single time I closed my eyes, I felt the exact moment the magical connection had snapped. I felt the sudden, sickening emptiness where his warm presence used to live.

By the time the morning sun came up, the whole pack had already moved on and adjusted to their new reality.

I heard it in the way conversations abruptly stopped the second I walked into the big dining hall. I saw it in the careful, curving paths the other wolves took to avoid walking too close to me. The new Luna sat proudly at the Alpha’s right hand, wearing the exact colors I had worn only yesterday. She did not look at me. My former mate did not look at me either. It was as if I had already turned into an invisible ghost living inside my own home.

I forced myself to pick up a piece of bread and eat a few small bites. The food tasted like dust and paper. When I stood up from the bench to leave, a large shadow fell across the table.

It was Conor.

He was taller than his twin brother, broader across the shoulders, and carried the same dark hair and piercing golden eyes that proved their Alpha bloodline. He had always been polite to me in the past, but it was the distant, cool politeness of a man who only shared blood with my husband. Today, that thin politeness was entirely gone. He stared hard at the dried blood still smeared on my neck, and then looked down at the empty seat at the high table where I no longer belonged.

“You are still here,” he said. His voice was low and quiet, but it carried easily across the room.

I met his golden gaze directly because looking away felt like another defeat I could not afford. “I have nowhere else to go.”

Something dark and unreadable moved deep behind his eyes. He did not offer any comfort. He did not offer any pity. He simply gave his head one sharp nod, as if he were filing away important information in his mind, and stepped aside to let me pass.

I could feel him watching my back all the way to the heavy wooden door.

Collin was waiting for me in the hallway just outside the guest wing.

Where Conor was open, burning strength, Collin was much quieter and sharper. He was leaning casually against the hallway wall with his arms crossed tightly over his chest, his expression completely blank. He had always spoken much less than his twin brother, but his heavy silence had never felt this dangerous before.

“You should have the pack healer look at that mark on your neck,” he said.

“It is going to leave a scar either way,” I replied.

“I know.” His sharp gaze dropped down to my throat and lingered there for a long moment. “That does not mean you should let it get infected.”

I almost laughed out loud. The strange sound that slipped past my lips was thin and broken. “Everything inside me is already rotting away.”

Collin pushed himself off the wall. For a split second, I thought he was going to reach out and touch me. Instead, he stopped a careful distance away, standing just close enough that I could catch the sharp, familiar scent of pine trees and cold steel that always clung to his clothes.

“The rest of the pack is going to watch how you carry this heavy burden,” he said softly. “They always do. Do not give them the satisfaction of seeing you break down in public.”

It was not a kind thing to say. It was a harsh warning wrapped up in something much colder. Yet, when he finally stepped past me, his broad shoulder brushed firmly against mine—it was deliberate, brief, and gone before I could even figure out what it meant.

I slipped inside my tiny room, closed the heavy wooden door, and leaned my back against it, listening closely to the sound of my own shaky, uneven breathing.

Outside in the halls, the pack moved on with their lives as if I had never mattered at all.

Inside my chest, the broken bond continued its slow, merciless work of tearing me apart.

And somewhere out there in the exact same house, the twin brothers of the man who had thrown me away were already beginning to watch the empty space I had left behind.

I did not know back then that their dark attention would turn out to be much more dangerous than the rejection itself.

I only knew for certain that the moon had taken everything away from me.

And it was not finished playing with me yet.