Too Late, the Luna Has Already Moved On

Angela's POV He didn't hold me after s*x. He lit a cigarette instead. "Let's dissolve our matebond." His voice was flat. The same tone he used to approve supply requisitions. I sat up. The sheets were still warm. Five minutes ago his hands had been in my hair. Don't, Silvia said. Not loud. Just a warning pressed low against my ribs. "Her bloodline carries a curse," Jake said. "It weakens their wolves with every generation. She can't shift. Can't heal properly." He took a slow drag. "The healers give her six months. Maybe less." The smoke drifted. "It's her dying wish," he said. "To be my mate." No. Silvia hit my ribs so hard I lost half a breath. Then she went quiet. That quiet was worse than the blow. "We'll resume the bond after," Jake said. "Six months. It's only to comfort her, Angela. You understand that." It wasn't a question. I looked at the wall. Our shadows were side by side on the white plaster — close enough that the edges overlapped. He means it, Silvia said. He actually means it. I know. Say something. Fight him. We don't have to— I know, I told her again. Quieter this time. She went still. Not accepting it. Just exhausted. I stared at him. As the Alpha, he could force me to comply. Yet he was leaving it my choice. As if I would ever disobey him. One stormy night, the wind howling, he had stepped between my stepfather and me. In his hands was a rotten plank. Knuckles turned white. “Touch her again and I’ll make sure you regret it!” he had snarled, teeth bared. I couldn’t forget it. The look in his eyes that night. After that, I fell head-over-heels in love. Nothing was too much. Whatever he asked, I’d hand it over. Seven years. That was how long I had loved this man. Before the altar. Before the mark. Before I was ever called Luna. My wolf had chosen him when I was seventeen and too foolish to understand that choosing someone didn't mean they chose you back. I'd spent seven years orbiting a man who treated my devotion like background noise — a ruffle of my hair when I did something right, a feather kiss that landed and disappeared, warmth rationed out like it cost him something. People called me a simp. I called it love. I wore both labels and told myself the difference mattered. A year ago his grandfather fell to Alpha madness. The elders passed the succession to Jake overnight, and suddenly there was a Luna position to fill, and elders to satisfy, and I was the obvious candidate — seven years devoted, no complications, already trained to want nothing from him. He brought me to the altar. We marked each other under the Moon Goddess's eyes. I thought that meant something. On our ceremony night, he turned away from me in bed. I told myself he was tired. The year we became mates, the more I attached myself to him, the more distant he grew. I could even taste his impatience in the air. "Angela." His voice cut through. "Are you listening?" "Do we have to do this?" He exhaled. Long and slow. "She's dying." "I know that." What about us? Silvia's voice was very small. What about what we built? I swallowed it. The words sat in my throat like a stone. A trace of impatience flashed across his dark eyes. He waited three seconds before saying, "She loves me," he said. "She's always respected our mate bond — never crossed the line, even when—" He stopped. Started again. "She's a good person. She's suffered enough. Don't make me believe you're the kind of woman who'd deny a dying girl this one thing." I looked at him then. The same face I had memorized a hundred times. Sharp brows. Straight nose. Thin mouth, pressed flat. The face of a man who had just rewritten cruelty into compassion and expected me to sign off on it. When did you stop smelling like ours? Silvia asked. I didn't have an answer for her. But it had started the day that she appeared in our lives. "If we sever the bond," I said carefully, "it won't come back the same." "I know what I'm asking." "Do you?" Something moved behind his eyes. Not guilt. Impatience. He waited three seconds — I counted — then said, "Yes. You—" "Fine." He blinked. I had never cut him off before. Not once in seven years. He studied me the way he'd study a threat. Eyes narrowed, jaw tight. "You timed this," he said. Low. Controlled. "You're trying to force my hand, aren't you?" I said nothing. I watched our shadows on the wall instead. Two shapes. Overlapping at the edges. Meaning nothing. Jake stubbed the cigarette out. Got dressed without a word, each movement clipped and precise, and walked out without looking back. The door slammed. The echo of it moved through the room and then it was quiet. I don't know how long I sat there. Long enough for the sheets to go cold. Long enough for Silvia to stop pacing. The bond pulled once, low in my chest, as his footsteps faded down the corridor. Habit. Seven years of my wolf tracking where he was at every moment. I pressed my hand flat against my sternum and waited until it stopped. Then something slid under the door. White envelope. No name. I crossed the room and picked it up. I'd received them before — blurry photographs, inanimate objects, nothing Jake couldn't explain. A stalker, he'd told me the first time. You could have staged these yourself, the second. I'd believed him. Or I'd wanted to. Same thing. I opened this one. One photograph. Clear. Crisp. Jake's profile caught in the foyer mirror — sharp and undeniable. His expression was open in a way I had never once seen it directed at me. Something in his eyes that I didn't have a word for, because he'd never looked at me like that. Tender. I turned it over. He came to see me again. My hands kept moving. More photographs beneath the first. I went through them one by one, flipping each to the back, reading each inscription in her neat unhurried hand — the writing of a woman with nothing to hide. He told me I'm the one in his heart. Two figures sharing an umbrella in the rain. Rainy nights are cold, aren't they? Not for me. He keeps me warm. A blurry shot of a man mid-laugh, head thrown back, every line of him unguarded. The real mistress is the one who isn't loved. Angela, you were a spur-of-the-moment choice. He admires me. He shares my passions. I'm the one he loves. I set that one down. Adrienne Jenson. I had known her name for months. Celebrity florist. The bouquet in our living room that Jake swore he'd chosen himself. I'd touched them and thought how strange it was that he'd noticed what I liked. He hadn't. She had. She's been marking our territory, Silvia said. Quiet and precise. His jacket. The packhouse entrance. The living room. Three months of her scent in places that should only carry ours. I knew something was wrong. I just couldn't make you listen. I looked at the photographs spread across the bedsheet. Silvia was utterly still inside me. Not pressing. Not howling. Just still, the way wolves go still before something ends. My hand moved to my stomach. Three days ago, a healer had pressed warm hands there and smiled. Congratulations, Luna. Jake's pup. Growing in me right now, while he slammed doors and called his dying lover a good person and asked me to simply step aside. A tear hit the photograph. Then another. I didn't wipe them. Do it, Silvia said. Her voice was very quiet. Now. Before you change your mind. I picked up Jake's lighter from the nightstand. The first photo caught fast. Her handwriting went first — the one he loves — curling black at the edges, then collapsing. I fed the rest in slowly, one by one, watching seven years of evidence reduce to ash in the glass tray. The last ember died. I set the lighter down. He had no idea what he'd just agreed to. He thought he knew me — the Angela who chased and forgave and swallowed her own hurt and stayed. He thought that woman would be here when he came back. She wouldn't. Seven years of my life. Every last one of them repaid tonight. We're done, Silvia said. I made a decision. I’d no longer love him.