Chapter 1

For three years, I was the Luna for the powerful Alpha Kaelen. He showered me with gifts but never with love. When he touched me, his eyes looked through me, searching for a ghost I couldn't see.

When my human father was dying, I reached out to him through our sacred mind-link, begging for my Mate's comfort. He blocked me.

I called for him ninety-nine times while my father died alone. Two days later, our Beta sent me a vision of Kaelen in Paris, holding my aunt, Lyra, with a tenderness he had never once shown me. When he returned, he lied effortlessly, blaming the distance for the broken link.

I found the truth locked in his private study. It was a shrine to her. His diary revealed everything: our first meeting, the rogue attack where he saved me-all of it was a lie, staged so he could have a substitute for the woman he truly loved.

I was just a vessel for her bloodline, and the pup I carried was conceived from that lie. So I tricked him into signing two scrolls. The first was a protocol to magically hide my pregnancy. The second was a blank rejection form, which I signed and filed with the Elders before walking onto a ship bound for a new continent, erasing myself from his world forever.

Chapter 1

ELARA POV:

For three years, I had been Alpha Kaelen's Luna.

Our Pack, the Blackmoon Pack, was a corporate empire disguised as a sprawling family, and he was its CEO, its king, its Alpha. To the world, he was a ruthless businessman. To our people, he was a leader born of strength and ancient blood.

To me, he was my Mate. The one the Moon Goddess had supposedly crafted for my soul.

He showered me with gifts. A penthouse overlooking the city, closets filled with clothes I never wore, cars I never drove. He gave me everything a she-wolf could want, except for the one thing I craved: him.

When he touched me, it was with a desperation that wasn't for me. His hands would grip my shoulders, his eyes would look through me, and his scent-a powerful mix of pine and winter frost-would overwhelm me. It felt less like love and more like a conquest, as if he were trying to possess a ghost by holding me.

I told myself it was just his Alpha nature. Powerful. Dominant. Overwhelming. I was the luckiest she-wolf in the Pack, the envy of all.

I was a fool.

The truth began with a scream that no one but me could hear. My human father was dying. He wasn't Pack, but he was my blood. I reached for Kaelen through our Mind-Link, the invisible thread that connects a Mate to their Alpha, a sacred bond that should never be broken.

"Kaelen, please. I need you. My father... he's going."

Silence.

I sent it again, a desperate plea filled with pain. "Kaelen!"

A wall slammed down in my mind. A cold, hard barrier. He had blocked me. It was an act of such brutal finality it felt like a physical blow, knocking the air from my lungs.

I called for him ninety-nine times. Each time, my call hit that silent wall and died.

My father died alone. I grieved alone.

On the second day of my silent agony, a flicker of an image appeared in my mind. It wasn't from Kaelen. It was from our Beta, Marcus. He was Kaelen's second-in-command, loyal to a fault, but his loyalty was to the Pack first. I'd always known Marcus worried Kaelen's coldness was a weakness, a rot that could threaten us all from the top down. The image he sent wasn't just pity; it was a warning. A call to action.

Kaelen, standing on a rain-slicked street in Paris, his arms wrapped around a woman. He held her with a tenderness I had never known, his head buried in her neck as if breathing in her very soul.

My own soul fell into an icy cavern. I knew that woman. I knew her silhouette, the way she held her head.

It was my aunt, Lyra. My mother's younger sister.

Three days later, Kaelen returned. He walked into our sterile, silent home, his face a mask of weary concern.

"I had to handle an emergency with the European division," he said, his voice smooth as polished stone. "The Mind-Link is unstable across continents. I'm sorry I wasn't here."

The lie was so effortless, so clean.

I didn't cry. I didn't scream. I simply looked at him, my heart a frozen stone in my chest.

"I missed you," I said, my voice hollow. "To make it up to me, there are two scrolls I need you to sign. An old Pack tradition for when an Alpha is away during a time of need."

Guilt flickered in his dark eyes. He would do anything to appear the doting Mate. "Of course, my love. Anything."

He followed me to the great oak table. I laid out two ancient-looking parchments. He barely glanced at them before pressing his thumb into the wax seal, his Alpha sigil stamping his approval in blood-red.

He had no idea what he'd just done.

The first scroll was a "Cub Life-Link Severance Protocol," an obscure herbalist agreement that would mask the life signs of a fetus, making it appear as if it had never existed.

The second was a blank Rejection Acceptance form, already bearing my signature. All it needed was the proof of his rejection to become binding.

That night, I did something I had never dared to do. I entered his private study, the Alpha's Den. He'd always said it was for Pack business only.

There were no business files.

The room was a shrine. The air was thick with her scent, a faint perfume of lavender and vanilla that clung to the leather chairs and the heavy drapes. The walls were covered in her portraits. Lyra laughing, Lyra reading, Lyra in her wolf form.

On the desk was a leather-bound journal, written in the old wolf tongue. It was his diary. A ten-year saga of his love for her.

And there, on the last page he'd written, was the truth that shattered the last piece of my heart. Our meeting, the "rogue attack" where he had saved me, the moment I thought the Moon Goddess had delivered my hero to me... it was all a lie. He had staged it.

He chose me because I looked like her. He marked me because I carried her bloodline.

All his affection, all his touches, all his gifts... they were just reflections cast by a man staring at the ghost of another woman.

I walked out of that room, the journal clutched in my hand. I found the Pack's dark healer, an old she-wolf who dealt in secrets and forbidden herbs.

It was time to activate the protocol. This cub, conceived in a lie, would not be born into a world where it wasn't truly wanted. It would simply... disappear.

And so would I.

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