Chapter 2

Elara POV:

The elders granted my request. The ritual would take place in two weeks, on the night of the full moon. The same night Kaelen planned his secret ceremony with Seraphina. When it was done, the bond would be broken, and my name would be erased from the pack records as if I had never existed.

I returned to the Alpha's house-his house, I corrected myself, not ours-and began to purge my life of him. I gathered the gifts he'd given me over the years. My fingers brushed against a smooth, milky stone. The first moonstone he ever gave me.

"A piece of the Goddess for my goddess," he had whispered, his voice full of a sincerity that now felt like a cruel joke.

I packed all the jewelry, the stones, the silver trinkets that marked me as the Alpha's chosen, and had them delivered anonymously to the pack treasury. The rest-letters, dried flowers, a worn t-shirt of his that I used to sleep in-I took to the fireplace. Watching the flames consume the memories was the only warmth I'd felt in days.

Kaelen came home three days later. He found me sweeping ash from the hearth.

"What's all this?" he asked, frowning at the bare mantelpiece.

"The rainy season is coming," I said, my voice even. "The den felt damp. I was just cleaning out some clutter."

He seemed to accept it, pulling me into an embrace. I stiffened as her scent clung to him. It was a cloying, sweet smell, like overripe berries. Nothing like my own scent of wild lavender and rain.

"I have a surprise for you," he murmured against my hair. "To make up for being so busy."

The surprise was the annual Pack Gala. He had it catered with all my favorite foods, filled the hall with my favorite flowers. A grand gesture to soothe his guilty conscience.

And then I saw her. Seraphina, standing near the entrance, looking completely out of place in a simple dress.

"What is she doing here?" I asked, my voice tight.

"She's never seen anything like this," Kaelen said dismissively. "I thought I'd let her have a look. It's nothing."

But it wasn't nothing. As he led me through the crowd, several pack members, those from the outer territories who didn't know me well, bowed their heads. "Luna," they murmured, their eyes on the woman walking beside their Alpha. They were looking at Seraphina.

Kaelen quickly corrected them, his voice sharp. "This is Elara, my mate." He then gestured to Seraphina. "And this is her... distant cousin. Visiting from afar."

The lie was so effortless. He protected her feelings, her reputation, at the expense of mine. I watched him lead her to the buffet table, placing delicacies on her plate, his fingers brushing away a crumb from the corner of her mouth with an intimacy that made my stomach clench.

I had to get away. I smiled, nodded, and endured the pleasantries. But the words of the guests became a chorus of my own private hell.

"We saw you and the Alpha at the charity auction last week, Luna! You looked so radiant."

"Alpha Kaelen was just telling us how he took you to see the waterfalls at the northern border. How romantic!"

"I saw you leaving the Healer's clinic together just the other day. It's wonderful to see our Alpha so devoted."

Each comment was a fresh wound. The charity auction. The waterfalls. The clinic. I hadn't been to any of those places with him.

The "Luna" they had all seen, the woman he had been parading around our territory, wasn't me. It was her.

He hadn't just taken a surrogate. He had built a whole other life with her, a life where she played my part, and I was left in the dark, the fool who still believed she was the one.