Chapter 1

My fated mate, Alpha Liam, called our love a fairytale blessed by the Moon Goddess.

But fairytales are lies. I discovered his was a pregnant mistress he publicly called "my queen."

She sent me selfies wearing the sacred Mating necklace he gave me, while our pack whispered I was just the "bloodline problem" to be handled once his true heir was born.

So on our anniversary, I handed him a gift.

Inside were divorce papers and my official rejection.

Then, I disappeared.

Chapter 1

Maya POV:

The necklace felt cold against my skin.

Liam called it the "Moon Goddess's Tear," a teardrop-shaped sapphire so deep and blue it seemed to hold the night sky within it.

He'd fastened it around my neck on our Mating Ceremony, his voice thick with emotion as he declared me his, the orphaned she-wolf everyone believed was merely human, the greatest miracle the Goddess had ever granted him.

The memory of our first meeting assaulted me, a phantom limb that still ached. The moment I saw him, my world tilted.

A scent, like a winter storm crashing through a forest of ancient pines, had flooded my senses, making my knees weak.

My heart had hammered a frantic, primal rhythm against my ribs, and deep within me, a voice I'd never heard before-the voice of my own dormant wolf-had roared a single, possessive word: Mine!

To the world, we were a fairytale.

But fairytales are lies.

I ran my thumb over the gem, my eyes drifting to the second phone hidden beneath a loose floorboard in my closet. It was a cheap, disposable thing, a human device he couldn't access. A device he didn't know existed.

The Mind-Link, the sacred, unguarded bridge that is supposed to connect the very souls of a Mated pair, was supposed to be a channel of absolute trust. It was a constant stream of thought and feeling, a way for a Luna to always know her Alpha's heart.

But with Liam, there was a wall. A smooth, polite barrier I could never push through. He said it was to protect my "delicate, human-raised mind" from the brutalities of Alpha business.

I now knew it was to hide the scent of another she-wolf that clung to him like a stain. It was faint, always scrubbed away, but my wolf-the part of me that had explosively awakened on my eighteenth birthday-could smell it. It smelled of synthetic cherry blossoms and desperation.

It smelled like Ava Sinclair.

The proof hadn't come from a vision or a slip of his tongue, but from the garish, blinking screen of a social media app. Ava, a popular she-wolf influencer from our own Goldblood Pack, was live-streaming, batting her eyelashes at her phone and thanking her followers for their gifts.

And then a username flashed across the screen, gifting her a virtual "crown" worth thousands of dollars. EmpireWolf.

"Oh, my Alpha," she'd purred, a triumphant smirk on her face. "Thank you. You always know how to treat your queen."

My blood ran cold. My queen.

Then, a few weeks later, I was at the pack clinic for a routine check-up-one of Liam's little rituals to monitor my "unusual bloodline's fragility." As I waited, Ava walked out of the fertility ward, a hand resting possessively on her slightly rounded stomach.

But it wasn't the baby bump that made my breath catch. It was the bracelet on her wrist. A delicate chain of silver and moonstones, an ancient Goldstein family heirloom passed down from Luna to Luna. The bracelet Liam had told me was being "restored" for our official anniversary.

The final confirmation had been the pack dinner. Liam's Beta, Marc Chen, raised a glass, his words slurring just enough to feign drunkenness.

"To the Alpha," Marc had said, a smug look on his face. "A man who knows how to handle his... assets. A true Alpha can balance duty and pleasure."

A few of the other warriors chuckled, their eyes darting between me and the empty seat where Ava was supposed to be. They all knew. They were all in on the joke, and I was the punchline.

I thought back to the moments that had made me fall for him. The night of my first Shift, my bones breaking and reforming in agony, he had held me, his powerful Alpha presence a soothing balm on my fractured soul, whispering that he would keep me safe.

When a Rogue wolf's silver-laced dagger had left me bleeding out, the cursed metal burning in my veins and preventing my wolf from healing, he'd defied the pack Elders, slicing open his own palm and forcing his life-giving heart's blood past my lips to save me.

He hadn't been saving me. He had been taming me.

I closed my eyes, the words of my vow at our ceremony echoing in my mind, a promise made before the Moon Goddess herself. "If you lie to me, Liam Goldstein," I had whispered, my hand in his. "A true lie, a lie that breaks the heart of this bond, I will ask the Moon Goddess to sever our connection. I will disappear from your life as if I had never existed."

My eyes snapped open. The decision was made.

I picked up the burner phone and dialed a number I had memorized. The voice on the other end was electronically distorted. "Phoenix."

"This is Nightingale," I said, my voice steady. "I'm activating the plan. I need you to erase Maya Goldstein. The Luna-to-be of the Goldblood Pack."

An hour later, Liam came home. He smelled of pine, winter, and the faint, lingering trace of another woman.

"Border skirmish with some Rogues," he said, his voice a low, tired rumble. He didn't meet my eyes. He opened a velvet box, identical to the one on my dresser. Inside was the Moon Goddess's Tear. "I had the Elders re-enchant it for our anniversary. For protection."

A lie. A perfect, beautiful lie.

I smiled, a brittle thing. Later that night, while he slept, I took an identical empty box. Inside, I placed two documents: a signed divorce petition for the human courts, and a formal Rejection application, written in the old ink of our kind.

The paper was just a symbol for him.

I knew the true severing required me to speak the ancient words to his face, a final, agonizing ritual I wasn't sure I had the strength for. But this... this would be the first blow.

The next morning, I handed it to him. "Happy anniversary, my love," I said sweetly. "Don't open it for two weeks. I want it to be a surprise."