I didn't need the cards to know this. I could feel the lie clinging to her aura like cheap perfume, a cloying sweetness hiding something rotten. But clients paid for the theater of it all.
"There's...another woman?" she whispered, her voice cracking.
"More than that," I corrected gently. "There's another home. Maybe even another family. The connection you thought was exclusively yours has been severed for a long time."
The dam broke. Sobs wracked her small frame, raw and ugly. I pushed the box of tissues across the small table. My violet eyes watched her, not with pity, but with the detached weariness of a surgeon observing a necessary amputation. I saw this every day. Broken bonds, shattered trust. It was the air I breathed.
After she paid in cash, her hands still trembling, I walked her to the door of my small downtown apartment that doubled as my office. Once she was gone, a familiar throb started behind my eyes. I pressed the heels of my palms into my sockets, trying to push the headache away. It was a side effect of peering into the messy lives of others.
I needed to ground myself. I needed him.
I closed my eyes, reaching out through the invisible tether that bound me to my mate. The mind-link. The sacred connection between an Alpha and his Luna.
Barth?
Silence.
Not the usual comfortable silence of him being busy. This was a dead silence. A void. Like screaming into a vacuum.
My heart stuttered. A cold fist clenched in my stomach.
I tried again, pushing my thoughts toward him with more force. Barth, I'm going to be late tonight.
Nothing. The link was a one-way street, ending in a solid brick wall. He had blocked me.
An Alpha never, ever severs the link with his Luna without warning. It was the ultimate alarm bell, a signal of extreme distress or...betrayal.
The headache intensified, sharp and piercing. A cold dread, colder than the Seattle wind rattling my windowpane, seeped into my bones. It was a familiar cold, the one I felt in my darkest moments, the chilling sensation of being utterly alone, abandoned by the Moon Goddess herself.
I didn't hesitate. I grabbed my keys and my worn leather jacket. My purse was still on the table, Chloe's crumpled cash spilling out. I ignored it.
I knew where he would be.
The drive to "The Crimson Fang," the Graystone Pack's exclusive supernatural club, was a blur. I hated that place. The pulsing music was a physical assault, the flashing lights designed to disorient. It was a playground for the pack's elite, a place where deals were made and secrets were kept.
I strode through the main entrance, my Luna status a key that opened any door. The guards, two hulking warriors, saw me and immediately looked uncomfortable, but they stepped aside.
The wall of sound hit me. I bypassed the writhing bodies on the dance floor, my gaze fixed on the staircase leading to the VIP section. My wolf, a presence usually so quiet within me it was almost non-existent, stirred with a low growl of anxiety.
At the end of the second-floor corridor, I saw him. Marcus, Barth's Beta. He was standing guard outside the main suite, his arms crossed, his posture rigid.
He saw me, and his eyes widened in panic. He moved to block my path.
"Luna," he said, his voice a little too loud over the distant thud of the bass. "The Alpha is in an important meeting."
His eyes darted away, refusing to meet mine. A dead giveaway.
My gaze drifted past his shoulder to the heavy oak door. It was slightly ajar. From the crack, I could hear a woman's soft, tinkling laughter.
And then, I smelled it.
Underneath the cloying mix of sweat, alcohol, and expensive cologne, I caught a familiar scent. Not just Barth's signature cedar and winter frost, but something else woven through it. A sweet, almost sickeningly innocent fragrance of vanilla and cherry blossom.
Elna's perfume. My adoptive sister. The orphaned human girl my parents had taken in while I was missing as a child, who had learned exactly how to smile, how to charm, how to make everyone forget the daughter they had lost. When I came home at six years old, broken and strange and unable to fit into the perfect mold she had already filled, they looked at me with disappointment. Why couldn't I be more like her? She was the sweet one, the beloved one, the one everyone adored. And now, it seemed, she had claimed my husband too.
My blood ran cold.
"Move," I said. My voice was quiet, but it held a new, sharp edge.
"Luna, I can't-"
I didn't wait for him to finish. I pushed past him, my hand hitting the heavy door. It swung open.
The scene inside was a perfect, cruel tableau.
Barth was slouched on a plush velvet sofa, his tie loosened, his shirt half-unbuttoned, exposing the hard planes of his chest. And sitting on his lap, straddling him with her legs wrapped around his waist, was Elna. My adoptive sister. The girl who had already taken my parents, my home, my place in the family. And now she had taken my husband too. Her dress was bunched around her thighs, her fingers tangled in his hair, her lips still hovering inches from his as if they had just broken apart from a deep, consuming kiss.
She was holding a strawberry, her fingers delicately poised to place it between his lips. His large hand was resting possessively on her slim waist, his thumb tracing slow, lazy circles against the bare skin where her dress had ridden up. They looked less like siblings and more like lovers caught in an intimate moment.
The laughter died in Elna's throat. Their heads snapped toward me.
Barth's sharp, amber wolf eyes widened, first in shock, then in a flash of pure, unadulterated annoyance.
Elna, the consummate actress, gasped and slid from his lap like a startled fawn. Her face was a mask of panic, but underneath it, in the slight curl of her lips, I saw a flicker of triumphant provocation. She made no move to fix her dress, letting the disheveled fabric speak volumes about what I had interrupted.
I stood in the doorway, the thumping bass from downstairs suddenly sounding like my own heart failing. The air in my lungs turned to ice. I couldn't breathe. My fingers felt numb, my stomach a knot of writhing snakes.
Seven years.
Seven years of playing the perfect Luna. Seven years of shouldering the responsibilities, of managing the pack's welfare, of smiling at pack gatherings while my own soul withered from his neglect.
Seven years of being a placeholder. A duty.
All of it, a fucking joke.
Seven years of watching her play the sweet, innocent sister. Seven years of catching her scent on my husband's clothes and telling myself I was imagining things. She had already taken my family. Now she had taken my mate. There was nothing left.
I felt the fragile connection I still held with the Moon Goddess, the one I fought for every single day, tremble violently. It was fraying, threatening to snap under the weight of this one, perfect, crystalline moment of agony.
I didn't scream. I didn't cry.
I just stood there and looked at him. At the man the Goddess had told me was my other half.
And as he looked back, his expression hardening into a cold mask, I felt the last bit of warmth in my violet eyes extinguish, leaving nothing but frozen ash.
He stood up, his tall frame casting a long shadow. "What are you doing here?" His voice was ice.
A bitter, brittle smile touched my lips. It didn't reach my eyes.
I didn't answer him.
I just turned around and walked away, each step on the plush carpet sounding like the crack of breaking ice.
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