"Get up."
Ethan's hand closed around my upper arm, fingers digging in hard enough to bruise. He hauled me off the bed where I'd collapsed onto the floor, my legs refusing to support me.
"What are you doing?" My voice came out broken, barely a whisper.
"What I should have done weeks ago." He dragged me toward the door. Cora had already dressed, her red dress clinging to curves I'd watched her perfect in my bathroom mirror just last week. She followed us down the stairs without a word, her heels clicking against the hardwood.
"Ethan, please." I tried to pull free but his grip only tightened. "You don't have to do this."
"Yes, I do." He shoved open the front door. The Blood Moon hung heavy in the sky, swollen and crimson like a wound that wouldn't close. "You think I can just let this fade quietly? Let people wonder why the Alpha's son is still connected to a scentless wolf?"
The street had filled with pack members. They lined both sides, drawn by instinct to witness whatever the Blood Moon would reveal. I recognized faces from the market, from pack gatherings, from the coffee shop where I'd served them for years. Their eyes tracked us as Ethan pulled me forward.
No one moved to help.
"The square," Cora murmured. "Everyone will be there for the ceremony."
My wolf finally stirred, clawing up from wherever she'd retreated. She wasn't fighting Ethan's hold. She was fighting me, trying to force a shift that my broken genetics wouldn't allow. The pain of her struggle tore through my chest.
"Stop," I gasped. "Please, my wolf, stop."
But she wouldn't. She was screaming inside my mind, a sound that had no voice but shredded my thoughts anyway. She'd been quiet my whole life, accepting our defect with silent resignation. Now she raged.
The pack square opened before us like a mouth. Stone plaza, old buildings pressing close on all sides, torches already blazing in iron brackets. The entire pack had gathered, hundreds of wolves standing in loose circles, their attention snapping to us the moment we entered.
Ethan dragged me to the center. The stone was smooth beneath my feet, worn down by generations of wolves performing ceremonies just like this one.
"No." I tried to dig my heels in but he was stronger, always had been. "Ethan, don't do this to me. Not in front of everyone."
He released my arm and I stumbled, catching myself on my hands and knees. The stone was cold. The Blood Moon's light painted everything the color of fresh blood.
"Haven Willow." Ethan's voice rang out, formal and final. He'd shifted into his Alpha tone, the one his father had trained into him since childhood. "I, Ethan Vale, son of the Vale pack and heir to the Alpha line, hereby reject you as my fated mate under the light of the Blood Moon."
Gasps rippled through the crowd. Someone's wolf howled, a mournful sound that others took up until the square filled with their grief.
Not for me. For the bond being broken. For the sacred tie being severed.
I pushed myself up to my knees, hands pressed flat against the stone. "You already chose her. Why do you need to do this?"
"Because you are released from any bond or claim I may have placed upon you." He kept speaking as if I hadn't said anything, the words ritualistic and rehearsed. "You are free to find another, should any wolf be willing to accept a mate who cannot provide what is owed."
The last part landed like a physical blow. Murmurs spread through the assembled pack.
"Scentless," someone whispered.
"Can't even mark properly."
"What Alpha would claim her?"
Cora moved to Ethan's side, sliding her hand into his. Her scent rolled over the square, jasmine and vanilla and satisfied female. She'd won. She wanted everyone to know it.
My wolf clawed harder. Blood filled my mouth where I'd bitten through my tongue trying to keep from screaming.
"Accept the rejection," Ethan commanded. "Say the words, Haven."
I looked up at him. The boy I'd loved. The man I'd believed fate had chosen for me. His eyes glowed gold in the darkness, his wolf enforcing his will through the mate bond that still connected us.
For now.
"I..." The words stuck in my throat. My wolf was screaming. The bond was fraying. Everything hurt.
"Say it."
"I accept." The words ripped out of me like flesh tearing. "I accept your rejection."
The mate mark on my chest, the one that had appeared three months ago when he first claimed me, flared white-hot. I screamed, hands flying to my chest, trying to claw the burning symbol out of my skin.
The bond snapped.
I felt it break like a rope pulled too tight, the severed ends whipping back into my chest with enough force to stop my heart. I couldn't breathe. Couldn't think. The world tilted sideways and the stone rushed up to meet me.
Then the sky spoke.
"Unworthy."
The voice came from everywhere and nowhere at once. Ancient. Feminine. Absolute. The Blood Moon blazed brighter, its light turning from crimson to silver-white, so bright it hurt to look at.
Luna.
The Moon Goddess herself, manifesting through her sacred light.
"Unworthy wolves burn in my light." Each word was a judgment carved into reality. "Those who cannot scent cannot bond. Those who cannot bond cannot serve."
My chest exploded in silver fire.
I tried to scream but no sound came out. The mate mark wasn't just burning now. It was consuming me, spreading across my skin in branching lines like lightning frozen in flesh. Every nerve ending ignited. Every breath was glass in my lungs.
The pack backed away. Ethan pulled Cora behind him, his face shocked but not sorry. Never sorry.
"Luna's judgment," someone breathed.
"She's being purged."
"The goddess is burning out the false bond."
I collapsed onto the stone, convulsing, my body arching as the silver fire burrowed deeper. My wolf was still screaming but her voice was fading, like she was being pulled away from me into some vast darkness.
Through the agony, I saw Luna's light condensing above me. Taking shape. A woman's form made of moonlight and cruelty, beautiful enough to break hearts just by existing.
She looked down at me with eyes that held no mercy.
"Defective," she whispered, and her voice was inside my head now, inside my bones. "You were never meant to survive."
The mark on my chest flared one final time, so bright the world went white.
Then I was falling.
Falling through stone.
Falling through light.
Falling through the space between heartbeats where nothing exists but ending.
My last thought before the darkness swallowed me whole was that my wolf had finally gone silent.
-----
I woke up dying.
That was the only way to describe it. The pain from the square had followed me into unconsciousness and dragged me back out the other side, but worse now. So much worse.
I was moving. Stumbling. My legs carried me forward through instinct alone because my mind had shattered into too many pieces to give them orders.
Trees rose around me. The forest at the edge of pack territory, the one where young wolves learned to hunt and old wolves went to die alone. My feet were bare. I'd lost my shoes somewhere between the square and here.
Blood dripped from my chest, soaking through my shirt. Not red blood. Silver. It caught the moonlight as it fell, each drop glowing like captured starlight before it hit the ground.
My blood smells like moonlight and ash.
The thought came distant and dreamlike, like it belonged to someone else.
The rejection bond was still tearing itself apart inside me. I could feel it, phantom ropes of connection that no longer had anywhere to anchor, writhing through my chest and shredding everything they touched. Lungs. Heart. Ribs. All of it burning with silver fire that wouldn't go out.
I pressed my hand against my chest. My palm came away wet and glowing.
"Help." The word came out as a whisper. "Someone help me."
But there were no wolves in this part of the forest. No one to hear me. The pack was still back at the square, probably celebrating Ethan's freedom. Probably toasting Cora's victory.
I stumbled over a root and went down hard, palms scraping against bark. The impact sent fresh waves of agony through my chest. I stayed there on my hands and knees, gasping, watching silver blood drip onto fallen leaves.
My wolf was gone.
I could feel the absence where she used to be, a hollow space inside my mind that echoed when I reached for her. Luna had burned her out. Purged her. Left me empty.
"No." I pushed myself up. Kept walking. Had to keep walking because if I stopped I would lie down and never get up again. "You're still there. You have to still be there."
Silence answered me.
The trees opened suddenly onto a clearing I didn't recognize. A stream cut through the center, its water black in the moonlight. But the surface reflected something else. Not the forest canopy above. Not the Blood Moon.
Stars.
Thousands of them, maybe millions, reflected in water that shouldn't be able to hold their light. The stream had become a river of reflected stars, impossibly deep, impossibly bright.
I stood at the edge, swaying. My chest was still burning. The silver blood was still flowing. I could feel my heartbeat slowing, each pump weaker than the last.
This was where I would die.
The thought came calm and certain. I'd survived the betrayal. Survived the rejection. Survived Luna's judgment. But I wouldn't survive this. The bond was eating me from the inside out and there was nothing left to fight it with.
"I'm sorry," I whispered to my absent wolf. To my mother. To whatever part of me had believed I could be enough. "I'm sorry I wasn't stronger."
My legs gave out.
I fell forward.
The river of stars rose up to meet me and I didn't try to stop it. The water was cold, so cold it burned worse than the fire in my chest. It closed over my head, filling my mouth, my lungs, pulling me down into depths that shouldn't exist in a stream barely three feet wide.
I opened my eyes beneath the surface.
Stars surrounded me. Not reflections anymore but real stars, burning in an ocean of darkness that stretched in every direction. I was drowning in space itself, in the cold void between worlds.
My body stopped fighting. The pain began to fade. The silver blood streaming from my chest mixed with starlight and dissolved into something that looked like smoke.
Far above me, or below, or maybe all around, I saw the Blood Moon. But it wasn't red anymore. It was white. Pure white. And it was crying.
Tears of light fell from its face, streaming past me into the darkness.
I reached for them but my hand passed through like they weren't real. Like I wasn't real.
My lungs gave up their last air.
My heart gave up its last beat.
The river of stars swallowed me whole, and I didn't resurface.