POV: Evelyn
"Kneel, Evelyn."
Ashton's voice filled the pack hall. Nobody breathed.
I stood in the middle of the room. Two hundred wolves stared at me. Candles burned along the walls. The stone floor was cold under my bare feet.
"Why?" I asked.
"Because I am your Alpha."
"I am your wife."
"Not for long."
Charlotte stepped out from behind him. She wore white. Luna white. The same silk I had picked for my own wedding five years ago.
My stomach dropped.
"Charlotte?" I whispered. "What are you doing?"
She gave me a small smile. "I'm sorry, Evie. I tried to tell you."
She had not tried. Last week she cried on my couch. She held my hand. She called me the sister of her heart.
That was a lie. Now I knew it.
Ashton raised his hand. The room went silent.
"I, Alpha Ashton Blackwood of the Crescent Ridge Pack," he said, "reject you, Evelyn Hart, as my mate and my Luna."
"Ashton, don't…"
"I break the bond. Let the moon be my witness."
The pain hit me like fire. It started in my chest and tore outward. My knees slammed into the stone. I screamed. I could not stop. Inside me, my wolf howled once. Then she went quiet.
Too quiet.
I pressed both hands to the floor. I shook. Tears ran down my face and dropped onto the stone.
Nobody moved to help me.
That morning, he kissed my forehead before he left the room. He said, "Wear the gray dress tonight. The pack will want to see you." I thought it was a ceremony. I thought it was a gift.
It was a stage.
I wore the gray dress. I stood in front of two hundred people. And he cut me open.
Five years. That was how long I had been his Luna. When his father died, the pack turned on Ashton. They called him weak. They said he would never be the Alpha his older brother was. I stood beside him every single day. I fixed the pack's money. I ended the fights. I healed the sick. I held that pack together with my own two hands.
Now I knelt in front of all of them.
"Ashton." A chair scraped. His mother, Marilyn, was on her feet. Her face was white. "Stop this. Right now."
"Sit down, Mother."
"She is your wife…"
"Sit. Down."
Marilyn sat. Her hands shook in her lap. She looked at me. Her eyes said, I am sorry. I cannot help you.
I looked away.
Elder Thompson Donald cleared his throat. He was old, with a thin gray beard. He held the pack's law book against his chest. "The rejection is clean," he said. "The moon has seen it." He did not look at me either.
Ashton walked closer. His boots stopped by my face.
"Look at me."
I looked up. His green eyes were cold. They used to be warm. I remembered that. I hated that I remembered.
"Why?" My voice cracked. "Just tell me why."
"You know why."
"No. I don't."
He laughed. It was not a happy sound. "Five years, Evelyn. Five years in my bed. And what did you give me?"
I said nothing.
"No pups. No heir. Nothing." He turned to the crowd. "A pack needs an heir. My Luna could not give me one."
Whispers ran across the room. Someone laughed. A woman in the back said, "Poor thing." She did not sound sorry.
My face burned. I wanted the floor to open and swallow me.
I had cried over this alone. In the bathroom, with the water running so he would not hear. Every month. The healer told me, very gently, that my body might never carry a child. I told one person in the whole world.
Him.
"You told them," I said. "You told them my secret."
"It's not a secret anymore."
Charlotte slid her hand across her stomach. Slowly. On purpose.
I stared at it.
"No," I said.
"Three months." His voice went soft for her. It never went soft for me anymore. "Charlotte carries my heir."
Three months.
"Three months ago," I said, "you held me in our bed. You told me you loved me."
He shrugged.
He shrugged.
Something inside me went still. I stopped crying. I wiped my face with the back of my hand. I stood up. My legs shook, but I stood.
"Give me the ring," he said.
I looked down. The silver ring with the blue moonstone. It was his grandmother's. I tried to slide it off. It stuck. Ashton grabbed my wrist and yanked it free. My knuckle split and bled.
He dropped the ring into Charlotte's palm. She put it on. It fit.
"Take nothing," Ashton said. "Everything in this house belongs to the pack. Your clothes. Your books. All of it."
"My sister…"
"Is free to go. I am not cruel."
I almost laughed. Almost.
I walked down the long aisle between the wolves. Nobody met my eyes. As I passed Charlotte, she leaned close.
"You were always too soft, Evie," she whispered. "That is why he got bored."
I stopped. I looked her right in the eye.
"And you are always hungry, Charlotte," I said. "That is why he will get bored of you too."
Her smile fell off her face.
I walked on. My hands were shaking. I did not let her see.
Cold air hit my face at the door. My bare feet burned on the stone steps. I thought of the first time I walked into this house. I was twenty. I was so proud. I thought I was starting a family.
I was starting a prison.
A guard pulled open the heavy doors. Rain poured down outside.
My little sister stood in the rain. Mary was nineteen. She held two bags. Her hair was soaked flat. Her eyes were red and swollen.
"Marilyn sent word," she said. "I packed what I could. Evie, I'm so sorry…"
That was what broke me. Not the pain. Not the ring. Her face.
I fell into her arms and sobbed. Ugly sobs. Loud ones. She held me tight in the rain, the same way I held her the night our parents died.
"I've got you," she whispered. "I've got you. I'll always have you."
"I'm so tired, Mary."
"I know."
Behind us, the doors opened again.
"Evelyn."
I turned. Ashton stood under the porch light. Charlotte hung on his arm.
"You'll want a divorce," he said. "Fine. Send the papers. But hear me. You leave this marriage with nothing, or you don't leave at all."
"I will leave," I said.
"We'll see."
The doors shut. The sound echoed inside my empty chest.
Mary and I walked down the dark road. Rain soaked my thin dress. My wolf stayed silent. She was not dead. I could feel her curled up in a corner of my mind, hurt and small.
I thought nothing could be worse than that night.
I was wrong. Before the sun came up, a stranger would make me forget my own name.