"Step back, Oscar," I said, clicking the brass latch shut on my suitcase. "You don't get to command me anymore."

"I am your Alpha," he growled, stepping into the guest room. "And you are my Luna. Unpack those bags."

Before I could answer, running footsteps thundered down the hallway.

"Elder Jonathan, please!" Ruby’s frantic voice cut through the corridor. "It has to be here! She was in the east wing right before the ceremony!"

Oscar’s head turned sharply toward the doorway.

Ruby burst in, her face streaked with tears, clutching her silk robe tightly against her collarbones. Behind her stood Elder Jonathan, Beta Thomas, and half a dozen pack warriors, their faces grim and questioning.

"What is the meaning of this?" Oscar demanded, his voice booming over the commotion. "Ruby, what happened?"

"It’s gone, Oscar," Ruby sobbed, collapsing against his arm. She pointed a trembling finger straight at me. "My father's crest. The heirloom from the Silverfang line. Someone stole it from my bedside table!"

A collective gasp went through the warriors standing in the hall.

"Watch where you point your finger, Ruby," I said, leaning against my luggage with folded arms. "I haven't set foot near your room."

"Then why did two guards see you walking out of the east corridor after the ritual?" Ruby cried, burying her face against Oscar's bare shoulder. "It’s the only thing I have left of my father! The ancestral silver crest can only be carried by his bloodline! Why would you take it?"

"Nobody is accusing anyone yet," Beta Thomas tried to intervene, raising a hand. "Let's calm down and search the living quarters properly."

"There is no need to search the whole floor," Ruby gasped out between choked breaths. "She took it because of the Luna necklace! She thinks I stole from her, so she took my father's memory to punish me! Search her room! Search her bags!"

"Search her," Oscar ordered instantly.

I stared at him. "Excuse me?"

"You heard me," Oscar said, his gray eyes cold and unmoving. "Thomas, search the room."

"Oscar, she is the Luna," Thomas protested under his breath. "You cannot simply search her belongings like a common thief."

"I said search it!" Oscar bellowed.

One of Ruby’s cousins, a hotheaded warrior named Gary, pushed past Thomas and went straight to the nightstand beside my bed. He yanked the top drawer open. Nothing. He ripped the second drawer open.

A sharp metallic clink bounced off the timber floorboards.

A heavy silver medallion rolled to a stop right at Oscar's bare feet. Carved upon its face was the howling wolf of the old Silverfang lineage.

The room fell dead silent.

Ruby let out a wail of theatrical agony, dropping to her knees to scoop the medal against her chest. "My father's badge... how could you? How could you be so cruel, Quinn?"

Murmurs erupted among the warriors in the hallway.

"She actually stole it?"

"From an orphaned guest?"

"That’s disgraceful for a Luna..."

A dry, bitter laugh bubbled up from my throat. I looked at Ruby, whose downcast eyes held a fleeting, vicious glint of triumph, and then at Gary, who stood by the empty drawer with a smug smirk.

"A convenient discovery," I said, meeting Oscar’s gaze. "I’ve been in the ritual courtyard and then straight here. I haven't opened that drawer in six months."

"The evidence is lying right on the floor, Quinn," Oscar said, his voice dropping into a harsh gravel. "Don't insult everyone's intelligence."

"Are you serious?" I took a step toward him. "You think I crept into her room, took a trinket, and shoved it into an unlocked nightstand where anyone could find it?"

"Quinn, give it back to her," Oscar said, gesturing to the silver medallion Ruby cradled. "And apologize."

My chest contracted, tight and hollow.

"You aren't even going to question this?" I asked, staring directly into the eyes of the man I had pulled through the snow five years ago. "You aren't going to check the sentry logs? You won't check the corridor cameras?"

"The cameras in the east wing malfunctioned during the storm yesterday," Oscar snapped dismissively. "You know that."

"So you just assume I'm a thief."

"I am looking at the facts," he countered, stepping closer to shield Ruby behind his back.

"Look at me, Oscar," I said, my voice dropping to a whisper that cut through the noise of the crowd. "Answer me one thing. Do you believe I did this?"

Oscar didn't blink. "Ruby wouldn't make a joke about her father's relic."

Those eight words landed like a silver blade driven straight through my ribs.

He didn't say, *I think you did it.*

He said, *Ruby wouldn't lie.*

Which meant, by default, I would. Five years of bleeding for him, five years of running his pack, five years of loyalty—all weighed less than the tears of a woman who had spent the last three years hiding in safety while I took scars for his throne.

A quiet calm settled over my racing pulse.

The mate bond between us, that glowing, golden tether linking our souls, thrummed in my chest. It felt warm, heavy, and sickeningly familiar. For years, I believed that bond was sacred. I believed it meant we were destined to protect each other above all else.

What a pathetic fantasy.

The bond didn't make a man honorable. It didn't force a man to choose you. It was just a chain.

And tonight, I was breaking it.

"You're right," I said quietly, a faint smile touching my lips. "She wouldn't joke about it. And you will never choose me."

"Quinn, stop speaking in riddles," Oscar said, frowning with impatience. "Hand over your ceremonial keys, apologize to Ruby, and we will handle your punishment within the council tomorrow."

"There will be no council tomorrow," I said.

I closed my eyes.

Deep inside my consciousness, I found the glowing silver thread that connected my inner wolf to his. The mate bond. It was pulsing with his scent of cedar and pine, anchored deep into my spiritual core.

I gathered all of my wolf's strength, forming an invisible, razor-sharp edge of will.

*Snap it.*

"Quinn, what are you doing?" Oscar's tone suddenly spiked with alarm. He reached out to grab my shoulder. "Your aura—stop!"

I didn't stop. I brought the edge down on the bond with everything I had.

*CRACK.*

An unbearable, soul-ripping agony erupted inside my chest, like iron hooks tearing through my lungs and ripping flesh from bone. My vision flashed blinding white. My knees buckled beneath the sheer violent shock of the severance.

Blood welled up in my throat, hot and metallic, spilling past my lips and running down my chin.

Across from me, Oscar stumbled backward with a strangled roar of pain. He dropped to one knee, clutching his chest with both hands, his face draining of all color.

"Quinn!" he choked out, coughing violently as the severed link snapped back into his soul like a whip. "You... you rejected the bond?!"

Elder Jonathan gasped. "The Luna severed the mate bond!"

The warriors backed away in horror, whispers turning into panicked shouts. Severing a bond by pure willpower was considered near-fatal. Most wolves died of the agony before the thread parted.

I wiped the blood from my mouth with the back of my hand, breathing through the raw, burning void in my chest.

Then I looked down at Oscar, and I laughed.

It was a clear, ringing sound that stunned the entire room into silence.

"From this day on," I said, staring at the kneeling Alpha, "you are no longer my mate. And you are no longer my Alpha."

"You're insane," Oscar rasped, dragging himself up by gripping the bedpost, his knuckles white. "You won't survive as a lone wolf! The pain will drive your beast mad within three days!"

"I survived rogue daggers in the snow to save your pathetic life," I replied, grabbing the handle of my travel bag and slinging my leather pack over my shoulder. "I'll survive losing you."

I turned my back on him.

"Stop her!" Ruby screamed from the floor. "Oscar, she disgraced the pack! She can't just walk out!"

"Let anyone try," I said without turning around, letting my suppressed warrior aura flare outward in a suffocating wave of pure pressure.

The guards in the hallway backed away, pressing themselves flat against the walls to clear a path. Nobody moved a hand. Nobody dared to breathe.

I walked down the grand staircase of the Pack House, my boots steady on the stone steps. The silver crescent pendant Ruby wore around her neck didn't matter anymore. The crown didn't matter. None of it belonged to me, and none of it could hold me.

I pushed open the heavy front doors and stepped out into the freezing midnight air.

At the edge of the Red Hill territory, past the desolate northern border where the trees grew thick and the mist never lifted, lay the forbidden lands of the Blue Moon Pack.

They were ruthless, secretive, and ruled by an Alpha who answered to no one.

I adjusted the strap of my bag against my shoulder, stepped over the boundary line, and didn't look back.