My wolf was tearing at the confines of my mind, a feral howl shredding my sanity. “Mate! Chase her!”

I lunged toward the fading scent of tuberose and moonlight, but a hand clamped onto my bicep. "Kian, ignore that madwoman," Ember purred.

Her poppy scent suddenly reeked like rotting syrup. My wolf snarled, repulsed by any touch when our true mate fled. I ripped my arm free. "Don't. Touch. Me." The icy growl turned her face chalk-white.

The street was empty when I burst outside, neon bleeding into shadows. Rage ignited in my chest—not just at her escape, but at her defiance. She needed to bleed for this.

I activated the mind-link, my Alpha Command crackling like lightning: “Liam! Status report on the Woodlands sanctions. I want Asia Watkins’ pack collapsing NOW.”

The silence lasted three heartbeats. “Alpha…” Liam’s voice tightened. “The embargo crushed them within 48 hours as ordered. But thirty minutes ago… Silvermoon Pack absorbed all their trade routes. They injected ten times our capital.”

Silvermoon. The name stabbed my spine. Adella hadn’t just escaped—she’d gutted my victory. How? The question burned. A wolfless pawn couldn’t move Silvermoon’s pieces—

My thoughts shattered as polished metal glinted down the block.

The armored SUV’s door yawned open. Adella stood framed in its steel jaws, her spine rigid as a blade. The warrior beside her dropped to one knee. Moonlight caught the obsidian card he offered—etched with a wolf crowned in stars. The Gray Dynasty crest.

Ember’s poison hissed in my skull: …spreading her legs for the next Alpha…

Reality warped. The kneeling warrior wasn’t a lover. He was a subject.

And the Gray bloodline ruled Silvermoon.

My claws tore through my palms as I mind-linked my tracker:

“Larsen. Surveil Adella Gray. Document every ally, every whisper. I want proof of how deep Silvermoon’s corruption runs—and her role in it.”

The SUV devoured the night. My teeth ground bone-deep.

She’d played me. Used her name like a hidden blade.

At the Rejection Ceremony, I’d expose that blade—and break it.

Adella POV

The scent of night-blooming tuberose and warm vanilla filled my luxurious Silvermoon penthouse, a stark contrast to the sterile, suffocating air of the Blackwood estate. It had been days since I submitted the Rejection paperwork, yet Kian’s silence was deafening.

I stood by the floor-to-ceiling windows, looking down at the city that had once been my prison.

*“My Lady,”* Elder Magnus’s respectful voice echoed through our mind-link. *“The Blackwood Pack has not responded. They are deliberately stalling the official procedures.”*

A hot spark of anger ignited in my chest. Even now, Kian was trying to exert his dominance, using bureaucratic delays to keep me tethered to him. I was done waiting in the shadows. I grabbed the brown envelope containing the Rejection documents from the counter. I would force the Alpha to face what he was so desperately trying to avoid.

The Blackwood Group tower loomed like a monument to Kian’s ego—cold steel and black glass. But before I could even reach the massive revolving doors, a manicured hand clamped onto my wrist.

"Look who it is," Jean Blackwood sneered, her expensive perfume failing to mask the sour stench of her jealousy. "A discarded Omega, daring to show her face on our territory."

Beside her, Kian’s sister, Kailyn, wrinkled her nose. "Do you smell that, Mother? A pathetic mix of desperation and cheap herbs."

For six years, I had swallowed their venom. Not anymore. I ripped my arm from Jean’s grasp with a sudden, fluid strength that made her stumble backward.

"I'm here to get your Alpha's signature," I said coldly, holding up the envelope. "Once he signs this, I am done with the Blackwood family forever."

Jean’s face contorted into an ugly mask of pure rage. "You ungrateful little bitch!"

Her hand cracked across my cheek. The sharp sound echoed through the marble lobby, freezing the air. But before her triumphant smile could fully form, my White Wolf instincts flared, demanding immediate retribution.

I swung back. My palm connected with her jaw with a sickening crack. Jean shrieked as the force sent her crashing to the polished floor, her designer pearls scattering like teeth.

"Mother!" Kailyn screamed, lunging at me with her claws extended.

She never reached me. A massive, scarred hand caught Kailyn’s arm mid-air, halting her instantly.

I turned to see Kian standing near the entrance, having just stepped out of a sleek Rolls-Royce. His eyes were wide with shock, fixed on the red handprint blooming on my cheek. But it was the imposing older Alpha beside him who had stopped Kailyn. Lord Timothy Carson.

"Blackwood," Lord Timothy’s voice boomed, cold and lethal. "Is this how you allow your family to treat the heir to the Silvermoon Pack? Perhaps our billion-dollar partnership needs to be reconsidered."

The word *heir* dropped like a bomb. The color instantly drained from Kian’s face. Jean and Kailyn froze, their eyes darting between me and the furious Lord Timothy in absolute terror.

Under the crushing weight of Timothy’s glare, Jean and Kailyn muttered trembling, humiliated apologies. I didn't even look at them. I locked eyes with Kian.

"And you, Alpha Blackwood?" I mocked, my voice dripping with disdain. "Your mate is assaulted on your territory, and you just stand there? Or is the Alpha of the Blackwoods just a coward hiding behind women?"

His jaw ticked so hard I thought his teeth might shatter. The Alpha command in his blood fought against the reality of losing his most crucial business alliance. Slowly, agonizingly, the businessman won.

"I'm... sorry," Kian ground out, the words visibly choking him.

I nodded, stepping forward to slap the Rejection envelope hard against his chest. He caught it reflexively. "Don't forget to sign it."

I turned my back on him, accepting Lord Timothy’s offered arm. As we walked out of the glass doors, I could feel Kian’s furious, disbelieving gaze burning into my spine. Let him seethe. Let him order his trackers to dig into my past. They would find nothing but the impenetrable, ancient shields of the Silvermoon Pack, leaving him completely in the dark.

Kian POV

The elevator ride to my penthouse office was a blur of red-hot fury. I slammed the mahogany door, the sound cracking through the sterile space. On my desk lay the brown envelope Adella had slapped against my chest—those damn Rejection papers. A monument to my public shaming.

My inner wolf clawed at my skull, whimpering for the mate who’d walked out with another Alpha. To silence the traitorous beast, I forced myself to remember the truth about Adella Gray.

Six years ago. My grandfather, Alpha Alvah, bleeding out in a Rogue ambush near the border. When I arrived, a scentless girl crouched beside him. Adella. A wolfless Omega. Grandfather claimed she’d outwitted trained killers to save him. A ludicrous fairy tale. I knew it was staged. She was a snake using Rogues as pawns to infiltrate Blackwood.

I’d confronted Grandfather in his study. "I love Ember! I won’t bind myself to a stray!" But Alvah, desperate for some unnamed alliance he refused to detail, locked me with his Alpha Command’s crushing weight. My knees hit the floor. My freedom died that day—sacrificed to a scheming Omega’s ambition.

The memories grew darker. Three weeks ago. Ember trembling in my arms after fleeing Rogues in the wild. She pulled up her sleeve, revealing a jagged silver burn scar. "Adella discovered my Rogue blood," she wept. "She threatened to expose me unless I vanished."

That wolfless witch had exiled the woman I loved.

My phone buzzed. Security: Trail lost, Alpha.

Goddamn incompetents. It reminded me of last month—discovering Adella had hired a human PI to track me. An Omega surveilling her Alpha? The audacity still curdled my blood.

Suddenly, Ember’s scream tore through our mind-link: “Kian! My apartment!”

Her terror spiked like ice in my veins. “Show me!”

Images flooded my mind: slashed furniture, shattered glass, crimson paint like blood on the walls.

“Guards caught two Rogues fleeing,” she sobbed. “They took a dark web bounty... Techs are tracing it now—”

Before she finished, another mind-link pulsed—Liam’s voice tight: “Alpha, the IP traces to Silvermoon servers.”

Silvermoon. The name was a silver dagger through my ribs.

Adella. That "harmless" wife of mine wasn’t just a liar. She’d weaponized her newfound Pack to send assassins after Ember.

My wolf’s whimpers transformed into a roar. Our territory violated. Our chosen female threatened.

I stared at the torn Rejection papers scattered like ash on my rug. She thought she could burn my world and walk away?

I’d drag her back to Blackwood Manor.

And make her bleed for every sin.