I extended the Bond Rejection Decree just as Kael Blackthorne’s voice dipped into that low, indulgent tone, his communicator pressed to his ear while he soothed yet another favored she-wolf.

“Kael. Let’s dissolve this mating.”

“Sign it. Give it one full moon cycle for the severance to finalize, and then we walk away. No bond. No claim. Nothing tying us together.”

He barely reacted. A faint hum of acknowledgment was all I got as he took the document, his gaze never leaving the middle distance. Without reading a single line, he flipped to the final page and signed—quick, careless, as if it were nothing more than a routine form.

The pen lifted. That was it.

He rose immediately after, reaching for his coat, still murmuring into the communicator, still focused on someone else.

“Alright, alright. I’m on my way now. I’ll come keep you company, okay?”

The call ended. He had already stepped halfway out when he paused, as though something belatedly crossed his mind. He turned back, one eyebrow raised in mild curiosity.

“Oh, Clara. That document you had me sign just now… what was it?”

He had already signed it. Only now did he think to ask.

The corner of my lips curved upward. The smile felt sharp, almost metallic.

“The Bond Rej—”

I didn’t even get to finish.

He waved a hand dismissively, cutting me off, impatience practically radiating off him.

“If you’re planning to purchase another den, just go ahead and do it. There’s no need to run every contract past me. I’m busy calming someone down right now. She’s been upset for days because I’ve been stuck here with you.”

That was when it clicked.

He hadn’t listened. Not even a single word.

To him, it was just another property agreement.

And really… why wouldn’t he think that?

In the worst of our fights, the thing I did most often was spend his territory wealth on sprawling estates, entire rows of ancestral dens across the northern districts. The market for those old properties had long since collapsed, yet I kept pouring billions in moon-credits into them, buying and buying, just to punish him. Just to release the pain and fury I couldn't hold inside anymore.

Back then, I still had expectations of him. That faint, stubborn remnant of love made it impossible for me to accept that he had already turned away, and so I broke apart again and again, falling into despair each time like it was the first.

But when, exactly, had he started to change?

I remembered the night we first met. It was at a moonlit lounge on the edge of Blackthorne territory.

I'd gone to collect a friend. Kael was there, drunk beyond steadiness, his wolf's aura flickering unevenly as he nearly staggered into a table. I caught his arm out of simple decency.

He looked up at me. Just that once. And from that single glance, he decided I was his.

The name Kael Blackthorne was never unknown in pack circles. Heir to the northern territories, with a face that carried the arrogance of old bloodlines and a reputation to match. The she-wolves around him rotated every three days. Half the city knew someone who'd been burned by his charm.

I had no intention of becoming one of them. I wanted nothing to do with a wolf who treated courtship like sport, so I refused him from the start.

But he didn't stop. He only sank deeper, pursuing me with a stubbornness that bordered on obsession, his gaze refusing to settle on anyone else.

On Moon Lovers Day, the entire plaza overflowed with moonflowers. For my sake he lit an arc of fire across the coastal cliffs that burned until dawn. And every time I was low, he appeared, always exactly on time.

Under that kind of relentless pursuit, the heart I'd kept still and guarded my entire life cracked open, piece by piece.

After we were together, he truly did rein himself in.

No more wandering from den to den. His schedule was mine to see, every patrol and every outing reported without my asking.

Everyone said he'd come to heel for me. That a reckless wolf settling down was the rarest gift.

I believed them.

So when he dropped to one knee under the full moon, his eyes red-rimmed and his voice rough, and asked me to take the Moon-Oath with him, I said yes almost before the words were out of his mouth.

But the mating was less than a year old when he started tangling himself with other she-wolves again.

We fought more times than I could count.

I stood in the wreckage of the main hall, howling like something inside me had come unhinged, while he just pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose, his face hollow with exhaustion.

In the end, he made a proposal so absurd my wolf went still inside my chest.

"Clara, I love you. But spending a lifetime bound to a single mate… it gets stale."

"We each take our pleasures where we find them. No feelings for anyone outside. And when we've had our fill, we come back to the den. To each other. Isn't that enough?"

I refused.

He carried on as though I hadn't said a word.

Slowly, I had been pushed to the edge of collapse.

I started fighting back the same way he had.

I took a young Alpha-born from the Royal Academy under my wing. Sylvia Stormcrest.

At first, it was nothing more than spite.

But he would call me "sister" in that gentle voice, would coax me with patience, would appear at my side the moment I was most helpless.

The night of the carriage wreck, I lay in the Healers' Lodge, and he stayed beside me, his eyes red-rimmed, accompanying me through every examination the moon-healers ordered.

He was clean, untainted. Like a shaft of light carrying no impurity at all.

Over time, my heart, torn open and riddled with wounds, was somehow mended by him, piece by careful piece.

I had thought about giving him a den, giving him gold moons.

But he wanted none of it.

He wanted only a name. A place beside me that the packs would recognize.

"Sister, leave him. Reject the bond. Try me."

He looked at me, his gaze clear and steady, as if those eyes had room for no one else in the world.

In those eyes, the version of me reflected back was not the broken, pitiful creature I felt myself to be. She was glowing.

In that moment, something finally clicked into place.

When a thing is broken, you replace it. Even pups understand that. Yet I had wasted so many years bleeding inside this moon-oath union.

My entanglement with Kael Blackthorne had been nothing more than slow self-destruction.

So I agreed.

Agreed to be with Sylvia Stormcrest.

And decided to end this wreckage of a mating once and for all.

Kael had barely left the den when my communicator chimed with a crystal-screen call from Sylvia.

On the screen, he wore a clean white shirt, moving through a kitchen with quiet ease. Soft hair fell across his forehead, his lashes impossibly long. He looked clean and gentle, and the faint scent of rain cedar seemed to drift through the connection even though I knew that was only my imagination.

"Sister, is the bond rejected?"

I was older than him. I had been through more than he could guess. And still, every time I saw that face, my pulse quickened without my permission.

I cleared my throat, forcing my voice to sound casual.

"The agreement is signed. One more moon cycle, and he and I will have no connection left."

He listened, and his lips curved slowly upward. His voice came low, carrying a thread of pleasure he couldn't quite suppress.

"Since there's no connection left, then during this time, sister is not allowed to let him touch her."

His tone was light when he said it, but underneath ran a thread of possessiveness that left no room for argument.

"When the time comes, I'll be checking."

I hadn't expected those words from him. Heat crept across my cheeks, but I kept my expression flat, scolding him with a straight face. "What nonsense is a pup like you saying?"

He watched me through the crystal screen, his gaze carrying open, undisguised possessiveness, yet in the next breath he pressed it down, his voice turning wounded and clinging. "Sister, I'm only young in years. In other ways... I'm not small at all."

My chest tightened. Afraid the conversation would spiral somewhere I couldn't control, I cut him off, coaxing him with a few soft words until he finally settled down and ended the call.

This young wolf was perfect in every way. Except that he clung too tightly.

The moment the call ended, I went out and bought a calendar.

For the next moon cycle, I lived by tearing off pages, counting the days on my fingers.

Every day that passed, I ripped away one more sheet.

From the first of October to the tenth, Kael did not come back to the den once.

But where he went, who he saw, what he did, I knew with perfect clarity.

His new fascination, Vesper Duskmere, was an intern within his pack's territory house. Every day, she posted traces of them together on the pack channel, casual and deliberate at the same time, as if making sure everyone would notice.

Afternoon tea at high-end dens. Leisurely rounds at the hunting grounds.

Standing on the terrace of a mountain estate, looking out over the lights of the city below. Sharing the hot springs at some private lodge, playing in the steam.

Strange, really. With Kael's usual restless nature, he never lingered on any one she-wolf for long. The women who had come and gone before, the longest had lasted maybe a moon cycle before he grew bored.

But this Vesper Duskmere had already lasted three months, and he still hadn't grown tired of her.

Perhaps it was precisely that unusual "longevity" that gave her the nerve. She no longer kept to her place like the other she-wolves. She'd even added me on the pack channel directly, using that quiet, deliberate way of hers to test boundaries, to provoke.

But I didn't take it to heart.

I'd already decided to seek a bond rejection. Why bother with these petty games.

Over the next few days, with nothing else to do, I cleaned the den from top to bottom.

The grooming blades I'd carefully selected for him. The formal coats he wore every day, the ones I'd pressed by hand. The limited-edition moon-phase timepiece I'd stayed up all night to claim at a moonlit auction.

No matter how much or how little something was worth, if I had given it to him, I packed it up and threw it out.

What I discarded along with it was every bit of grievance from this mating, and every piece of the heart I'd once given without reservation.

I had made up my mind. A clean break from the past. A fresh start.

Two more days passed before he finally came back.

He stood in the main hall, looking at the estate that was noticeably emptier, and his brow furrowed. "Clara, you threw out my things?"

I flipped through the journal in my hands without looking up. "I did."

"I bought them. I can toss them if I want. Is there a problem? Besides, you never come back to the den. No point keeping things no one uses."

He clearly assumed I was still angry about what happened last time, that this was just me lashing out.

He walked over and sat beside me, his tone carrying that careless, offhand reassurance. "Didn't we agree a long time ago? We each do as we please outside these walls, no real feelings for anyone else. Why are you getting worked up over this again?"

The same old line.

No matter what he did, he could always find a reason to excuse himself. And I, his Luna in name only, could only silently absorb every hurt he brought, until even voicing a single complaint felt like too much.

But now, I no longer wanted to get tangled up in these meaningless things with him.

I closed the journal and stood, heading for the stairs. My voice was cold, without a trace of warmth. "You're overthinking it. I don't care at all."

He took that as me pretending not to care, and immediately stood to catch my hand.

Under my impatient gaze, he pulled an invitation from his coat and placed it in my palm.

"Stop being angry. Tomorrow I'll take you to the auction. Whatever catches your eye, bid on it. A chance to unwind. Alright?"

My first instinct was to refuse.

But when my eyes landed on the Silvercrest Auction House crest on the invitation, I changed my mind.

I was going to leave him anyway. Spending his gold moons to buy myself something nice didn't seem like a loss.

So I nodded.

At five in the afternoon, his car pulled up in front of the estate right on time.

I picked up my bag and came downstairs, reaching for the door, and saw a familiar face.

Vesper Duskmere.

She was clutching a large bag of snacks and drinks, settled firmly in the front passenger seat, smiling at me with a look that was all wide-eyed innocence.

"Luna, I get a little motion-sick. Would you mind terribly sitting in the back today?"

The flash of triumph at the bottom of her eyes didn't escape me. I lowered my gaze, and in my peripheral vision caught the ornament hanging from the mirror.

It was a custom charm, a small crystal wolf with a ribbon, and etched along the ribbon was a line of script.

Little Princess Vesper's Exclusive Seat.

I said nothing. I didn't move aside.

Kael seemed to sense my mood, and once again, with that low, impatient coaxing tone, tried to smooth things over.

"Vesper's never been to an auction before. I'm just showing her around. She's delicate, Clara. Give way to her."

Give way?

Of course I could.