Ava POV:

I couldn't leave without saying goodbye. Not to him, but to the girl I used to be.

Maya had arranged a discreet extraction—a black sedan waiting near the border to carry me away from this life. But I asked the driver to wait.

I slipped through the shadows of the Moonstone Pack territory, fighting the throb in my healing leg with every step. The moon was high, a cold, unblinking eye casting long, skeletal shadows across the forest floor.

My feet betrayed me, dragging me toward the one place I should have avoided: the ancient Laurel tree. It was the highest point in the territory, the place where the air always smelled crisp and clean. It was our place.

Or it had been.

As I crested the hill, my breath hitched, and my heart slammed against my ribs. I wasn't alone.

Ethan and Chloe were standing beneath the sprawling branches. The moonlight caught the silver thread of Chloe's expensive dress, making her shimmer like a mirage.

She was leaning against the trunk, her body pressed into Ethan's side. He had his arm around her waist, his face softened by a smile I hadn't seen directed at me in years.

I froze behind a cluster of bushes, the cloying, artificial scent of vanilla and roses instantly choking out the fresh pine air.

"Look, baby," Chloe cooed, tracing a manicured finger over the rough bark. "You carved my name so much deeper than hers. It's like you knew."

Ethan chuckled, a low rumble that used to make my toes curl. Now, it sounded like a betrayal, twisting my stomach into knots.

"Fate has a funny way of correcting its mistakes, doesn't it?" he murmured.

I felt the bile rise in my throat. Correcting mistakes? Is that what he called betraying his Fated Mate?

My mind flashed back to a night ten years ago. Ethan’s hands were smaller then, covered in sticky sap. *Our love is like this tree, Ava,* he had promised, his eyes bright with a devotion that felt eternal. *Roots deep, branches high. It will never die.*

Liar.

"I love how the moonlight hits this spot," Chloe sighed, resting her head on his chest, claiming him. "It's perfect for us."

"It is," Ethan agreed. He kissed the top of her head.

Something inside me snapped. It wasn't a loud break, like a bone. It was quiet, final—like a fraying rope finally giving up under too much weight.

I stepped out from the bushes, my presence breaking their perfect little tableau.

"It's a beautiful spot for a lie," I said, my voice raspy from disuse and unshed tears.

Ethan and Chloe spun around. Ethan’s eyes widened, his hand instinctively tightening on Chloe's waist as if I were a threat. Chloe’s face twisted into a sneer.

"What are you doing here?" Chloe spat. "I thought you were gone."

"I came to collect the last of my dignity," I said.

I walked past them. I didn't look at Ethan. I couldn't bear to see the pity or the annoyance in his eyes. I focused solely on the trunk of the Laurel tree.

There it was. *Ethan & Chloe*. Freshly carved, the sap still oozing like amber blood. Underneath, barely visible, were the scarred, fading remains of *Ava*.

I saw a sharp piece of slate on the ground. I picked it up. The stone was cold and jagged in my hand.

"Ava, don't," Ethan warned, stepping forward, his voice dropping an octave.

I didn't listen. With a grunt of effort, I slammed the stone into the bark. I dragged it down, gouging deep into the living wood. I scratched out his name. I scratched out hers. I scratched until my name was nothing but wood chips and dust.

"You bitch!" Chloe shrieked. "You're ruining our tree!"

She lunged at Ethan, burying her face in his chest, sobbing theatrically. "Make her stop, Ethan! She's destroying our memory!"

"Ava, stop it!" Ethan commanded. His voice held a trace of the Alpha Command, a weight that usually forced submission, but I was too numb to feel it.

I dropped the stone. My hands were shaking. "There is no memory," I whispered, my voice hollow. "Just a scar."

Chloe pulled away from Ethan, her eyes wild with malice. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a ring—a simple silver band with the Moonstone crest. It was the promise ring I had returned to Ethan days ago.

"Here!" she screamed, throwing it at me. "Take your trash! I don't want anything you've touched!"

The ring hit my chest with a dull thud and fell into the dirt.

I stared at it. That ring had meant everything to me once. Now, it was just metal.

I stepped forward to kick it away, but my injured leg finally buckled under the strain. I stumbled. I threw my hands out to catch myself, but I crashed into the stone altar that sat at the base of the tree—the sacred place where the pack left offerings to the Moon Goddess.

The altar was covered in silver coins and trinkets.

My skin made contact.

A scream of pure, blinding agony tore from my throat. The silver burned instantly into my palms and arms, sizzling like acid against raw nerve endings. It felt like dipping my hands into boiling oil. The smell of searing flesh and singed hair filled the air.

I collapsed to the ground, writhing in agony, the silver trinkets scattering around me like poisonous confetti.

"Ethan!" I gasped, the pain blinding me.

Ethan’s head snapped toward me. For a split second, the bond flared. He took a step, his hand reaching out as if to pull me from the fire.

But then Chloe whimpered. "Ethan, I'm scared! She's crazy!"

Ethan stopped dead. He looked at me, writhing in the dirt, smoke rising from my burns. Then he looked at Chloe, who was standing perfectly safe, clutching his arm in a performance of terror.

His eyes went cold. The hesitation vanished.

He turned his back on me. He wrapped his arms around Chloe, shielding her from... nothing. From me.

"Let's go, Chloe," he said, his voice hard as granite.

He looked over his shoulder at me one last time.

"Ava Miller," he said, the words cutting deeper than the silver ever could. "You are no longer my mate. From this day forward, you are nothing to me."

Ava POV:

Darkness swallowed me before I could hear their footsteps fade.

When I finally clawed my way back to consciousness, the sharp sting of antiseptic assaulted my nose. I wasn't in the Pack Hospital's pristine main ward. I was in the overflow clinic—a drafty, corrugated shed near the border, reserved for treating rogues and prisoners.

Maya was sitting beside my cot, her face pale and streaked with dried tears.

"You're awake," she whispered, her fingers trembling as she squeezed my hand.

I tried to sit up, but agony flared in my arms. I looked down. My hands and forearms were heavily bandaged, swathed in gauze that was already spotting with yellow. The burn of the silver still hummed under my skin, a constant, low-voltage torture that felt like acid eating through bone.

"Who brought me here?" I croaked, my throat dry as sandpaper.

"I did," Maya said. Her voice vibrated with suppressed rage. "A patrol found you by the tree. Ethan... he left you there, Ava. He just left you to bleed out."

I closed my eyes, letting the darkness hovering at the edges of my vision comfort me. "I know."

The door creaked open, and a Beta healer walked in. He didn't look me in the eye. He checked my chart with quick, nervous movements, like a rabbit sensing a predator.

"How are her burns?" Maya asked, her tone cutting through the silence.

"Severe," the healer muttered, still staring at his clipboard. "Silver poisoning takes time to clear." He hesitated, glancing at the door, then lowered his voice. "I'm sorry, Maya. I can't give her the Wolfsbane salve. Alpha Ethan's orders. He said... he said basic supplies only. No premium medicine for non-pack members."

The air left the room as if it had been sucked out by a vacuum.

"He said what?" Maya stood up, her chair scraping loudly against the concrete floor. "She is his Fated Mate! She served this pack for ten years! With burns this deep, that is a death sentence!"

"I'm just following orders," the healer whispered, looking terrified. He dropped a bottle of generic disinfectant on the side table and hurried out of the room before Maya could lunge at him.

I lay back on the thin, lumpy pillow. The last ember of hope—the tiny, foolish part of me that thought he might still care, that thought there was still a human man beneath the Alpha title—finally turned to ash. He didn't just reject me. He wanted me to suffer.

"Maya," I said. My voice was calm. Dead calm.

She turned to me, her eyes blazing gold with her wolf's fury. "I'm going to kill him. I swear to the Goddess, Ava, I will challenge him."

"No," I said. "You won't. You have a family here. You have a life."

I sat up, ignoring the screaming pain that shot up my arms with every movement. "Help me finish the paperwork. I need to formalize the rejection with the Council. I need to be gone."

"Where will you go?" Maya asked, her anger melting into desperate fear. "You can't survive alone like this."

"I won't be alone."

The door opened again, and an older woman stepped in. It was Elder Martha, my mother’s second cousin. She leaned heavily on a cane, but her eyes were sharp as flint. She had always been kind to me, though in the distant, reserved way of the pack elders.

"I heard what happened," Martha said, her voice sounding like cracking parchment. "Disgraceful. The boy has lost his way."

She walked over and placed a hand on my forehead. Her skin was cool and dry, grounding me.

"I have contacts in the north," Martha said quietly. "The Silver Lake Pack. They owe me a favor from the Great War. They will take you in."

Tears pricked my eyes, hot and fast. "Why would you do that?"

"Because you are blood," Martha said firmly. "And because I know a true Luna when I see one. Even if he is too blind to see it."

I spent the next two days in Martha’s guest room, hidden away from the pack's prying eyes. I slept fitfully, waking up screaming from dreams where Ethan’s eyes were cold as ice and Chloe laughed while I burned.

I packed the last of my things into a single duffel bag. I burned the photos. I buried the dried flowers he had given me years ago in the garden soil.

"We should hold a ceremony," Martha suggested gently on the last night. "A parting ritual. To say goodbye properly."

"No," I said, zipping up my bag with a finality that echoed in the quiet room. "I don't need a ceremony. We are strangers now."

"What will you do, child?"

"I'm going to be Olivia," I said, looking out the window at the moon hanging low and heavy in the sky. "Ava died on that altar. Olivia is going north."

The next morning, I had to go to the Pack House one last time to sign the exile papers.

The courtyard was crowded. Ethan and Chloe were standing on the balcony, looking down at the pack like royalty. Chloe was wearing a white dress that looked suspiciously like a Luna’s ceremonial gown. She was beaming, waving at people who looked too afraid not to wave back.

Ethan looked... tired. There were dark circles under his eyes. But the moment he saw me, his face hardened into stone.

I walked through the crowd. Wolves parted for me, their eyes filled with pity and shame. I hated it.

I signed the papers at the clerk's desk, the pen shaking slightly in my bandaged hand.

"Done," I whispered.

As I turned to leave, a deafening boom shook the ground.

*BOOM!*

Screams erupted. Smoke billowed from the eastern wall, thick and black against the morning sky.

"Rogues!" someone shouted. "They breached the wall again!"

Chaos unleashed. Wolves shifted mid-stride, mothers grabbed their children, and warriors scrambled for formation. But this time, I didn't run. I stood still, frozen amidst the panic, watching the balcony.

Ethan grabbed Chloe. He didn't issue commands to his warriors. He didn't check on the pups playing in the yard. He threw his body over Chloe, shielding her from the falling debris, his eyes squeezed shut in fear only for her.

He was an Alpha who protected his mistress before his pack.

And that was all the answer I needed.