Rejected Luna Finds True Mate

The days after the miscarriage blurred together like watercolors left in the rain. I stopped counting how many times I woke on the bedroom floor, unable to remember crawling there. My wolf had retreated so deep inside me that sometimes I wondered if she'd disappeared entirely, leaving me hollow.

Nikolas didn't come to our room anymore. He slept in his office, he said, to handle pack business. But I could smell her on him when he passed me in the corridors—vanilla and lies.

Two weeks after I lost our child, Leila collapsed during breakfast.

I was picking at toast I couldn't taste when her theatrical gasp cut through the dining hall. She clutched the table, her face contorting in what I'm sure she practiced in mirrors. "The poison," she whimpered. "It's spreading."

Nikolas was at her side instantly, catching her before she could complete her dramatic fall. "What poison?"

"From the rogue attack." Her voice trembled perfectly. "I didn't want to worry you, Alpha, but it's getting worse. The healer says—" She broke off with a convincing sob.

I watched this performance from my seat, too tired to even feel anger anymore. Just empty.

The pack healer appeared, wringing her hands. "Alpha, I've examined Leila thoroughly. The rogue poison is unlike anything I've seen. It's targeting her wolf directly, and if we don't act soon—"

"Then act," Nikolas commanded.

The healer's eyes flickered to me, then away. "There is one possible cure. Luna Elizabeth's wolf possesses rare healing essence. If we could transfer some of that power to Leila, it might neutralize the poison."

My fork clattered to my plate. "No."

Nikolas's gaze cut to me, cold and sharp. "No?"

"My wolf is already weak. If you take her healing essence—" My voice cracked. "It's what makes her special. It's all I have left of—"

"Of what? Your dramatics?" He moved toward me, and I felt his Alpha aura press against my skin like a physical weight. "Leila is dying because she tried to protect this pack. You're refusing to help her because of vanity?"

Vanity. He thought my wolf's essence, the core of who I was, was vanity.

"Please." I hated how small my voice sounded. "You don't understand what you're asking. My wolf is barely present as it is. If you take this from her—"

"I'm not asking." His Alpha tone crashed over me, forcing submission through our mate bond that he only acknowledged when it suited him. "You will submit to the healing transfer. That's an order, Luna."

My body moved without my permission, my wolf too weak to resist an Alpha command. I found myself in the healing room, laid out on the cold stone altar used for ceremonies. The healer's face was apologetic as she bound my wrists with silver-laced rope.

"I'm sorry," she whispered. "Alpha's orders."

Leila entered, supported by Nikolas, her smile hidden behind a mask of suffering. She positioned herself on the altar beside me, close enough that I could smell her satisfaction.

The ritual began.

I'd never experienced pain like this. The healer's magic reached inside me, into the deepest part of my soul where my wolf resided, and started ripping pieces away. My wolf howled, a sound of pure agony that only I could hear as her essence was torn from her, thread by thread.

I screamed. Screamed until my throat was raw, until I tasted copper, until the world narrowed to nothing but the sensation of being unmade from the inside out.

"Hold her still," the healer commanded, and I felt additional hands on my shoulders, my legs, pinning me down as I convulsed.

My wolf's presence, already so faint, grew fainter. I could feel her retreating, feel her giving up, surrendering to the trauma of this violation. *Don't leave me,* I begged her silently. *Please don't leave me alone.*

But she pulled back into the deepest recesses of my consciousness, where the pain couldn't reach, where she could hide from this butchery.

I don't know how long it lasted. Time lost meaning. When the healer finally stopped, when the magic released its grip, I was empty. Hollowed out. The silver ropes left burns on my wrists as they were removed.

Leila sat up easily, color blooming in her cheeks, power radiating from her that I recognized as mine. My wolf's healing essence, stolen and grafted onto someone who had no right to it.

"It worked," she breathed, flexing her hands. Then she turned to Nikolas with tears in her eyes. "Thank you, Alpha. You saved my life."

He cupped her face gently, tenderly, in a way he'd never once touched me. "Rest now. You're safe."

I tried to sit up, but my body wouldn't cooperate. I managed to turn my head enough to see them—Nikolas helping Leila from the altar, his arm around her waist, her head on his shoulder.

Neither of them looked back at me.

The healer helped me to my room eventually, half-carrying me through corridors that seemed endless. She left me on the bed with a warning to rest, to let my wolf recover, but we both knew the truth.

My wolf wasn't recovering. She was gone, buried so deep in dormancy that I could barely sense her presence at all. The mate bond, already strained, felt like a frayed rope ready to snap.

Three days later, Leila moved into the pack house.

"Just until she's fully recovered," Nikolas announced at dinner, as if this was normal, as if installing his mistress in the room next to ours was appropriate.

She smiled at me across the table, and I saw my own wolf's power glinting in her eyes. "I hope this won't be an inconvenience, Luna."

I said nothing. I had nothing left to say.

That night, I heard them laughing through the walls—his deep rumble, her bright trill—and I pressed my hands over my ears like a child afraid of thunder.

*Are you still there?* I whispered to the emptiness inside me where my wolf should be.

Silence answered. Just silence, and the sound of my mate falling in love with someone else.