Chapter 7

• Damien POV
• “I, Aurélie, Luna of the Bloodnight Pack, reject my position as the Alpha’s wife and Luna.”
• The moment those words leave her lips, it feels like a silver bullet punches straight through my chest. My wolf howls, thrashing inside my mind, desperate to break free. The air evacuates my lungs, sharp and sudden I can’t breathe. I’ve been impaled on the battlefield before, staked clean through, but nothing has ever hurt like this. How could it? I hadn’t even marked her.
• “Aurélie…” Her name slips from me in a broken gasp as I stagger forward, but Geneviève yanks me back. My wolf roars again, feral, as Aurélie turns her back on me on us and threads her arm through Fabrice’s.
• Rage blinds me. I want to tear the bastard apart. That smug prick who has never left her side, always hovering, always there. Now I finally understand why. He’s wanted her wanted mine for the goddess knows how damn long. The thought sears through me like acid. Had she truly betrayed me? Sleeping with her doctor while still my wife? All this time, I thought she was different… sweet, innocent, untouched by the rot of deceit that infects so many.
• But I can’t stop seeing them together in my mind his hands where mine once were. It makes something inside me snap.
• “I won’t let you leave me!” I roar, but my wolf takes over mid-sentence, shredding the last threads of restraint. The shift rips through me, and then we’re charging into the woods.
• I let him run. Let him destroy. Let him sink his teeth into anything that moves. Animals fall beneath us, trees bear the brunt of our claws anything to bleed out the fury tearing both of us apart. My wolf needs blood. Needs Fabrice’s blood.
• Two damn years she has been my Luna. My wife. And now she throws me and the entire pack aside… for him?
• Fuck. Aurélie slipped past every wall I built, crept into my pack, into my routines, into my heart with that quiet strength of hers. Just imagining his hands on her touching her the way I had sets a blistering jealousy ablaze inside me. The anger pushes my wolf into another frenzy, and I don’t fight it. He needs the destruction as much as I do.
• I never wanted marriage. My father forced my hand, insisting I choose a bride if I hoped to inherit the Alpha title. The bastard never had any intention of handing over power until I played by his rules. Fine. I agreed. I’d been more desperate to rid myself of him than anything else.
• We’ve never gotten along. He ruled with brutality, cruelty for the sake of control. He beat pack members for minor infractions… beat me when I was a child. That stopped only when I grew big enough to return the blows.
• Yes, I’m strict with my pack. But I have never crossed the line. I refuse to become the monster he was.
• His tyranny is what made Geneviève leave. Made her run into the arms of that pathetic excuse for an Alpha. When she told me she was becoming his Luna, abandoning me future Alpha King for someone weaker… I thought she was joking. She wasn’t.
• And then came Aurélie.
• I didn’t like her in the beginning she was simply the best choice among a sea of unsuitable candidates. Compared to Geneviève, who could command any room with nothing more than her presence, Aurélie seemed quiet, fragile… unremarkable.
• But I was wrong.
• Throughout our marriage, I saw another side of her emerge one I never expected. She was just as strong, just as breathtaking, but in her own way. She carried wisdom, a calm confidence born from alpha blood and lifelong training. In war meetings, she steadied the room with a single word. Even my council respected her admired her. She made her mark on the Bloodnight Pack without ever needing to raise her voice.
• She was never weak.
• And I grew used to her at my side my Luna. I never imagined she would walk away from me. When she took our vows, I believed her determination was unwavering. I believed she meant every syllable.
• That night two months ago… I still taste the shame. News from my trackers pushed me over the edge, and I turned to alcohol something I rarely allowed myself. She found me in my office: drunk, undone, disappointed in myself in the same way my father would have been disappointed in me. With him gone, I punished myself instead.
• I must have looked pathetic. But she didn’t leave me on the floor. She didn’t scoff or scold.
• She helped me.
• She took care of me, gently, quietly when anyone else would have walked away and left me to drown in my own mess.