Chapter 2

2.

When I returned to the Long Island estate and pushed open the heavy oak doors, I was met by the giant oil painting on the wall. In it, a smiling man affectionately nuzzled my forehead―it was commissioned the day we completed our mating ceremony.

Enzo and I were both lone wolves who grew up in the Brooklyn foster system. That place chewed people up and spat them out. When I was eighteen, the perverted Omega warden tried to "sell" me to some abusive old bastard. It was Enzo who stole a silver-dipped dagger and pulled me over that barbed-wire fence.

The warden screamed curses after us. "Enzo! See if you can protect her forever! The moment you step out that door, mutts like you with no family backing will be torn to shreds by other packs!"

He turned back, his eyes flashing with the feral light of a young wolf. "Then I'll protect her forever! I'll rip out the throat of anyone who dares touch her!"

He used what little money his parents had left him to rent a moldy basement apartment in Queens. He fought in underground werewolf fight clubs, trading his blood and claws for our survival.

"When I become an Alpha," he'd say, covered in wounds while I cleaned them, "you'll be my Luna. And no one will ever dare to lay a finger on you again."

Those days were hard, but they were also incredibly sweet. He fought for us out there, and before he left each time, he would take a deep breath of my scent, as if to carve it into his soul. I managed our money at home. I remember one Christmas Eve, we were so broke we split a single can of Campbell's soup, and it felt like the warmest meal in the world.

Eventually, he did it. He became the feared Alpha of the Blackwood pack, a name that sent shivers down the East Coast. And I became the pack's revered "Iron Luna." We moved from that basement to a luxury apartment, and then to this priceless estate.

But with more power came more temptation. Then one day, on the collar of his shirt, I smelled a cloyingly sweet gardenia scent that wasn't mine.

"The girl sprained her ankle, I just helped her up! It must have rubbed off!" he snapped, ripping off his tie when I confronted him. "Elena, you're a powerful Luna, don't act like some insecure she-wolf who's paranoid all the time! I have a social life!"

"So being powerful means I can't be betrayed? Enzo, we swore an oath before the Moon Goddess―eternal loyalty!"

Arguments became our new normal. I started tracking his movements, checking him for foreign scents, even stooping so low as to wait outside clubs for him. As if to punish my "distrust," Enzo truly began to let himself go. The women around him became a revolving door.

The worst time, he came home with fresh scratches on his back, reeking of booze and a cocktail of female scents. "Satisfied?" he sneered, swirling a glass of whiskey, his eyes cold. "You wanted to investigate? Well, here are the results you were looking for."

I was a mess back then―I knew I should let go, but that damn mate bond held me captive. After more than a decade together, Enzo and I were intertwined in each other's flesh and blood, like two poisonous vines. Separating would be bloody; staying together was mutual torture.

Then, about a year ago, he suddenly seemed to change his ways. He cut off all the women in his life, except for that human girl, Mia. I used my connections to investigate, and the moment I saw Mia's photograph, I shattered.

That face, those timid eyes, they were a mirror of me at eighteen―the girl I was before I'd seen the bloody reality of the packs, the girl who still had light in her eyes.

Enzo would rather have a cheap imitation than the real thing who crawled out of the trenches with him.

That night, I lay in the bathtub and slit my wrists with a silver blade. When Enzo kicked the door in, he was trembling from head to toe. He rushed me to the pack clinic, soaking wet in his arms, his eyes so red they looked like they were bleeding. "Elena! Are you fucking insane?! We can make this work, I swear, it'll only be you from now on, I'll never see anyone again!"

Lying in the hospital bed, I just felt tired. A soul-crushing exhaustion.

It was on that same day that men from the Chicago High Council appeared, handing me a yellowed, top-secret file. "Lady Elena, the Council has re-examined the list of casualties from the 'Bloody Friday' purge... Your birth parents were two legendary 'Executioners.' You have inherited the supreme Royal Bloodline."

My fingers were cold as I held the file. Right after I hung up the phone with them, something pulled me to the window. Down in the garden below, the man who had just sworn it would "only be you," was holding Mia tightly in his arms.

"I'm sorry, Mia. She's just very unstable, the mate bond is causing a severe stress reaction... I can't leave her right now."

"But trust me, baby. Once she's stable, I promise I'll make it right."

They kissed under the moonlight, lost in each other.

In that moment, I felt the piece of our souls that connected us being ripped apart. On the seventh day in that hospital bed, the constant stress of his betrayal and the lingering effects of the silver poison caused the pup within me to fade away.

And on that day, I finally understood.

I had to leave Enzo. I had to sever this bond with my own hands.