Moonlight and Blood Pact

The moonstone choker around my neck feels like a leash tonight.

I stand at the edge of our pack mansion's stone balcony, overlooking the vast silver forest of Ashveil territory, watching the pine trees catch the moonlight like broken mirrors.

Somewhere beyond those trees, ordinary she-wolves are nursing pups and arguing with mates who forget the full moon rituals.

I used to think I was lucky to have escaped that ordinary life.

My name is Seraphina Voss — Seraphina Calloway before I became the mate of Caius Voss, Alpha of the most powerful werewolf pack on the Eastern Continent.

I was twenty-two when he first looked at me across a crowded Gathering Hall, his amber eyes locking onto mine with the force of something ancient and inevitable.

I was twenty-three when I stood beside him at the Blood Bonding Ceremony, our wrists cut and pressed together while three hundred wolves bore witness.

I am now twenty-eight, and I am beginning to understand what I actually purchased with that silver bond scar on my wrist.

Power.

Protection.

A beautiful cage.

"Luna Voss." Ryker, Caius's head enforcer, appears at the balcony door, broad-shouldered and professionally blank, loyal to my mate in ways he has never been loyal to me.

"Alpha Caius called — he will be late returning from the Borderlands."

I smile the smile that costs me nothing anymore, the one I have perfected over five years of Pack Council dinners and territorial summits where the pack in question controls every forest within three hundred miles.

"Thank you, Ryker."

He retreats.

I turn back to the trees.

Caius has been late a great deal recently.

Three months ago the pattern shifted — pack dinners abandoned, the bond link between us growing muffled and distant as if he were deliberately dampening it, the space in our bed widening every night like a slow tide pulling him somewhere I was not invited.

I told myself it was border business, that the Voss pack was managing a territorial challenge from the Duskfang wolves to the north.

Men like Caius carry the weight of an entire pack on their shoulders, and packs demand sacrifice.

But I am not naive.

I grew up watching my father lie to my mother about his midnight runs through the eastern wood.

I know the particular quality of a wolf's absence when it is shaped like another woman.

I just don't have proof yet.

I pull my shawl tighter and go inside to eat dinner alone, the long oak table set for two because my housekeeper Brina is an optimist and refuses to learn otherwise.

The roasted venison is perfect and I taste nothing at all.

My phone buzzes — a message from my closest friend Isolde: Did you see the photos the Ashveil Gazette ran this morning?

I set the phone face-down on the white tablecloth.

I already know what photos she means.

A pack photographer caught Caius outside the Silver Thorn Lodge last Thursday, and the story claimed the woman beside him was a "territorial liaison," but the photo was taken close enough to show his hand at her waist with a familiarity that belongs nowhere near official business.

Her hair was dark.

Her dress was the color of a fresh wound.

I pour myself a glass of elderberry wine.

Then I pour it down the sink, because I need to stay sharp.

Five years ago I bonded with a wolf who looked at me like I was the only female alive under the moon.

I need to find out if that female is still me — or if she is standing in a red dress somewhere, learning the weight of his name the way I once did.

Tomorrow, I will start looking for the truth.

Tonight, I eat alone and smile at no one and practice feeling nothing.

---