He said the words in front of everyone.
"I, Alpha Cassian of the Blood-Moon Pack, reject you, Elara Vance, as my mate and my Luna."
There was no hesitation, no flicker of guilt. His voice was flat and final, and something inside her went quiet forever.
She thought that was the worst of it. She was wrong.
Three days later, he sold her. A debt owed to a man no one dared to mention above a whisper. Chains. A covered cart. A road leading north into a cold that kills slowly. She had no idea what awaited her at the end. She only knew the name.
King Valerius. The Monster of the North.
She arrived expecting a dungeon and had already accepted it.
Instead, he broke her chains.
"In this castle," he said, "you are not a prisoner. You are a guest. Until you choose otherwise."
She waited for the lie. She braced herself for the cruelty hiding under the kindness. It never came.
What did come changed everything she thought she knew about herself. Her mother. Her family line. The power that lived inside her for twenty-two years while the wrong people called her weak, scentless, and worthless. She was not a fading Omega. She had never been. The King who accepted her as payment had spent thirty years looking for her.
The bond that grew between them was not written the day she was born. It was written before the world had a name for it.
Now, Cassian's pack is falling apart. His allies are gone. The woman he chose over his fated mate was never loyal, not once. And something ancient and hungry has found the path of the last Sun-Wolf.
He's coming north. To beg. To explain. To take back what he threw away.
But the girl he put in chains is gone.
What he'll find instead is a Queen on a throne of ice, with a King beside her who has ended wars for less.
Cassian traded a star for a piece of coal. He made his choice with both eyes open.
Now he has to watch her burn.
