The first wave hit her at exactly 8:47 PM.

Evelyn Hart knew the time because she had been staring at the clock for the past four hours, watching the minutes crawl past like wounded animals. The full moon hung fat and silver outside the bedroom windows of Blackwood Manor, and her body was responding to it the way it always did—the way it was supposed to.

Heat bloomed low in her belly. Her skin grew sensitive, every brush of silk against her arms feeling like fire and need combined. The mating bond in her chest pulsed, reached out, searched.

Searching for him.

Adrian Blackwood. Her Alpha. Her husband of four years. The man who had marked her on their wedding night and promised to be beside her every full moon until death parted them.

His side of the bed was cold. Had been cold for three days.

Evelyn pressed her palm against her sternum, trying to calm the frantic pulsing of the bond. It felt like a rubber band stretched too thin—taut, aching, about to snap. She knew what was supposed to happen. Her body knew. Every Omega in every wolf pack across the continent knew the ritual: full moon heat, the Alpha present to ground the Omega, to provide his pheromones, to complete the cycle.

But Adrian wasn't here.

She had called his private line seventeen times in the past seventy-two hours. Each call went straight to voicemail. She had sent messages to his assistant, his beta, his driver—all returned with polite variations of "Alpha is in meetings" and "Alpha will return soon" and "Alpha sends his apologies."

Apologies.

That word had lost all meaning eighteen months ago, when she first found a receipt for a hotel in his jacket pocket. He had explained it away as a pack business dinner. She had chosen to believe him. She was Luna, after all. Lunas were supposed to trust their Alphas. Lunas were supposed to be steady, graceful, unshakeable.

Evelyn had spent four years being exactly that.

She had given up her research fellowship at the Berlin Lycanthrope Research Institute for this. She had packed her entire life into two suitcases and moved into a manor where Margaret Blackwood—her mother-in-law—watched her like a hawk watches a mouse, waiting for a single misstep. She had smiled through dinners with elders who questioned her bloodline, her fertility, her worth. She had stood beside Adrian at pack gatherings and pretended not to notice the way young female wolves looked at him—and the way, sometimes, he looked back.

She had done all of it because she loved him.

And now, she could feel the bond on his side shrinking.

She had noticed it first three months ago. The connection between them—that invisible thread of pheromone and instinct and something deeper—had started to thin. She could still feel him, but his emotions came through muted, muffled, like hearing voices underwater. At first, she thought it was stress. Pack leadership was demanding. His mother was relentless. Of course, he was pulling inward.

Then she realized what it actually was.

He was blocking her. Intentionally. A wolf could only block the bond if they deliberately chose to.

Evelyn swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood. The heat in her body surged, a rolling wave of pure biological need, and she gripped the bedpost until her knuckles went white. Her knees wobbled. Her vision blurred at the edges.

She had taken two suppressants already, but the full moon was too strong. Suppressants could dull the heat, but they couldn't kill it—especially not for a pure-blooded Omega. Her body was built for this. It expected the ritual. It demanded completion.

And her Alpha was not here.

"Madam?" A voice came from outside the door. It was one of the maids, a young beta named Eliza. Her tone was hesitant, almost frightened. "Do you need anything?"

Evelyn opened her mouth to say yes—yes, she needed a doctor, she needed an emergency injection, she needed someone to help her through the worst of it because the bond was pulling her apart from the inside.

But before she could speak, another voice cut through the hallway.

"Leave her be. Luna is resting."

That was Margaret's voice.

Evelyn's mother-in-law. The real power in Blackwood Manor. The woman who had made it clear from day one that Evelyn was a placeholder, a pretty face with a good bloodline, and nothing more.

The maid hesitated. "But Mrs. Blackwood, the full moon—"

"I said leave her be." Margaret's tone was ice. "If Luna needs anything, she will call. Do not disturb her. Understood?"

The maid's footsteps retreated down the hallway.

Evelyn pressed her forehead against the cool wood of the door and listened. Margaret's heels clicked away in the opposite direction. The hallway fell silent.

She was alone.

No, wait—there was someone else.

Footsteps. Light, careful footsteps, approaching from the east wing. That was Adrian's private entrance, the one that led directly to his study and his personal quarters. Evelyn's heart seized in her chest. He was home. He had finally come home.

She reached for the door handle, her fingers trembling with relief and need and something that might have been anger.

But then she heard a sound that made her stop cold.

Laughter.

A woman's laughter. Light, musical, the kind of sound that was meant to be charming. It was coming from the stairwell that led to the rooftop terrace—the terrace where she and Adrian had shared their first full moon together as mates.

Evelyn's hand fell away from the door.

She moved to the window instead, pressing herself against the glass, looking out at the darkened garden. The rooftop terrace was visible from her bedroom if she angled herself just right. She could see the candlelight flickering there, the silhouette of two figures.

One was unmistakably Adrian. She knew the breadth of his shoulders, the way he held himself—tall, powerful, every inch the Alpha of the Blackwood Pack.

The other was a woman. Slender, small, with long hair that caught the moonlight.

And Evelyn could smell her.

Even through the glass, even with her heat making her senses chaotic and unreliable, she could smell the other Omega's pheromones. Rose. Thick, cloying, deliberately overpowering rose.

That was not an accident. Omegas could scent each other. In a pack, the Luna's pheromones were supposed to be the dominant female scent. Anyone who entered the Luna's territory—especially in the Luna's own home—was supposed to suppress their scent as a sign of respect.

This woman was doing the opposite. She was broadcasting her scent like a challenge.

Evelyn's heat surged again, hotter this time, and she felt a cramp twist through her abdomen. She doubled over, gasping, her nails digging into the window frame.

And as she straightened, she saw it.

Her Alpha—her mate, the man who had marked her—was lighting a second candle on the terrace. A candle meant for two. A dinner setting for two.

The other woman was wearing Adrian's jacket around her shoulders.

Evelyn's vision went red at the edges. Not with anger—her body was too overwhelmed for that. It was something else. Something primal. Something that felt like the bond inside her chest was being physically ripped apart.

She had to know.

She forced her legs to move, one step after another, until she reached the door. She opened it a crack, just enough to see down the hallway.

The woman's voice drifted up from the stairwell.

"Addy, you promised me this night. Just the two of us."

Addy.

Evelyn had never called him that. No one called him that. Adrian was Alpha to the pack, Mr. Blackwood to the staff, and Adrian to her. Always Adrian. Formal. Distant. The name she had chosen because it felt safe.

And this woman—this stranger, this intruder—called him Addy.

Evelyn's phone buzzed in her pocket. She pulled it out with numb fingers, expecting a message from Adrian. Maybe he was finally explaining why he had been gone for three days. Maybe he was coming to her now, to fulfill his duty as her Alpha, to complete the mating cycle that he had promised to complete until death.

It wasn't Adrian.

The message was from an unknown number. The preview displayed only a few words:

"If you want to know where he's been for three months, open the attachment."

Evelyn stared at the screen. Her body was screaming at her to go upstairs, to walk onto the terrace, to confront the two figures in the candlelight. Her heart was screaming at her to delete the message, to preserve the last shred of the marriage she had fought so hard to build.

Her brain made the choice before her heart could.

She opened the attachment.

The video was grainy, clearly recorded on a phone camera. But the faces were unmistakable.

Adrian Blackwood, walking into a hotel. His hand resting on the small of a woman's back. The same woman. The one with the rose scent. The one who called him Addy.

The timestamp was three months ago. Three months ago, when Adrian had told Evelyn he was attending a summit in the northern territories. Three months ago, when she had spent three nights alone in the manor, eating dinner by herself, convincing herself that pack leadership was demanding, that he would come home soon, that he loved her.

The video cut to a jewelry store. Adrian's credit card—she recognized the distinctive platinum color—being swiped. A small velvet box. The same box that Evelyn had seen on Serena's neck tonight.

The video cut again. A private clinic. Evelyn didn't recognize the name, but she recognized the symbol on the door. It was a fertility specialist. The kind of clinic where wolves went when they wanted to ensure a pregnancy took. When they wanted a pure-blooded heir.

Evelyn's stomach turned. The video continued, frame after frame, each one driving a spike deeper into the bond that connected her to him.

And then the final clip.

Adrian's voice, low and intimate, speaking to someone off-screen. Her hands shaking, she turned up the volume on her phone, pressing it against her ear so she wouldn't miss a word.

"—Evelyn doesn't need to know. She's fine as the Luna. She's good at it, actually. But I can't—I can't be tied to her forever. If she gets pregnant, that's it. I'm stuck. You understand, right?"

The woman's voice, soft and sweet: "She wants children, though. I saw her looking at the baby section in the catalog."

"She can want whatever she wants. That's not what's happening." A pause. "She's not getting pregnant. I'll make sure of that."

The video ended.

Evelyn stood in the darkness of her bedroom, the phone clutched in her hand, the full moon blazing through the window. Her heat was still burning through her body, making her skin prickle and her muscles cramp. The bond in her chest was screaming, reaching out for its other half, desperate for the comfort that would never come.

She was not going to call for a doctor. She was not going to break down on the floor.

She was going to do what she should have done eighteen months ago.

Slowly, deliberately, she walked to the study. Her legs were shaking, but she kept moving. She opened the bottom drawer of her desk, the one she never used, and pulled out a thick folder.

Inside was the Mate-Bond Dissolution Petition.

Adrian had given it to her three years ago, in a moment of drunken bitterness. "If you ever want out," he had said, "just sign it. I won't stop you."

At the time, she had laughed. She had thought it was a joke, a moment of dark humor between two people who loved each other.

Now she knew the truth.

He wasn't offering her freedom. He was hedging his bets. He was building himself an escape route while she was still committing her entire life to him.

Evelyn pulled out the petition and read it for the hundredth time. It was simple, clinical, cold as a contract—because that was exactly what it was. A legal document severing the bond that biology had created.

She signed her name with a shaking hand.

Then she opened her laptop and typed out a message to the one person she had been avoiding for four years:

"Dr. Reed. I accept your offer. I need to come to Berlin. I need your help."

She hit send.

The full moon reached its peak, and her body screamed with need. She gripped the edge of the desk and forced herself to breathe.

Through the window, she could still see the candlelight on the terrace. She could still see their silhouettes. Adrian's hand on that woman's shoulder. The woman's head tipped back in laughter.

She could still smell the rose.

Slowly, carefully, Evelyn closed the lid of her laptop and leaned her forehead against the cool surface.

She was going to leave. She was going to end this.

She just had to survive the night first.

Her phone buzzed again. A new message from the unknown number:

"There's more. Check the bed."

Evelyn's blood turned to ice.

She walked back to the master bedroom on wooden legs, her body screaming with every step. She pulled back the duvet, her fingers numb, and saw it.

A small box. Black velvet. The same kind she had seen in the video.

She opened it.

Inside was a pregnancy test. Positive. And a note in handwriting she didn't recognize:

"He said he would never let you have his child. He was right. But he let me."

Evelyn read the note three times.

Then she walked to the window and watched the candlelight on the terrace until it flickered out, leaving her in complete darkness.

The bond in her chest tore a little more.

And she did not cry.

The Rejected Luna's Comeback — Chapter 197: The Witness Protection Crisis

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