Danae’s POV
I don’t remember walking to the bedroom.
One moment I was standing over the report card; the next I was there, my vision swimming, something enormous and hot roaring up through my veins.
I tore through Galen’s things with a fury I didn’t recognize as mine—feral, animal, larger than my own body could contain.
My fingers found a hidden panel in his nightstand.
Inside: photographs of him and Drusilla.
Their bodies tangled in ways he’d never been with me.
A platinum bracelet, their initials engraved beneath a symbol I’d learned to recognize from werewolf mating rites.
Then something else.
Small.
Velvet.
I thumbed the box open, and a diamond blazed up at me—bigger, brighter, more extravagant than the ring already weighing down my hand.
A card tucked against the satin lining, written in his slanting handwriting:
To my true love.
Always yours, W.
I sank onto the edge of the bed.
The ring pinched between my trembling fingers.
I stared at it, and even now—even buried under all of this wreckage—some small and foolish corner of me searched for an explanation.
Some misunderstanding that could still salvage five years.
It found nothing.
Each photo, each love note burned itself into my retinas.
The acid tears finally spilled over.
That’s when my human ears caught it.
A key in the front-door lock.
Distinctive.
Unmistakable.
My whole body went rigid, my heartbeat slamming so loud I was certain even a human could hear it, let alone a werewolf.
Voices drifted in from the entryway.
Galen’s deep timbre—the same voice that had promised me forever.
And beside it, a woman’s laugh I recognized instantly.
Drusilla.
Here.
Together.
“…we could’ve just gone straight to my place,” Drusilla was saying, her voice playful, intimate—the easy confidence of a woman who knows exactly where she stands.
A tone she had never once used with me.
“I want to shower first.
I smell like the gym, and you know how sensitive your nose is,” Galen answered.
The floor tilted beneath me.
They rounded the corner and stopped dead.
Galen’s face bleached white.
Drusilla’s manicured hand, resting possessively at his waist, dropped away.
“Danae?” His voice cracked.
The confident future Delta of the Ashmoon Pack sounded suddenly like a boy caught red-handed.
“Aren’t you supposed to be at Eirwen’s?”
I couldn’t speak.
My vocal cords had locked shut, and I sat there frozen, the evidence of my ruin scattered across the sheets.
Drusilla recovered first.
A slow, smug smile spread across her perfect face.
Her eyes flashed predatory gold at the corners.
“Well, well.
Cat’s out of the bag—or should I say, the wolf?” A cold laugh.
“Honestly, I’ve been sick of hiding for years.
Didn’t expect the big reveal the night before the wedding, though.” A pause, sweet and vicious.
“Poor little human.”
“Five years.” My voice finally scraped out.
Barely a whisper.
Each word raw glass in my throat.
“We were together five years.
And you—and my bridesmaid—”
Galen stepped forward, his gaze sweeping the evidence scattered across the bed.
The amber of his irises bled gold at the edges—his wolf rising.
“Danae, you shouldn’t be going through my things.
That’s an invasion of privacy.”
I backed away on instinct, some deep survival sense screaming at me.
But the hurt in my chest was already shifting—transmuting—becoming something hotter and harder.
Rage.
Burning the tears dry.
“The boy.
Elric.” My voice gathered itself.
“He’s your son.
How long?”
Drusilla flicked her platinum hair over one shoulder, adjusting her designer bag with an arrogant snap of her wrist.
“Oh, do keep up, darling.
Why do you think he never spends the full moon with you?”
The blood drained from my face.
Full moons were sacred—the nights when pack bonds ran deepest, when the wolf pressed closest to the surface.
Galen had always said he needed to be with the Pack on those nights.
That his position demanded it.
That humans couldn’t attend.
He’d been with her.
With their son.
Building the family I had thought we would build together.
“So all five years were a lie?” My voice gathered strength now, vibrating with the fury swelling inside me.
“You were going to marry me, complete your marking ceremony, and just keep cheating with her?
Use me to lock in your precious Delta title?”
Galen came toward me—fluid, unhurried—his voice sliding into that reasonable, patronizing register he kept for things he thought were beyond my human understanding.
“Danae, you need to understand—this is common in werewolf society, especially for those of us rising in rank.
You’re my destined mate.
That bond is sacred.
But it doesn’t exclude other…
needs.
Once I’m Delta—”
Drusilla laughed, her eyes fully golden now, her nature fully bared.
“He might need you as his mate to elevate his standing with the Alpha and the elders.
But he loves me.
Our son is his true heir.
His political mate.” She smiled like she’d won.
“Every powerful wolf needs one.”
The fire in my chest roared—devouring every tender thing I’d ever felt for him.
“So what am I?
A tool you pick up when it’s convenient?
A pawn in your Pack politics?
A human trophy to display in front of the Alpha?”
Galen seized my wrist.
His grip was crushing, inhuman.
I watched in horror as his nails thickened, lengthened slightly—not a full shift, just enough to remind me of what he really was.
“Listen.
The wedding is tomorrow.
You can’t refuse the mate bond.
It’s critical to my position.
You know how much my father’s standing with the Alpha matters.
This marriage secures generations of status for my bloodline.”
I twisted.
Tried to wrench free.
His werewolf strength held me pinned.
His claws pricked my skin, drawing tiny beads of blood.
“You’re hurting me.”
The physical pain meant nothing against the betrayal tearing through my chest.
I’d been manipulated.
Lied to.
And now they were discussing me like a temporary inconvenience—a stepping stone Galen would kick aside once he’d climbed high enough.
“You two deserve each other.”
With a burst of strength born purely from rage, I ripped my arm free—his claws leaving thin red lines across my skin.
I tore the ring from my finger and hurled it straight at his face.
It struck just below his eye.
He flinched—more startled than hurt—his hand flying up to the small red mark blooming on his cheek.
“Take it!” My voice broke wide open.
“I refuse to be your mate!
I refuse your marking ceremony!”
Galen’s face contorted with anger and disbelief as he stooped to retrieve the ring.
“You don’t understand what you’re doing,” he growled, the wolf thickening his voice.
“This isn’t about us.
It’s about Pack hierarchy.
Tradition.”
Drusilla stepped between us and set a possessive hand on his arm, manicured nails digging in.
“Don’t be so ungrateful, Danae.” Her voice dripped condescension like it was a gift.
“Most human women would kill to be standing where you are.
Do you have any idea what comes with being mated to a Delta?
The protection.
The status.
The wealth?”
Something snapped.
Before I could think, my hand cut through the air and cracked across her perfectly made-up face.
The sound split the room like a gunshot.
One terrible heartbeat of silence.
Then Drusilla straightened.
What I saw turned my blood to ice.
Her beautiful face was changing—jaw stretching, teeth sharpening into fangs no human mouth could hold.
Her golden eyes narrowed to predatory slits, and a low, inhuman growl rolled up from her throat.
“You stupid, pathetic human,” she snarled, the words warped by her half-shifted mouth.
“No one strikes a werewolf and lives to tell it.”