Some hours ago,
after mating with his true mate, Vincent’s mind finally cleared enough for reality to crash back into him.
The first thing he remembered was Leah.
Earlier, overwhelmed by instincts he had never imagined could exist, he had sent her away without a second thought.
The realization struck him with enough force that he immediately abandoned everything and set out to find her, despite every instinct inside him resisting the decision and urging him to return to Bryce instead.
He searched everywhere he could think of- the company, and every place she was known to visit.
Nothing.
The absence of a mate bond made the search infinitely more difficult. Although Vincent knew Leah’s scent as intimately as his own, he couldn’t detect it from a distance.
Unlike true mates, they shared no supernatural connection that allowed him to follow her scent across great distances.
After exhausting every possibility in the human world, only one destination remained.
Their original homeland.
Leah had spoken about it countless times over the years. Ever since their exile, she had refused to abandon the dream of reclaiming everything they had lost. The throne. Their dignity. Their rightful place within the greatest pack.
Perhaps she had finally decided to return without him.
Without wasting another moment, Vincent shifted into his wolf form and disappeared into the forest. His powerful body surged effortlessly through the dense woods as he followed the same route they had taken years earlier when they crossed into the human world.
His suspicion proved correct.
Before long, he caught up with her.
There was no point concealing what had happened. He admitted that he had mated with Bryce, and hated it.
What he concealed was everything that followed.
He told her he had rejected him immediately afterward, severing the mate bond before it could take root.
It was a lie.
Not only had he failed to reject Bryce, but the mere thought of doing so filled him with a resistance so fierce that even imagining it left something inside him recoiling violently.
Leah accepted his explanation before returning to the daily subject.
She wanted to go home.
She wanted to be a Luna. Vincent tried to persuade her otherwise.
He told her they no longer needed titles, power, or a throne. They had built extraordinary lives in the human world, commanding respect that countless people could only dream of. As long as they remained together, nothing else truly mattered.
Leah refused to yield.
Cornered by her determination, Vincent found himself telling another lie.
He promised they would return to their Homeland. He promised he would find another way for them to have a child. But even as the words left his mouth, he knew they were empty promises.
That was never going to happen.
His mate was Bryce.
Bryce was a man.
No matter how desperately Vincent searched for alternatives, he knew none existed.
Unless he allowed Leah to conceive a child with her true mate and raise it as his own, but that was something he could never bring himself to accept.
Besides, Leah never spoke about her true mate, Vincent didn’t know who it was.
No matter how many times he tried to ask, she always responded with vague explanations before steering the conversation back into the shadows.
Vincent knew with absolute certainty now that he no longer had any desire to return to the wolf world.
His father had stripped him of everything long before the exile itself.
After discovering that Vincent had lied about Leah being his true mate, failed to find his true mate, failed to produce an heir, and brought disgrace upon the greatest pack, the Alpha King had banished him without hesitation.
To preserve the pack’s honor, he had declared Vincent unworthy of succeeding him and chosen his younger son as the future Alpha instead.
Vincent no longer believed that decision had been unjust.
He had deceived everyone, and worse, he had never intended to find his true mate for the right reasons. All he had ever wanted was to use her for his own ends.
Perhaps that was why the Moon Goddess had punished him with a male mate.
Compared with returning to a homeland where he would forever be remembered as the disgraced Alpha who had failed at everything, remaining in the human world felt infinitely preferable.
Here, people trembled beneath his influence rather than whispered about his failures.
That life was enough for him as long as he had the woman he had loved since their teenage years. But if her presence alone was enough to make him content, why couldn’t his presence be enough for her?
Why did becoming Luna still matter so much? Why did reclaiming a throne outweigh the life they had already built together?
No matter how many times he turned the questions over in his mind, the answers remained stubbornly beyond his reach.
He eventually managed to persuade Leah to return with him.
The moment they stepped into his office, she pulled him down onto the couch, closing the distance between them as though determined to erase what had happened between Vincent and Bryce.
Their lips scarcely parted as the moment grew increasingly heated.
Vincent tried to throw himself into the familiar passion they had always shared, but the harder he tried, the more every touch lost its certainty.
His hands hesitated of their own accord, seized by an unbearable urge to touch another body instead of the one beneath them.
Irritation gnawed at him.
More than anything, he wanted to find Bryce and sever the bond between them. He couldn’t understand how he had spent the entire night having sex with him longer than he had ever spent with anyone else, only to wake up still craving the same thing.
Not only had he failed to get enough of him, but the hunger had only deepened, returning with astonishing force after only a few hours.
The realization infuriated him more than anything else.
The longer Vincent hesitated, the more insistently Leah drew him closer, deepening the kiss as though determined to dissolve the distance that had suddenly risen between them.
Without warning, Vincent tore himself away with such abrupt force that even Leah was left staring at him in shock.
"Ughr!" he groaned, his hand flying to the side of his neck as the mark suddenly throbbed with increasing intensity, each pulse stronger than the last.
"What is it?" Leah asked, but Vincent didn’t answer.
He got off her, his breathing growing increasingly uneven as his wolf deep within him stirred violently. It had awakened, restless with unmistakable excitement.
"You’ve got to be kidding me," he muttered through clenched teeth, forcing the words past his irritation.
He already knew what was happening.
Bryce was nearby.
Vincent couldn’t believe Bryce had actually come looking for him. The realization ignited two violently opposing desires within him.
Part of him wanted to find Bryce immediately, grab him by the throat, and warn him never to come anywhere near him again.
The other wanted to find him for an entirely different reason.
It wanted Bryce beneath him once more. It wanted to feel him again.
"Vincent... what’s wrong?" Leah asked again, rising from the couch.
"Nothing," Vincent replied, turning toward her.
The instant their eyes met, her expression froze.
"Your eyes..." she whispered. "They’re glowing red. How is that possible? You haven’t undergone the Alpha ritual of your pack yet."
"Red?" Vincent echoed in disbelief. He snatched the tablet from the table and used its dark screen as a mirror.
"How is this possible?" he murmured.
Closing his eyes briefly, he opened them again. The crimson glow had vanished. The relentless pulsing at his neck, however, refused to subside.
Neither did the overwhelming urge to find Bryce.
’How stupid was I to mark him,,’ The thought struck him with fresh irritation. ’I’ve only made everything worse.’
"Stay here," he said, already striding toward the door. "I’ll be back in a minute."