Chapter 1

My husband had a curse.

Every wolf in Northbridge knew it.

Every six months, Alpha Adrian Black would lose fifteen days of memory.

Not all of it.

Never his name. Never his power. Never the pack he ruled. Never the instincts that made wolves bow when he walked into a room.

Only me.

His Luna. His true mate. His wife.

For fifteen days, the mate bond would go dead in his mind, and another woman would become the center of his world. He would call her his moon, his fate, his only love.

And I would become the joke every pack wife pitied behind a jeweled hand.

The first time the curse took him, Adrian fell for my rival at the Northbridge Broadcast Center.

For his so-called true love, he had me kidnapped on the morning of the most important live broadcast of my career. I was supposed to anchor the national interview that would make my name impossible to erase.

Instead, my own mate sent guards into the studio before the red light came on. They clamped a hand over my mouth, dragged me through the hallway in front of the crew, and broke both my legs on his orders so I could not crawl back to the desk.

The broadcast went black.

My rival took my seat.

By sunrise, she was the new face of Northbridge.

I was the Luna whose Alpha could break her bones for another woman and still make the whole city laugh.

On the fifteenth day, Adrian woke.

He collapsed at my feet and cried until his throat bled. Before nightfall, my rival vanished from the city. The official report called it a disappearance. The pack called it justice. No one dared say her name again.

The second time, he fell for a maid who had climbed into his bed.

She wanted my room. My jewels. My title. My bond.

When I refused to leave, Adrian had his guards throw me into the red-lamp quarter outside the pack border. They filmed me being dragged through the streets while drunk wolves howled my name and posted the footage across every pack feed.

On the fifteenth day, he woke outside the bond court.

He put a blade to his own throat and begged me to let him bleed enough to pay for it.

As for the maid, she ended the same way as the first woman: sold across the northern rogue line and returned three days later so broken she no longer knew how to speak.

The worst time was the seventh.

He chose my adopted sister.

I was six months pregnant.

For her, Adrian signed the order that sent me to a healer’s room and had our pup cut from my body before his lungs had learned how to breathe.

By the time the curse ended, the sheets were soaked red, the crib was empty, and the pup I had carried under my heart was gone.

Adrian woke in a room full of blood and silence.

He tried to hang himself before the healers could stop him. They fought for three days and three nights to keep him alive.

He survived.

So did the curse.

And now, this was the twelfth time.

I stood at the door of our bedroom and looked at my best friend wrapped around my half-dressed husband.

Selena Vale wore one of my old silk nightgowns. Pale blue. Expensive. The one I had thrown into the donation basket last week.

She had always been delicate in public. Soft voice. Wet eyes. Fingers trembling at exactly the right moment.

Now she lay against Adrian’s bare chest like a she-wolf who had won a war.

“Elena,” she whispered, as if I were the one who had walked into the wrong room. “I know you’re hurt. But love can’t be forced.”

Her hand slid over Adrian’s heart.

“He loves me now. You have to accept that.”

Adrian looked at me like I was a stranger standing too close to something that belonged to him.

Something in my chest should have cracked.

It didn’t.

I only looked at the calendar on the wall.

Day one.

Good.

I still had fourteen days to bury this marriage before it buried me.

“If you run out of protection,” I said, “there’s more in the second drawer.”

Selena blinked.

Adrian’s brows drew together.

I kept my voice calm.

“If you want to give him a pup, tell me early. I have a heavy work schedule this week, and I’ll need time to file the rejection papers.”

Selena stared at me like I had lost my mind.

I turned to her and smiled.

“Oh. And Selena?”

“Yes?”

“Did you buy life insurance?”

Her smile froze.

I let the question sit between us.

Then I turned and walked out.

Behind me, Adrian laughed, low and cruel.

“Why are you wasting your breath on her? Elena was only ever a political Luna. My heart is yours.”

A political Luna.

That was what the curse always did.

When Adrian forgot loving me, his mind filled the empty space with contempt.

It gave him a story that made sense.

I stepped out of the Alpha estate and called my lawyer before I reached the gates.

“Start the rejection process,” I said. “I don’t care how much it costs. In fifteen days, I want the mate bond severed, my assets locked, and every Luna right removed from Adrian Black’s control.”

There was a pause.

“Luna Black, are you certain?”

I looked back at the house where I had spent seven years bleeding for a male who only remembered loving me after the damage was already done.

“Yes,” I said. “And don’t call me Luna Black again.”