Chapter 1

Every wolf in the Iron-Fang pack says I'm not the same Luna anymore.

I no longer slipped out of bed before dawn to brew Valerius his morning herbal. And no longer press the creases from his Alpha command uniform before each council.

Seven days passed like this.

On the seventh night, Valerius returned, shrugged off his mantle, and looked at me. I was reading the healing grimoire.

"What's wrong with you lately?"

After seven days of silence, that was the first thing he said to me.

His voice carried the chill of deep water — controlled, distant, not a thread of warmth in it.

I looked up and studied his face in the candlelight. He was striking in the way that powerful wolf often are.

The she-wolves of the pack said Valerius needed only to stand in a room to attract everyone's attention.

I had believed that once.

But this life, I had reborn, and I was not going to make the same mistakes again.

In my last life, every she-wolf in the territory envied me, said my ancestors must have pleased the Moon Goddess for me to be fated to a man like Valerius.

He was the Alpha of the Iron-Fang Pack and commander of the Lycan Council, gifted with both power and a presence. Being his Luna was supposed to be a blessing beyond measure.

I had believed that completely, and I entered this palace.

On our mating night, he said, "The pack and the Council will always come before everything else."

"I have no time for sentiment, and no energy for a mate's expectations. If you understand that, stay and do something useful."

I nodded, my face still warm, and told him I understood that he should focus on protecting the pack, and I would hold the palace together for him.

I had meant every word and I kept every one of them.

He had no time for the palace, so I ran it — every supply ledger, every Elder negotiation, every pack ceremony.

When I caught a fever I brewed my own herb and heal myself.

When a rogue's blade caught my side during a border escort, I bound the wound myself and said nothing.

And when wolfsbane poisoning began destroying me from the inside, and I was vomiting blood through the nights, I still said nothing.

I handled everything alone rather than diverting his attention from those critical matters.

He swept the Council clean of corruption at thirty. He stood above every rival by thirty-five.

At forty, he was granted a title no wolf had held in two centuries.

At the feast celebrating that title, a beta raised a cup and asked how he regarded the mate who had stood behind his rise.

Valerius turned his goblet and said, "We have mated for many years, but I have never felt anything for her beyond that bond. "

"My devotion belongs to this territory and the wolves under my protection. Sentiment is smoke. The pack endures."

The hall applauded. They called it the answer of a true Alpha — selfless, uncompromising.

Then he rushed to the next border campaign and never came back to the packhouse.

He didn't know when the wolfsbane eroded my body.

Even when I died in the eastern wing, undiscovered for three days until a servant passed by.

I watched my own burial from above as a fading spirit, without ceremony.

I saw Valerius receive the news in his war tent, acknowledge it with a single quiet sound.

I spent an entire life learning that we were never meant for the same path.

He was a revered Alpha, respected by the pack. But being his mate was too much to bear.

His heart belonged entirely to the pack; there was no room left for me.

So when I woke to find myself back three years after our mating bond, the first thing I did was make up my mind to sever the bond.

The second was to write a application to the Moonshadow Enclave, the ancient healer's valley sealed from pack politics by old protective magic.

Their reply was due in two days.

"Nothing in particular," I said, closing my grimoire. "I had time, so I read."

His brow furrowed. "What use do you have for that?"

His tone carried no malice. In his mind, my purpose was to manage the palace and stay out of the way.

Outside the window, two of the night-watch she-wolves were murmuring.

"Seven days and the Luna hasn't once gone to the gate. She used to pace until her feet ached when the Alpha ran late."

"Her birthday was last week. She had prepared. The candles burned to nothing and the Alpha never came."

"He keeps her too cold for too long..."

Valerius glanced toward the window, then turned back. "I don't observe birthday, the time is better spent on Council reports."

He drew two scrolls from his sleeve and set them on the table.

"The Alpha King is hosting a Moon Gathering tomorrow night. You will attend with me. Resume your normal routines beginning tomorrow — this ends here."

I looked at the scrolls — gold-pressed parchment stamped with the Alpha King's seal, the kind of invitation mated pairs across the territory would fight for.

A month ago, I would have been unable to sleep from excitement. Now I only felt the exhaustion.

"I am not going," I said.

Valerius went completely still. He looked at me with a flicker of surprise.

In three years of mating, I had never once said no to him.