He lied about urgent pack business on my birthday, but I found a single bleached-blonde hair in his car. At the restaurant where we first met, I discovered his secret phone and saw the explicit texts from his assistant, Jami. *"Are you with her now? Is it as boring as you say?"* she taunted.
Then came the picture message: Jami holding a Tiffany's box he'd bought for her. *"Can't wait for you to put this on me tonight, Alpha."* The poison of his betrayal made me physically sick.
My pack's Healer confirmed my illness wasn't food poisoning but a "Soul-Rejection"-our bond was so contaminated by his affair that my very soul was rejecting him. That night, Jami sent me a final, vicious psychic attack: a picture of her positive pregnancy test. *"His bloodline belongs to me now. You lose, old woman."*
I had been his anchor, but an anchor can also choose to let go. I called my lawyer. "I want nothing from him," I said. "Not a cent. I want to be free." This wasn't an escape; it was a carefully planned retreat. His world was about to collapse, and I was going to be the one to light the match.
Chapter 1
Eliana's POV
For fifteen years, our love story was the envy of every pack on the continent. I was Eliana David, the destined mate of Dustin Powell, the formidable Alpha of the Blackstone Pack. He was my world, and I, his Anchor. That's what he called me. My presence, my very scent, was the only thing that could soothe the raging beast that lived within him, the beast that had clawed his way to the top of the corporate world and the werewolf hierarchy.
Today, that perfect world shattered.
It started as a whisper, a faint disturbance in the psychic space that connected us, our Mind-Link. A scent that was not mine, cheap and sickeningly sweet like drugstore perfume, seeped through the cracks. It was followed by a flash of a mental image, an unwanted intrusion: a hand, its nails painted a vulgar, glittery red, resting possessively on a man's thigh.
My breath hitched. I knew that hand.
It belonged to Jami Salinas, Dustin's omega assistant.
And the trousers... the sharp, tailored grey wool... I had picked them out for him myself just last week.
My inner wolf, a part of me I had always known to be serene and calm, let out a howl of pure agony inside my head. I shoved the sound down, my hands clenching into fists at my sides. Fifteen years. Was any of it real?
The next day, the storm in my chest gave way to a cold, hard calm. I spent the morning staring at a faded photograph on my nightstand-a picture of my mother, taken years before she met my father, her maiden name-Tillman-written in elegant script on the back. It was a name that belonged only to her, a symbol of a life lived on her own terms. The thought planted a seed.
That afternoon, I drove not to the pack lands, but into the human city, to the cold, impersonal halls of the county courthouse.
"I'd like to file for a legal name change," I told the bored-looking clerk.
She glanced up, her eyes widening slightly in recognition. My face was, after all, often plastered alongside Dustin's in glossy magazines. "Name?"
"I am Eliana David," I said, my voice steady. "I wish to change it to Hope Tillman." Tillman was my mother's maiden name. A name that belonged only to me.
The clerk frowned. "But... you're Alpha Powell's mate. That would require his consent, a severance of-"
"He never marked me," I cut her off, the words tasting like ash. In our world, the Mark-a bite on the neck-was the final, unbreakable bond. It was a sign of ultimate possession. Dustin had always said he was waiting for the perfect moment, a grand public ceremony. I had once believed him. Now, I saw it for the blessing it was. It meant I was still, in the eyes of both human and pack law, my own person.
That evening, I watched Dustin on the news. He was at a charity gala, looking every bit the powerful, devoted Alpha. He raised a glass, his eyes finding the camera as if he were looking right at me. "To my beautiful mate, Eliana," he boomed, his voice full of practiced warmth. "My Anchor. Without her, I am nothing."
The words, once the sweetest music to my ears, were now just noise. A political performance. I felt nothing.
Later, I took the matching bracelets we'd exchanged on our first anniversary-two bands of woven silver, each holding a polished, luminous moonstone-to a dingy, out-of-the-way jeweler in a part of the city Dustin would never visit.
"I want you to melt them," I told the old man behind the counter, placing the bracelets on the velvet pad.
He looked at them, then at me. "These are mate-gifts. Sacred. To destroy them is..."
"Melt them," I repeated, my voice leaving no room for argument. "Melt them together until you can't tell one from the other. I want a single, ugly, unrecognizable lump of rock."
When Dustin came home that night, long after midnight, he brought me a bouquet of my favorite white lilies. He leaned in to kiss me, and the scent hit me like a physical blow: his own powerful aroma of sandalwood and a winter storm, now tainted with Jami's cheap, cloying sweetness.
And there, just below his jawline, was the faint, unmistakable mark of a kiss.
"Long day, my love," he murmured against my hair.
I forced a smile, my heart a frozen stone in my chest. "The longest," I agreed.
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