2

Five years ago, Tristan tore open the world for me.

I still remember the moment with painful clarity the smell of wet earth after rain, gunshots splitting the forest air, fear gripping my ribs. Hunters had me cornered, silver-nitrate bullets raised, ready to erase a life that had barely begun. I was nineteen, an Omega without a wolf. Alone. Unprotected. Easy prey.

Then Tristan arrived.

He came through the trees like a storm violent, relentless. He ripped into the hunters with a savagery that stunned me. One heartbeat I was staring at death; the next I was staring at the man who had saved me.

When the forest finally fell silent, Tristan turned toward me. Rage burned in his golden eyes, but it softened the instant he looked at me.

He knelt, voice low. “Are you hurt?”

His thumb brushed my cheek gentle, sure, devastating.

Something in me broke open. Or maybe something finally healed. Either way, I fell for him completely.

And Tristan didn’t stop at saving me. He chased after me with a devotion so intense it felt unreal appearing at the training grounds, teasing me in the pack market, finding me even in the library where I tried to hide from my own feelings.

“You’re mine,” he whispered once, pinning me lightly against a tree. “I can’t let you go.”

Back then, I believed him. Every word.

So when he proposed a year ago a ring he claimed belonged to his grandmother, vows that felt carved from fate I said yes, heart full and foolish.

I didn’t know the moon was only illuminating the lie I had refused to see.

________________________________________

My wolf awakened the same day he proposed.

It struck like fire heat rushing up my spine, a burn in my chest so sharp I collapsed. I thought I was dying.

Then a voice filled my mind.

Breathe.

I’m here.

My wolf.

My missing half.

When I opened my eyes, everything sharpened. I heard footsteps in distant rooms, the steady drip of the kitchen tap, even the flutter of wings on the balcony.

And then I heard Tristan.

His voice drifted from the hallway low, intimate, warm in a way he rarely used with me unless someone was watching.

“I’ll come by tomorrow,” he murmured. “She won’t suspect anything.”

Liora’s smug voice followed. “You’re really proposing today?”

“It keeps her distracted,” Tristan replied, that warm tone twisting like a blade. “Just a little longer.”

My breath froze.

My wolf snarled new, wounded, fiercely protective.

Mate? He lies to us.

But I clung to denial, desperate for any explanation. Maybe I misheard. Maybe the awakening distorted my senses. Maybe...

But then memory flashed.

Quiet whispers I ignored.

Touches that weren’t innocent.

A scent on his clothes that was never mine.

The truth hit hard and merciless.

Tristan had been cheating.

For a year.

Every promise, every kiss, every whispered vow it had all been a distraction. Even the ring. Especially the ring.

My knees buckled. I dropped to the floor, fingers clawing the carpet, breath thin and strangled.

My wolf whimpered.

We must leave.

Not yet.

I needed to see it clearly. To let the truth sever every piece of him still clinging to me.

I wiped my tears and whispered to the empty room:

“If this is real… show me everything.”

And the moon silent, cold did exactly that.

________________________________________

When Tristan walked into my room that evening, he looked radiant, smiling as if he hadn’t set my world on fire. He knelt, opened the velvet box, and spoke the words he had rehearsed.

“My Luna. My future. Marry me.”

I gazed at the man I once believed would destroy kingdoms for me, the man who had already destroyed me without hesitation.

I let a soft, perfect smile touch my lips.

“Yes,” I whispered.

And in that quiet moment, I made a vow of my own:

I would not be the one who broke.

This time, they would.