1

I had always imagined the moment I’d be marked by my fated mate.

Not the exact details just the feelings.

Warmth, belonging, the quiet kind of happiness that settles in your bones and makes you feel chosen.

Instead, I stood frozen in the center of the Northern Pack’s ceremonial hall, watching the man I had loved for eight years sink his teeth into my cousin’s neck.

Her gasp echoed, high and breathy. His growl followed low, possessive, final.

My vision blurred, but not from tears. It was the shock, the kind that hollows you out from the inside before your mind even catches up. I tried to breathe. I tried to move. But my legs rooted to the ground as if the bond itself was chaining me in place.

Asher the Alpha of the North, my fated mate, the boy who had held my hand during every full moon since we were both twelve pulled back from my cousin’s neck, blood on his lips.

“W–What…” My voice cracked, barely audible. “Asher?”

His head snapped in my direction. For a moment, something flickered in his eyes guilt, maybe even fear but it was gone as fast as it appeared.

“It isn’t what you think,” he said, straightening. His voice was too even. Too practiced. “It’s political necessity.”

My cousin, Lyra, clutched her neck dramatically as if she were the one betrayed. “It’s temporary,” she added quickly. “I’m just… filling in. For the good of the pack.”

Temporary. Filling in.

Like I was a job she was covering until the real employee returned.

A few pack members exchanged looks. Others stared at me with something close to pity. Pity burned more than their disgust ever could.

“You marked her.” My voice steadied as the numbness melted into something sharp and hot. “You marked someone else while bound to me.”

His jaw tightened. He lifted his chin with the arrogance only an Alpha could carry. “The elders needed reassurance about the Luna bloodline. Yours isn’t”

“Pure enough?” I finished for him.

He didn’t deny it.

“This wasn’t personal,” Lyra whispered, stepping closer to him. “You know I’d never”

“Don’t,” I snapped, and she flinched. “Save the fake sympathy.”

Her eyes darted to Asher, silently demanding protection.

And like the fool I had always been, I still looked to him. For truth. For something that made sense.

Instead, he stepped toward me. “You’re causing a scene,” he murmured.

I let out a humorless laugh. “I *should* be causing a scene.”

His expression darkened. “Don’t force my hand.”

“For your hand to do what?” The challenge slipped out before I could stop it. “Mark me again? Control me harder? Pretend this is anything other than betrayal?”

Gasps rippled through the crowd.

His eyes flashed Alpha power rising like a storm behind them. “You don’t understand what’s at stake.”

“Oh, I understand perfectly.”

Every ounce of pain crystallized into clarity.

But I underestimated him.

Asher’s power surged before I could block it. A choking force slammed into me, pushing me to my knees. My breath hitched as invisible chains wrapped around my lungs.

“Asher, stop” I rasped, fingers digging into the floor.

He didn’t.

He stepped behind me. And despite my struggling, despite every instinct screaming to run, he tilted my head just enough to expose my neck a gesture that used to be intimate, sacred.

Now it felt like execution.

“Don’t fight me,” he growled.

And then pain.

White-hot, slicing through every nerve, every thread of the bond we shared.

He marked me. Again.

The agony of a double mark illegal, forbidden ripped through my body. My scream split the hall. I clawed at the floor, but there was no escaping it. It felt like my soul was being branded twice over, pressed into a mold that no longer fit.

When he pulled away, I collapsed onto my hands, trembling.

The room was dead silent.

Asher’s voice broke through the ringing in my ears. “Now the elders can’t question you. Or us.”

Lyra touched her fake-innocent mark. “She should be grateful. He only did what was necessary.”

I pushed myself slowly to my feet. My body shook, but my voice didn’t.

“Grateful?”

I met Asher’s eyes those same eyes I once thought held my future.

“You humiliated me. Marked her. Marked me again. And you expect gratitude?”

Asher’s jaw flexed. “You’re being dramatic.”

“No,” I whispered. “I’m being done.”

His brows knit together. “What does that mean?”

“It means I’m leaving.”

The hall stirred, whispers rising like wind through dead leaves.

“You can’t just walk out,” Lyra snapped, panic flickering in her eyes.

“Watch me.”

Asher stepped forward, towering, dominant. “You’re mine.”

“Not anymore.”

I turned toward the exit. Every step felt like walking through fire, but I didn’t stop not when the bond tugged at my chest, not when my knees threatened to buckle.

At the doorway, I paused just long enough to look back at the two of them my mate and my cousin, their matching marks still fresh.

“In three days,” I said, voice steady, “I will perform the Sundering.”

A collective gasp filled the hall.

Asher’s face drained of color. “You can’t. It could kill you.”

“Good,” Lyra whispered behind him, barely audible.

But Asher didn’t protest her. He only stared at me like losing me was suddenly a possibility he hadn’t calculated for.

I met his gaze one final time.

“In three days,” I repeated, “I’m severing this bond. And I’m returning your mark.”

Then I walked out not because I was strong, but because staying would have killed every part of me worth saving.

And if the Sundering finished the job…

So be it.