Chapter 1
The Wrong Luna
Ameyali's POV
"Look at me, Tenoch."
My voice carried farther than I wanted in the ceremonial hall.
No one spoke. The Elders stood in a half circle behind him, and the rest of Blackthorn watched from the stone floor below the dais. Nelli waited several steps to my right, straight-backed and calm in a way I had spent the entire morning trying to imitate.
Tenoch looked at me at last.
For one stupid second, I almost smiled.
He was still my mate.
Whatever the Elders had said about my weak wolf, whatever doubts had followed every failed shift, the bond between us was real. I felt it now, a living pull beneath my ribs, familiar enough that I had built a future around it.
He loved me. He had told me so when there had been no audience to judge the cost.
Today he only had to say it where everyone could hear.
"Ameyali." His voice was controlled.
The way an Alpha spoke when he had already made a decision.
My brief relief disappeared.
Nelli stayed perfectly still.
I stepped closer to the foot of the dais. "You said this ceremony would end the questions."
A murmur moved through the room and vanished almost at once.
Tenoch's expression closed. "It will."
I waited. The bond pulled toward him. My wolf stirred weakly inside me, more ache than strength. That weakness had become public property long ago. Every failed shift and every moment my body had betrayed me had been weighed against one question.
Could a wolf like me stand beside an Alpha? I had believed Tenoch's answer mattered more than theirs. He descended one step. Not enough to reach me.
"Blackthorn needs a Luna who can stand without doubt," he said.
The words struck cleanly because I understood them before he finished.
"No."
His eyes changed, not with anger. With pain, which hurt worse.
I shook my head. "Do not make their fear sound like duty."
A few faces turned away.
Tenoch glanced toward the Elders, then back to me. That small movement told me everything I had refused to see.
He had made this choice before entering the hall.
I had simply been the last person allowed to know.
"Ameyali," he said quietly.
"Say what you came here to say."
My hands were cold. My balance kept threatening to go. I would not give him the mercy of pretending I did not understand.
He lifted his chin toward the room.
In that moment, he looked like my Alpha before he looked like my mate.
"Ameyali, I reject you as my mate."
The bond tore.
There was no graceful word for it. Pain punched through my chest and drove out my breath. I folded, one hand catching the lowest stone step.
Somebody gasped. Tenoch moved before anyone else.
I saw his boot come down from the dais.
"Don't."
The word scraped out of me.
He stopped, and the refusal held.
If he had chosen to break me in front of the pack, he did not get to hold me while it happened.
Pain ripped through my ribs and spine. The pull toward Tenoch tightened once, vicious and absolute, then snapped back so hard my vision flashed white.
I heard my own breathing. I heard the room breathing with me. Then, beneath all of it, I heard Tenoch say, "I choose Nelli to stand beside me as Luna." Silence lasted half a second. Then the hall erupted.
It wasn't cheering, not exactly. Voices collided in whispers and sharp breaths. Rank shifted around me before I had even managed to stand. Nelli was suddenly the woman beside the Alpha, and I was the mistake the ceremony had corrected.
My sister climbed the dais. Tenoch did not look at her first. He looked at me. I forced myself upright.
His face had gone pale. His hand was still half lifted, as if some part of him had forgotten he no longer had the right to touch me.
I almost hated him for making regret look so much like love. Almost.
"Ameyali," he said.
I wiped my palm against my dress. The stone had cut it, but the sting barely registered beside the hollow place under my ribs.
"You made your choice."
"It wasn't that simple."
A laugh escaped me, small and ugly. "It was simple enough to say in front of everyone."
He said nothing.
Nelli's expression shifted at that, but I did not look at her for long. If I did, I might start counting every warning she had repeated, every doubt she had helped turn into common wisdom.
This choice belonged to Tenoch.
I straightened until the room stopped tilting.
The pack was watching to see what a rejected mate looked like after the bond was gone.
I would not collapse for them twice.
"Congratulations, Alpha."
His title tasted unfamiliar.
Tenoch flinched. That was the first thing I took from him.
I turned before he could answer.
Every step toward the doors hurt. No one stopped me. No one called my name except Tenoch, once, behind me. I kept walking.
The moment I crossed out of the hall, cold air hit my face.
It should have helped.
Instead, heat rolled beneath my skin. I stopped.
At first I thought it was another wave of the bond breaking. Pain, shock, humiliation. My body finding one more way to punish me for surviving the last minute.
Then the heat deepened.
It did not burn on the surface. It moved under my skin, slow and bright, threading through my arms and pooling behind my ribs where the mate bond had been.
My wolf recoiled as I pressed a hand to the stone wall beside the door.
The stone was cold for one breath. Then warmth spread beneath my palm. I jerked my hand away. The wall stayed warm. I stared at it, then at my trembling fingers.
The bond was gone. I knew that emptiness. I could feel exactly where Tenoch had been and where there was nothing now.
Heat occupied that emptiness and kept rising.
And whatever had awakened inside me, it was not my wolf.
