The Secret Alliance of the Lion Alpha and the Betrayed LunaChapter 1
I pushed open the carved stone door to Alpha Axton’s study, planning to surprise him with a warm midday feast. What I found instead knocked the breath from my chest.
My mate—my legally bonded Alpha—had Vanya Redmist pinned against his obsidian desk, their mouths fused together, his claws tangled in her midnight hair. Scrolls and territorial maps littered the ground like fallen leaves.
They sprang apart at the echo of my boots across the granite floor. Vanya swiped her mouth with the back of her hand, tugging her tunic back into place, never once meeting my eyes.
“Isolde—” Axton moved toward me, his Alpha mark glowing faintly at his throat, his mantle of authority crooked. “This isn’t what it looks like—”
I lifted a hand. My Moonbond ring shimmered under the lanternlight, mocking me. “Don’t talk.”
“Please, love. Just let me speak—”
“We’ve been together for five years,” I said, my voice far steadier than the storm inside me. “Five years of a sacred matebond, and this is what it meant to you?”
Vanya clutched her tablet of runes and headed toward the exit. “I should leave.”
“No,” I snapped, the word cracking like a command-sigil. “It seems this den suits you better than it ever suited me.”
Axton shoved a hand through his disheveled hair. “That isn’t right. You’re my bonded mate—”
“Your mate?” A bitter laugh spilled out of me. “Is that what you call this? Because from here I stand, I look like a deluded she-wolf.”
“It was one lapse. One weak moment—”
“Spare me.” The food basket slipped from my numb fingers. “I don’t want your explanations. I don’t want anything from you.”
The life I’d built in this kingdom—far from the shadows of my bloodline—fell apart in a breath. Every vow, every shared dawn, every whispered promise in the moonlight—lies.
“Isolde, don’t walk out like this—”
“How should I walk out, Axton? With your command? Your blessing?” I slid the Moonbond ring off my claw-marked finger, the metal still warm.
“Here. Offer it to someone who still buys your fantasies.”
——
The ring struck his desk with a sharp clang, echoing through the chamber. Axton looked at the ring, the panic on his face hardening into something colder, sharper. The charming façade I once fell for peeled away like rotted bark.
“Do you know, Isolde?” He straightened his mantle and smoothed his tunic. “Maybe this is overdue.”