After My Mate Accused Me of Attacking His Luna

The words tasted like ash and shattered glass on my tongue. "I, Emilia Warren, reject you, Duncan Cooper, Alpha of the Moonstone Pack, as my mate."

The moment the words left my lips, an invisible blade cleaved through my soul. My inner wolf wept, curling into a tight, agonizing ball in the back of my mind. Duncan stumbled back as if physically struck. The warmth in his eyes—the tender gaze that had healed my broken past—shattered into a million jagged pieces.

I didn't want to do it. Goddess, I loved him. But how could I stay bound to the son of the Lycan King who had slaughtered my parents? The blood of my birth pack stained his royal lineage. And if the crushing weight of my family’s ghosts wasn't enough, Grayson’s blackmail had forced my hand.

Duncan’s grief didn't last long. His deep-seated fear of abandonment, a scar left by his own father, twisted his heartbreak into a vicious, blinding rage.

"You chose him," Duncan snarled, his Alpha aura suffocating the air in his office.

"Duncan, please, it's not what you think—" I choked out, but he cut me off with a feral growl.

He had seen us the night before in the shadows of the greenhouse. He saw his Beta brother, Grayson, pressing me against the glass. What Duncan didn't see was the vial of liquid wolfsbane Grayson had brutally forced down my throat, threatening to hunt down the last surviving member of my fallen pack if I didn't comply. Duncan only saw the proximity. He saw my tear-streaked face and Grayson's hands on me, and his traumatized mind painted a picture of romantic betrayal.

When I tried to explain, the lingering wolfsbane burned my vocal cords, and Grayson’s deadly threats kept the full truth locked behind my teeth. Duncan refused to listen to my fragmented pleas.

His retaliation was swift and merciless.

By noon the next day, Duncan summoned the entire Moonstone Pack to the courtyard. My heart hammered against my ribs as I stood on the platform, stripped of my dignity. Beside him stood Anais Mitchell, a haughty noblewoman from a powerful family. She clung to his arm, her cloying scent of heavy roses masking the comforting vanilla and cedar of my mate.

"Emilia Warren has betrayed this pack and our bond," Duncan's voice boomed, hard and devoid of the love I once knew. "She is stripped of her Luna privileges. From this day forward, Anais is my chosen mate. Emilia is nothing but a servant."

The collective gasp of the pack echoed in my ears, but I was numb. The man who had once kissed my scars had just turned me into the lowest creature in his territory.

Now, three days later, my hands were raw and blistered from scrubbing the stone floors of the pack infirmary. I was a healer. I was supposed to be brewing salves and setting bones, not wiping away mud like a disgraced Omega.

Suddenly, a sharp spike of panic pierced