Chapter 1

Introduction

On our fourth wedding anniversary, I almost died from a slice of mango cake.

My husband, Rowan Hale, knew perfectly well how severe my mango allergy was. He rushed over, gave me the injection himself, held me, and kept telling me not to be afraid, like a husband who still loved me.

But all Maeve Sinclair had to do was say, her eyes red, "This is all my fault. I never should have stayed here," and he let go of me to comfort her.

That was when I finally understood: it wasn't that he didn't know who mattered more.

He simply chose her. Every single time.

That night he announced in front of everyone that he was firing Maeve, and I let myself believe he was finally willing to defend our marriage. But later that night, I heard him promote her to his personal assistant and tell her, "Elara is too proud. The only way she'll stay with me for good is if she loses everything the Voss family gave her."

So the love I had believed in was only a cage he had built around me.

I did not burst in and demand an explanation. I did not cry and beg him to come back to me.

I simply took out the mate dissolution agreement he had signed himself before the wedding and called my assistant, Talia Brooks. "Ten days. Move the patents, the team, and the funds. In ten days, I am leaving North America."

Rowan made it to the airport in the end, and through the glass he watched my plane climb into the night.

He never knew that the voice message I deleted before turning off my phone said, "Rowan, we're having a baby."

The night before their fourth anniversary, Elara Voss dreamed again of Rowan standing in blood-red moonlight with the mate dissolution agreement crushed in his hand. He said he was going to lose her and their baby, his voice as ragged as a wounded animal's.

She woke with a start just as Rowan bolted upright from the same dream. He pulled her against him and kept insisting dreams weren't real. Then he took her EpiPen from the inside pocket of his jacket, as solemn as a man renewing a promise. Elara rested against his chest and almost believed they still had time to escape their fate.

At the anniversary dinner, the cake turned out to have mango filling. As her throat began to close, Rowan was the first to reach her and give her the injection. But when Maeve said through reddened eyes that she never should have stayed, he turned away to comfort her. Later, he announced in front of everyone that he had fired Maeve—yet that same night, he promoted her to his personal project assistant.

Through the half-open door of the club, Elara heard Rowan say he planned to strip the Voss family of its power. "She is too proud. She'll stay with me only when she has nothing left." She did not push the door open. Back in the car, she called Talia. "Ten days. Move the patents, the team, and the accounts. And file the dissolution agreement I signed before the wedding."

The lights of the ballroom fell on the silver, cold as a thin layer of frost. Elara had once believed Rowan noticed every flicker of unease. In a crowd, he cleared a path for her. The moment she frowned, he asked if she was tired. But when Maeve cried, all that familiar tenderness shifted away from her. Elara did not turn her pain into an argument. An argument would only make him think she was demanding an explanation. What she needed now was a way out.

The next day, a nightmare about Talia sent Elara straight to the office. Maeve was holding the Voss project files. When she was confronted, Maeve slipped into a security-camera blind spot and cut her own wrist and neck with a silver brooch.

Silver suppressed a werewolf's healing, and the wounds looked horrific. Maeve dropped to her knees, crying. "Don't blame Talia. I never should have upset the Luna." When Elara arrived, she said plainly that she had watched Maeve injure herself and demanded the complete security footage.

Rowan looked at Elara, but his hesitation lasted only half a second. Maeve softly reminded him not to doubt his mate on her account, and his expression hardened. He gave Talia two choices: detention or repaying ten times the loss. Elara stepped between them, and Rowan actually ordered security to restrain her too.

When the silver restraints locked around her wrists, the pain doubled Elara over. By the time Gideon rushed in to stop it, she had collapsed with a hand pressed to her stomach. She finally understood that, to Rowan, what she had seen with her own eyes still counted for less than one of Maeve's tears.

Talia's hands trembled, but she kept the files pressed to her chest. Elara knew that if she stepped aside, Rowan would call the punishment justice. If she kept protecting Talia, she would become another victim of his power. Pain ran from her wrists to her abdomen, yet she raised her head and refused to deny what she had seen simply to make him stop. For the first time in their marriage, she understood that love was no shelter if she had to keep proving her own reality.