He Left Me for His Luna, Then Came Back

I told myself I was fine.

I'd been telling myself that for eight years, so by now I was pretty good at it.

The bonfire was enormous — the kind Silverfang only built for ceremonies, stacked high with pine and cedar until the flames reached above the cliff's edge and threw orange light across the whole ridge. Below us, the river ran black and fast in the dark. I could hear it if I stood close enough to the railing. I didn't stand close.

I stood near the back of the crowd instead, where the firelight barely reached, and I watched Harrison place his hand on Alia Mitchell's waist.

His touch was easy. Practiced. The kind of touch that said he'd decided.

The pack cheered. Someone near me let out a long howl, and others joined in, and the sound rolled out over the cliff and down into the valley like it belonged there. Like this was exactly how things were supposed to go.

I pressed my fingers to the inside of my wrist.

It was a habit I'd picked up somewhere along the way — pressing two fingers to that soft spot where my pulse lived, just to feel it. Just to stay in my body when everything in me wanted to go somewhere else. I'd done it so many times in Harrison's presence that it had become automatic. A private thing. Mine.

Alia was beautiful in the ceremony dress. White and silver, fitted at the waist, her dark hair pinned up with small flowers woven through it. She looked like a Luna. She'd been practicing looking like one for months, and she was good at it.

Harrison looked at her the way he looked at everything he'd decided to own.

I exhaled slowly and told myself the ache in my chest was just the cold air coming off the river.

Eight years. Eight years of staying. Of being useful and quiet and loyal, of telling myself that what Harrison and I had was complicated, that Alphas showed care differently, that the distance he kept was protection rather than indifference. Eight years of building my entire sense of belonging inside this pack around a single memory — a summer night when I was fifteen, rogues coming out of the dark, and a wolf who nearly died keeping them off me. I'd woken up with Harrison at my side, steady and unhurt, and I'd believed him when the story said it was him.

I'd believed him for eight years.

The fire crackled. Someone laughed near the railing. The ceremony was winding toward its close, the formal words already spoken, the bond already declared in front of the pack. All that was left was the celebration.

I should have left then. I know that now.

I was turning to go when I heard my name.

"Elora."

Alia's voice was smooth. Composed. She had the Luna tone down already — warm on the surface, with something harder underneath that most people didn't notice. I noticed. I'd always noticed.

She was walking toward me from the direction of the railing, away from the main crowd, a small smile on her face that didn't reach her eyes. The firelight caught the flowers in her hair.

"I'm glad you came," she said. "It means a lot to Harrison. To both of us."

I looked at her. "Congratulations," I said. Flat. Polite. The minimum.

She stopped a few feet away. Her smile didn't change. "You've been so devoted to this pack," she said. "To him. It must be hard, letting go of something you held onto for so long."

There it was. The thing beneath the warmth.

I kept my face still. "I don't know what you mean."

"I think you do." Her voice dropped, just between us. "But it's over now. You understand that, right? Whatever you thought you had — whatever story you told yourself — it's done."

I opened my mouth.

And then her hands hit my chest.

It wasn't a shove the way you imagine a shove — clumsy, impulsive, something you could call an accident. It was deliberate. Both palms, flat, with her full weight behind it, and she stepped into it the way you step into something you've already decided to do.

I went over the railing.

The fall lasted less than a second. I know that because I didn't have time to scream. I had time to see the firelight above me, orange against black sky, and then the river came up and hit me like a wall.

The cold was not like anything I can describe. It wasn't temperature — it was erasure. Every thought, every breath, every eight years of carefully maintained composure, gone in an instant. The current grabbed me immediately, pulling hard, and I couldn't tell which way was up. My body stopped working the way I told it to. My arms moved but not right. The cold was inside me already, in my lungs, in my bones.

I thought, very clearly: this is how it ends.

And then hands grabbed my arm.

A border patrol wolf. I never learned his name. He pulled me out onto the bank and I lay there on the cold ground, shaking so hard my teeth cracked together, and I stared up at the cliff's edge where the bonfire still burned like nothing had happened.

I don't remember much after that. Someone wrapped something around me. Someone carried me. The medical wing smelled like antiseptic and pine, and then I was in a bed and the shaking wouldn't stop and everything went dark.

I woke up warm.

That was the first thing I registered — warmth, which felt wrong after the cold, like my body didn't trust it yet. I was wrapped in a blanket I didn't recognize. Heavy, fur-lined, the kind of thing that cost real money. It smelled faintly of something I couldn't place — something dark and clean, like cedar after rain.

On the bedside table, a ceramic cup. Still faintly steaming.

I reached for it without thinking. One sip, and I went still.

It was my blend. Exactly my blend — the specific combination of chamomile and lemon balm and something slightly bitter underneath that I'd been making for myself since college, that I'd never written down for anyone, that I'd never thought to mention to anyone in this pack.

I set the cup down carefully.

My chest did something complicated. Something that wanted to be hope, which I immediately hated myself for.

Harrison, I thought. It had to be Harrison. Guilty, maybe. Shaken by what Alia had done. Trying to say something he didn't know how to say out loud.

I pulled the blanket tighter around my shoulders and stared at the ceiling and told myself that meant something.

I was still telling myself that when the door opened.