The Alpha Proposed to My Sister While I Was Dying

I didn’t go to my room.

If I had, I would have broken something I could never put back together.

Instead, I walked until the corridors thinned and the pack house fell silent behind me. The night air sliced into my lungs as I stepped outside, cold and sharp, but it was easier to breathe here than inside walls that no longer wanted me.

The moon hung high—full, radiant, merciless.

Once, it had answered me.

Now it only watched.

I reached the edge of the sacred grounds without remembering the path there. My feet knew it by instinct, even if my heart wished it didn’t. This was where mates came to swear vows. Where bonds were strengthened under moonlight. Where I had once knelt beside Vaelor, blood on our palms, believing forever was a promise instead of a convenience.

The ground was empty.

Good.

I sank to my knees anyway, the frost biting through the thin fabric of my dress. My breath came uneven, each inhale scraping like glass. The pain behind my eyes had dulled into something heavier, more dangerous—pressure that pulsed in time with my heart.

My wolf stirred faintly.

Not strong enough to rise.

Not strong enough to howl.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered to her, my voice breaking. “I tried to protect you.”

She didn’t answer.

I pressed my hand to my chest where the mate bond burned—no, rotted—a tether that had once glowed warm and steady. Now it felt frayed, infected, like something that should have been cut away long ago.

I didn’t want him back.

That truth settled quietly.

What I wanted was for the pain to stop.

Footsteps crunched behind me.

I didn’t need to turn to know who it was.

“Get up,” Vaelor said. “You’ll freeze.”

I laughed softly, staring at the moon. “You came to check if I was still alive?”

His silence was answer enough.

I stood slowly, the world tilting, and faced him. Up close, he looked exactly as he always had—strong, controlled, untouched by the chaos he left behind. His gaze flicked briefly to the frost dusting my knees, then back to my face.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he said.

“And yet,” I replied, “you proposed to another woman under the same moon that bound us.”

“This again,” he muttered.

“No,” I said sharply. “This ends tonight.”

Something in my tone made him look at me properly for the first time since the festival.

My voice was steady. Too steady.

“Aurelian,” he said, lowering his voice, “don’t do something foolish.”

“Foolish?” I smiled thinly. “You took my place. My title. My child. What more is there left to lose?”

His jaw tightened. “You’re still my Luna in name.”

“Then why does the bond feel like it’s killing me?” I shot back.

He didn’t answer.

I stepped closer, close enough to feel the cold radiating from him instead of warmth. “Tell me the truth, Vaelor. When did you decide I was no longer enough?”

He hesitated.

That was all the answer I needed.

“I’m sick,” I said quietly.

His brow furrowed. “You’re always sick.”

The words were casual.

Careless.

They cut deeper than any rejection.

“I’m dying,” I corrected, watching his face closely. “And you still chose her.”

For the first time, something flickered in his eyes. Not guilt. Not regret.

Annoyance.

“Don’t dramatize,” he said. “If you were truly unwell, the healers would’ve told me.”

I laughed then—soft at first, then harder, until it shook my shoulders and blurred my vision. “They tried.”

His gaze sharpened. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying you didn’t want to hear it,” I replied. “You stopped looking at me long before my body began to fail.”

The mate bond flared suddenly—hot, violent, unbearable. I gasped, dropping to one knee as pain ripped through my chest, radiating down my spine like fire.

Vaelor swore and grabbed my arm. “Enough! Stop this—”

“Don’t touch me!” I screamed, wrenching free.

The bond screamed too, stretched to its limit, pulling at both of us like a living thing refusing to die quietly.

My wolf finally found her voice.

A broken howl tore from my throat, echoing across the grounds—raw, fractured, nothing like the proud call of a Luna.

Vaelor staggered back as if struck.

“What are you doing?” he demanded.

“Ending it,” I said through clenched teeth. “Before it finishes killing me.”

I raised my shaking hand and pressed it to the Luna mark at my throat. Silver light flickered weakly beneath my skin.

“In the presence of the moon,” I said, voice hoarse, “I renounce the bond that no longer protects me.”

The air shifted.

Vaelor’s eyes widened. “You can’t—”

“I can,” I interrupted. “You already chose.”

Pain exploded—white-hot, blinding—as the bond fought back. I screamed, collapsing fully now, claws scraping at frozen earth as my wolf writhed inside me.

Vaelor shouted something—my name, maybe—but it sounded far away.

“I release you,” I gasped. “And I release myself.”

The bond snapped.

Not cleanly.

Nothing about this was merciful.

The force of it threw me forward, my body convulsing as the last threads tore free. I felt it—felt him—ripped out of my chest like a rotting organ.

Silence followed.

Not the peaceful kind.

The dead kind.

I lay there shaking, the cold seeping into my bones, my wolf curled deep inside me—faint, but no longer screaming.

Vaelor stood frozen, his face pale.

For the first time since I had known him, he looked… unmoored.

“What have you done?” he whispered.

I dragged myself upright, every movement agony, but my voice was calm when I answered.

“What you should have done the moment you stopped loving me.”

I turned away before he could speak again.

Each step away from him felt lighter, even as my body weakened. The bond was gone. The ache remained—but it was mine now.

Behind me, the moon shone on a pack that no longer claimed me.

And for the first time, I understood something terrifying and freeing all at once.

I was no longer a Luna.

I was a wolf without a pack.

And that was far more dangerous than they realized.