The Luna Who Walked Away from Her Cruel Alpha

I extended the Bond Rejection Decree just as Kael Blackthorne’s voice dipped into that low, indulgent tone, his communicator pressed to his ear while he soothed yet another favored she-wolf.

“Kael. Let’s dissolve this mating.”

“Sign it. Give it one full moon cycle for the severance to finalize, and then we walk away. No bond. No claim. Nothing tying us together.”

He barely reacted. A faint hum of acknowledgment was all I got as he took the document, his gaze never leaving the middle distance. Without reading a single line, he flipped to the final page and signed—quick, careless, as if it were nothing more than a routine form.

The pen lifted. That was it.

He rose immediately after, reaching for his coat, still murmuring into the communicator, still focused on someone else.

“Alright, alright. I’m on my way now. I’ll come keep you company, okay?”

The call ended. He had already stepped halfway out when he paused, as though something belatedly crossed his mind. He turned back, one eyebrow raised in mild curiosity.

“Oh, Clara. That document you had me sign just now… what was it?”

He had already signed it. Only now did he think to ask.

The corner of my lips curved upward. The smile felt sharp, almost metallic.

“The Bond Rej—”

I didn’t even get to finish.

He waved a hand dismissively, cutting me off, impatience practically radiating off him.

“If you’re planning to purchase another den, just go ahead and do it. There’s no need to run every contract past me. I’m busy calming someone down right now. She’s been upset for days because I’ve been stuck here with you.”

That was when it clicked.

He hadn’t listened. Not even a single word.

To him, it was just another property agreement.

And really… why wouldn’t he think that?

In the worst of our fights, the thing I did most often was spend his territory wealth on sprawling estates, entire rows of ancestral dens across the northern districts. The market for those old properties had long since collapsed, yet I kept pouring billions in moon-credits into them, buying and buying, just to punish him. Just to release the pain and fury I couldn't hold inside anymore.

Back then, I still had expectations of him. That faint, stubborn remnant of love made it impossible for me to accept that he had already turned away, and so I broke apart again and again, falling into despair each time like it was the first.

But when, exactly, had he started to change?

I remembered the night we first met. It was at a moonlit lounge on the edge of Blackthorne territory.

I'd gone to collect a friend. Kael was there, drunk beyond steadiness, his wolf's aura flickering unevenly as he nearly staggered into a table. I caught his arm out of simple decency.

He looked up at me. Just that once. And from that single glance, he decided I was his.

The name Kael Blackthorne was never unknown in pack circles. Heir to the northern territories, with a face that carried the arrogance of old bloodlines and a reputation to match. The she-wolves around him rotated every three days. Half the city knew someone who'd been burned by his charm.

I had no intention of becoming one of them. I wanted nothing to do with a wolf who treated courtship like sport, so I refused him from the start.

But he didn't stop. He only sank deeper, pursuing me with a stubbornness that bordered on obsession, his gaze refusing to settle on anyone else.

On Moon Lovers Day, the entire plaza overflowed with moonflowers. For my sake he lit an arc of fire across the coastal cliffs that burned until dawn. And every time I was low, he appeared, always exactly on time.

Under that kind of relentless pursuit, the heart I'd kept still and guarded my entire life cracked open, piece by piece.

After we were together, he truly did rein himself in.

No more wandering from den to den. His schedule was mine to see, every patrol and every outing reported without my asking.

Everyone said he'd come to heel for me. That a reckless wolf settling down was the rarest gift.

I believed them.

So when he dropped to one knee under the full moon, his eyes red-rimmed and his voice rough, and asked me to take the Moon-Oath with him, I said yes almost before the words were out of his mouth.

But the mating was less than a year old when he started tangling himself with other she-wolves again.

We fought more times than I could count.

I stood in the wreckage of the main hall, howling like something inside me had come unhinged, while he just pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose, his face hollow with exhaustion.

In the end, he made a proposal so absurd my wolf went still inside my chest.

"Clara, I love you. But spending a lifetime bound to a single mate… it gets stale."

"We each take our pleasures where we find them. No feelings for anyone outside. And when we've had our fill, we come back to the den. To each other. Isn't that enough?"

I refused.

He carried on as though I hadn't said a word.