He Thought I Became His Perfect Luna, I Had Only Stopped Loving Him Chapter 09

He Thought I Became His Perfect Luna, I Had Only Stopped Loving Him Chapter 09

Iris looked at him once.

Looked back at me.

“Nobody important,” she said. “Come on.”

“Wait.” He stepped in front of the car door. His eyes were red around the edges. “Aelwen. It’s me.

Stellan. Your mate. Your Alpha.”

I repeated the word.

“Mate?”

I reached into my bag and pulled out the letter from Elder Lioraen and held it out.

He took it. Read it.

And went very still, like something inside him had just stopped running.

“That was done without my knowledge,” he said, his voice cracking. “Aelwen, let’s start over. I was

wrong. I know I was wrong

I took the letter back.

“I don’t remember what happened between us,” I said. “But if we’re separated, that means it wasn’t

good. The past is the past. I’m starting over.”

I turned toward the car.

He lost it.

He grabbed the door.

“No – don’t go – Aelwen, please, just let me explain-”

“Explain what?” I looked back at him, keeping my voice even.

“How you hurt me again and again to protect someone else? How you blackmailed me with my

mother?

“how you destroyed my career, how you made me kneel in the freezing wind and confess to a dog?”

His whole body went rigid. “You – you remembered-”

“No.” I met his eyes. “Iris told me. She had the files. The medical records. Photos. Documents.”

I let that land.

“This isn’t about my memory, Stellan. I just don’t care.”

He collapsed.

Not metaphorically.

He went to his knees right there on the sidewalk outside the hospital entrance, in front of a woman sitting in a wheelchair, for everyone to see.

“I know what Rhoslyn did. All of it. The staged raid, your research, everything.” His voice was a wreck. “She’s been dealt with. She’ll never walk right again. I promise you—”

“So what?” I asked.

He looked up.

“You have nothing now. No Alpha title. No power. No standing.” I said it quietly, without cruelty. “You’re asking me to let you make amends. With what, exactly? Your regret?”

He had no answer.

The sound of a car door.

Hadrian stepped out, composed and well-dressed, carrying my notebook the way someone does when they’ve done it a hundred times before.

Hadrian Dunmire. One of the heirs to the Royal Pack. We’d crossed paths through the Alpha King’s medical situation, and he’d been nothing but steady and respectful ever since.

He looked at Stellan with mild, genuine curiosity.

“Aelwen, who’s this?”

“Ex-husband,” I said.

Hadrian processed this without blinking.

“I see.” He looked at Stellan with the polite distance of someone who didn’t need to be rude to make

a point. “I’ll ask you not to block her path.”

Stellan’s jaw locked. “Stay out of it.”

“I’m going to have to respectfully decline.” Hadrian held open the car door. “And I’d like to point

out that you don’t have any authority here anymore.”

“She’s my wife-”

“She was your wife.” He was still pleasant about it. Still immovable. “From what I understand, the experience wasn’t something either of you should be repeating. Aelwen is doing well. I’d prefer to keep it that way. So please, leave her alone.”

Stellan’s face changed.

“You’re threatening me.”

“I’m giving you information,” Hadrian said. “What you do with it is your business. But the Royal Pack takes its people seriously. Miss Bramlock is one of ours now.”

He waited until I was seated, then got in after me.

The car pulled away.

Stellan stood on the curb and watched until it turned the corner.

He took stock. No title. No money. No leverage. Nothing that would make a woman like Aelwen look

at him and see someone worth choosing.

He’d spent five years with everything, and used all of it to take from her.

Now he stood in an empty street with nothing left to offer.

Three days later, Royal Pack guards knocked on his door.

“You’re being asked to return to your home pack immediately. Please do not remain in this city.”

Hadrian’s doing. Obviously.

Stellan didn’t argue.

He packed a small bag and left.

On the train out of the city, he sat pressed against the window and watched the skyline dissolve into

the distance.

For the first time in longer than he could remember, he cried.

He finally understood what she had felt.

What it was like to love someone so much that you rearranged your whole life around them, and have them look straight through you.

It hurt like something being removed.