I Was Only His Backup Mate, His Second Choice Luna Chapter 02

I Was Only His Backup Mate, His Second Choice Luna Chapter 02

His pupils flickered. Then the impatience settled back over his face like a curtain dropping.

“This again?”

He laughed, cold, the arrogance so familiar it barely registered anymore.

“Fine. When? Once I’m cut loose from you, I can bond with Aelia. It isn’t as though I’m short of options.”

The mate bond is a blessing from the Moon Goddess. In his mouth it sounded like a lease agreement.

“Now works,” I said.

That stopped him. His gaze dropped to my stomach.

“You’re still carrying. Severing the bond will hurt you and the pup.”

“I don’t care.”

His face went dark. “I care. That’s my heir. But don’t imagine this tactic works on me.”

He made one call. A white-haired Elder arrived within the hour.

“I want to sever a mate bond by Full Moon Petition,” Magnus told him.

The Petition is the slowest way and the least painful. You speak your intent to the full moon, the Moon Goddess bears witness, and you have the entire lunar cycle to take it back.

“Then we petition,” I said. “It’s a full moon tonight.”

He studied me for a long moment. Whatever he thought, he kept it.

We went to the altar and pressed bloodied thumbprints onto the parchment, one beside the other.

“I petition the full moon. When the next full moon rises, I ask the Moon Goddess to sever the bond between us.”

“I, Magnus Thorn, reject Estella as my mate.”

“I, Estella, accept the rejection.”

The moonlight seemed to thin, going pale as bone.

No pain came. My tears came anyway, slow and steady down my face.

This was the third time I’d asked him to break the bond.

The first time, Aelia accused me of theft. Magnus didn’t defend me. He stood there and let her empty my bag in front of a crowded room so I could prove myself innocent. That was the night I understood that what he considered a small dispute was actually my dignity, and he’d priced it at nothing.

I didn’t sleep. In the morning I asked him to sever the bond, packed a bag, and went home to Pinebrook. He caught a red-eye and stood outside the Blackwoods’ door all night. Through the bond I felt him, the raw ache of him, all that love pushing against the closed door. I softened. I went back.

The second time, she printed out love letters I’d written him and pinned them to the company message board. Everyone decided I was the pathetic one chasing the Alpha. When a coworker laughed in my face I lost my temper and said Magnus and I were married. He denied it in front of the entire floor. Then he fired me.

Afterward he explained it the way you’d explain a schedule change. “If you expose the truth, how is Aelia supposed to hold her position in the company? The truth doesn’t stop being true because it’s private. It’s enough that I know you’re my Luna.”

We screamed at each other that night. I asked him to break the bond again. I got so worked up I passed out mid-sentence, and when I came around the healer told me I was pregnant.

So I stayed. For the pup, I swallowed it one more time.

Somewhere along the way Magnus decided that asking to break the bond was just how I begged for attention.

This time I meant it.

I left the altar and got outside just in time to see his car pull away down the road.

Wind caught the hem of my dress. The day I became Luna, the air moved the same way.

He’d smiled that day, wide and unguarded, which almost never happened. He’d held my hand and there’d been guilt sitting behind his eyes.

“Estella, the Blaze gene work has to stay buried. If it gets out, every other pack will drag them in front of a tribunal. My mother’s only condition for accepting you as Luna is that we keep it quiet. For now.”

“I know I’m asking you to carry this. Wait for me. I’ll bring them around, and then I’ll give you a mating ceremony no one in this territory will forget.”

I believed him. I thought that meant he loved me.

It turns out that kind of love doesn’t weigh much at all.

One good gust and it’s gone.