The hallway seemed endless, lined with photos of generations of Steele Alphas and their Lunas. Our wedding photo hung near the end me in white lace with stars in my eyes, Dominic staring straight ahead like he was attending a business merger.
Even on our wedding day, he'd looked like I was an obligation.
"Luna Elara!"
Dominic's mother, Celeste Steele, glided down the hallway with her usual regal displeasure. Perfect timing. One last hurdle before freedom.
"Former Luna," I corrected, watching her lips purse. "I'm leaving your son. Effective immediately."
Her eyes widened, then narrowed with calculation. "You can't do that. The pack needs a Luna. We have the Alpha Summit next month."
"Then I suggest you start grooming Vivian for the position. She's been auditioning for it long enough."
"You ungrateful little" She caught herself, smoothing her expression. "We took you in. Gave you everything. This is how you repay us?"
I laughed, the sound bitter and broken. "You took me in because the Moon Goddess gave you no choice. You gave me nothing but contempt. And I took it, because I thought that was the price of being Luna." I met her eyes directly. "But I'm done paying for a position I was never allowed to fill."
"Dominic will never let you go."
"Dominic doesn't care enough to stop me."
The truth hurt less than expected, like lancing an infected wound. "And even if he tried, it's too late. I'm already gone."
I left her speechless, pushed through the pack house doors into crisp autumn air.
My car waited in the circular drive, packed with everything that mattered two suitcases and three boxes. Three years of marriage, reduced to five pieces of luggage.
I didn't look back as I drove through the iron gates of Steele Pack territory.
My phone buzzed. Maya: "Did you do it? Are you okay?"
"I did it," I typed one-handed, eyes stinging. "I'm free."
"Thank the Goddess. Come to Crescent Moon. My brother will give you sanctuary."
I smiled for the first time in months. Crescent Moon Pack, where my childhood friend had found happiness. A fresh start, far from Dominic and the ghost of who I'd tried to be for him.
"I'm already on my way. I'll be there by nightfall."
"Drive safe. I love you. I'm so proud of you."
The tears finally came as I drove toward the setting sun, streaming down my face in hot tracks. But they weren't sad tears. Not entirely. They were cleansing, like a storm washing away years of accumulated pain.
My wolf still ached from the bond we were severing. She was confused, hurt, mourning the mate we were leaving behind. But even she seemed to sense the rightness of this choice.
We'd survived three years of slow death. Of being unwanted and unvalued. Of shrinking ourselves smaller and smaller, trying to fit into a space that was never meant for us.
It was time to remember how to live. How to be Elara Thorne again, not Elara Steele.
As the Steele Pack mansion disappeared in my rearview mirror, I felt something unfamiliar bloom in my chest.
Hope.
And I knew, with bone-deep certainty, that Dominic Steele would regret this day.
Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow.
But eventually when I'd rebuilt myself into someone strong and whole, when I'd found happiness without him, when he finally realized what he'd casually thrown away he would understand what he'd lost.
By then, I'd be long gone.
And I wouldn't be coming back.
Not for anything.
Not even for him.
The drive to Crescent Moon Pack territory took six hours, six hours of watching the landscape shift from Dominic's perfectly manicured estates to wild forests and rolling hills. Six hours of my wolf alternating between mournful howls and confused whimpers as the mate bond stretched thinner with each mile.
Good. Let it snap. Let it shatter into a million pieces that I'd never have to pick up again.
My phone rang three times Dominic's mother, his Beta Marcus, and finally Dominic himself. I declined every call, then blocked all three numbers with savage satisfaction.
Too little, too late.
By the time I crossed into Crescent Moon territory, the sun was setting, painting the sky in shades of amber and blood orange. The border guards recognized my car Maya had called ahead and waved me through with sympathetic smiles that said they'd heard the gossip.
Perfect. Within a week, every pack from here to the Canadian border would know that Luna Elara Steele had walked out on the great Alpha Dominic. The whispers would be vicious. The speculation endless.
Did she cheat? Was she barren? Did she go rogue?
I didn't care. Let them talk. Let them think whatever they wanted. The truth was so much simpler and so much more pathetic: I'd left because I was tired of being invisible to the one person who was supposed to see me most clearly.
Maya was waiting on the front steps of the Crescent Moon pack house when I pulled up, her auburn hair catching the last rays of sunlight like flames. She wore ripped jeans and an oversized sweater, looking nothing like the perfect Luna fashion plates we'd been taught to emulate.
She looked happy. Real. Free.
Everything I'd forgotten how to be.
"Elara!" She yanked open my car door before I'd even put it in park, pulling me into a fierce hug that smelled like vanilla and home. "Oh, thank the Goddess. I've been worried sick all day."
I buried my face in her shoulder and let myself break, just a little. Just enough to release some of the pressure that had been building in my chest for months. "I did it, Maya. I actually did it."
"I know, honey. I know." She stroked my hair like we were teenagers again, before arranged matings and political alliances and the weight of pack expectations. "Come on. Let's get you inside. You look like you're about to collapse."
She wasn't wrong. Now that the adrenaline of confrontation had faded, exhaustion hit me like a physical blow. I'd been running on spite and determination for the past seventy-two hours, barely sleeping, barely eating, just planning and packing and working up the courage to finally walk away.