The Phantom Luna

I checked my phone again—5:47 PM.

The candles were already lit—thirteen of them, one for each year we'd been together. The hotel suite looked perfect. I'd spent three hours getting it right, draping fairy lights across the curtains, scattering rose petals on the bed, setting up his favorite wine. The food I'd cooked myself was staying warm in the containers I'd brought. Pasta carbonara. The first thing I'd ever made for him that didn't turn out like garbage.

My hands were shaking as I smoothed down my red dress. The one he'd bought me on our fifth anniversary. Back when he still noticed what I wore.

I texted him: I'm here. Can't wait to see you.

Three dots appeared. Disappeared. Appeared again.

On my way. Be there by 6.

I sat on the edge of the bed and waited. My heart was doing that stupid thing where it beat too fast, like I was some teenager waiting for her crush. God, I was pathetic. But today had to be different. Today was ours.

Six o'clock came.

Then six-thirty.

I called. It rang four times before going to voicemail.

I texted: Everything okay?

The meeting ran late. Give me some time.

My chest felt tight. I told myself it was fine. He was busy. He was always busy. Alpha responsibilities, pack business, all of that. I understood. I'd always understood.

I looked at the food getting cold. The candles burning lower. At my reflection in the mirror across from me—too much makeup, too much effort, too desperate.

Seven o'clock.

Eight.

I called again at nine. This time he declined it. I stared at my phone like it had slapped me. Then I called again because maybe it was an accident, maybe he'd hit the wrong button—

The number you are trying to reach is currently unavailable.

He'd turned his phone off.

I sat there in that hotel room with my cold pasta and my dying candles and I felt something crack inside my chest. Not break. Just crack. Like ice starting to split.

At 11:58 PM, my phone buzzed.

Can't make it. Something urgent came up.

I watched our anniversary tick over to the next day.

Then another message: It's too late now. Don't come home tonight, it's not safe. I'll have a guard watch the house. Stay wherever you are.

Stay wherever I was. In this hotel room, I'd paid for. With food I'd cooked. Wearing a dress he'd bought me back when he still cared.

My wolf whimpered inside me. Or she would have, if she weren't already dying.

The silver bullet. That's what started all of this, wasn't it? Three years ago. I'd seen it coming for Desmond, seen it arc through the air in slow motion, and I'd moved without thinking. Took it right in my chest. For him. To save him.

I nearly died.

He visited me once in the hospital. Once. He brought white flowers—white, like he was already mourning me—and he'd stood at the foot of my bed looking uncomfortable. Like he didn't know what to say to his dying wife. He stayed for ten minutes. Then, a business called him away.

But his parents. Oh, his parents visited plenty.

"When are you giving us a grandchild?" his mother had asked, standing over my hospital bed while I could barely breathe. "You've been married seven years. What's wrong with you?"

His father nodded along. "A Luna's duty is to produce an heir. You're failing at the most basic responsibility."

I tried to explain. The doctor had explained. The silver was lodged too close to my womb. Pregnancy would be dangerous. Maybe fatal. One percent chance of survival, they'd said.

"Then you'd better pray that one percent is enough," his mother had sneered. "Because if you die childless, you'll have failed this family completely."

So I got pregnant.

I felt my wolf die during the delivery. Felt her slip away like water through my fingers. Richie came into the world screaming and perfect and mine, and I became something less than I'd been before. Weaker than a human. Breakable in ways I'd never been.

I thought Desmond would come back to me then. Thought that giving him a son would fix everything. That he'd look at me the way he used to, back when I was strong and whole.

But he didn't.

And now I was sitting in a hotel room at midnight, alone on our anniversary, with cold pasta and dead candles and a text message that felt like a knife.

I couldn't stay here. Couldn't sit in this room I'd decorated like an idiot. I grabbed my purse and left, didn't even bother cleaning up. Let housekeeping wonder what sad story had happened here.

The drive home was forty minutes. Forty minutes of radio silence and empty roads and my hands gripping the steering wheel so hard my knuckles went white.

The house was dark when I pulled up. Except for the upstairs bedroom. Our bedroom. The light was on.

Something twisted in my stomach.

I got out of the car. Walked to the front door. My key turned in the lock so quietly.

And that's when I smelled it.

Sex.

The scent hit me like a wall—thick and unmistakable and wrong. So wrong. My legs almost gave out. My hand grabbed the doorframe to keep from falling.

Then I heard it. A moan. High-pitched and breathless. Coming from upstairs.

My feet moved on their own. Up the stairs, one step at a time. The smell got stronger. The sounds got louder. My heart was slamming against my ribs so hard I thought they might crack.

Our bedroom door was open.

And there he was.

Desmond. My husband. The man I'd taken a silver bullet for. The father of my child.

He was on our bed. The bed where I'd slept beside him for ten years. The bed where I'd cried myself to sleep more times than I could count.

And he was fucking someone else.

A blonde. She was on her hands and knees, her hair spread across my pillows, and he was behind her, his hands on her hips, moving like—

I couldn't breathe.

He didn't even bother to close the door.