“My mate, Alpha Santino, brought another woman into our home. She was a pregnant Omega, the widow of his fallen Beta, and he swore to protect her above all others. He gave her my seat of honor, left our bed cold each night to soothe her feigned nightmares, and ignored me completely. I was the Luna of the Blackstone Pack, but I was becoming a ghost in my own life. The final betrayal happened in my own bedroom. She stood over my vanity and deliberately shattered my mother's sacred moonstone necklace, the last piece of my family I had left. When Santino burst in, he didn't see my heartbreak. He saw only her fake tears. "What did you do to her?!" he roared, his voice laced with the Alpha's Command, a sacred power he used to crush my will. Then, for her, he did the unforgivable. He raised his hand and struck me, his mate. In that instant, the love I had desperately clung to turned to ice. The man I had sworn my life to had not only betrayed me but had defiled the sacred bond the Goddess herself had blessed. As the pain of his betrayal ripped through me, something ancient and powerful awakened in my blood. I rose to my feet and spoke the words that would destroy his world and begin mine. "I, Alessia Bianchi, reject you, Santino Moretti, as my mate."”