The silver poison burns through my veins like liquid fire, and I don't make a sound. "Luna, please—you need to let me clean this." Healer Maren hovers over me, her hands shaking as she reaches for the gash across my ribs. The rogue's claws caught me deep, tore through skin and muscle, left three parallel lines that weep blood mixed with that telltale silver sheen. I pull my shirt down, covering the wound. "I'm fine." "You're not fine. That's silverblood venom. If it reaches your heart—" "Then it reaches my heart." I slide off the examination table, my legs steadier than they should be. The clinic spins once, twice, then settles. "I'll heal." Maren's face goes pale. She's young for a pack healer, maybe twenty-five, with dark hair she keeps in a braid and eyes that see too much. "I need to call your emergency contact." "I don't have one." "Every pack member has—" "I don't have one," I repeat, and this time she hears what I'm not saying. She stares at me. Opens her mouth. Closes it. The clinic door slams open hard enough to crack against the wall. Alpha Thorne fills the doorway—six-foot-four of raw dominance and barely contained fury, his dark hair disheveled like he ran here, his gray eyes wild. My husband. My mate. The man I haven't spoken to in three days. "What the hell happened?" His voice carries that Alpha command that makes weaker wolves drop their eyes. "I felt—" He stops. Looks at me. Really looks at me. "Why can't I feel you?" I meet his gaze and feel nothing. No pull. No ache. No warmth of the mate bond that used to sing between us like a living thing. "Cassian." He crosses to me in three strides, reaches for my face. I step back. His hand falls. "What's wrong? Talk to me through the link." "I can't." "Yes, you can. Stop blocking me out." "I'm not blocking you out, Thorne." My voice comes out flat, empty. "I just don't feel you anymore." Maren gasps. The sound cuts through the room like a blade. Thorne's head snaps toward her, then back to me, and for the first time since he walked in, I see fear flicker across his face. "That's not possible," he says. "It is if the Luna has been deliberately severing the mate bond." Maren's voice shakes. She shouldn't have said it. It's not her place. But the truth hangs between us now, solid and undeniable. Thorne goes very still. "How long?" "Eight months," I say. "Give or take." The number lands like a physical blow. I watch him process it—watch the exact moment he realizes what I'm not saying. Eight months. The same eight months he's been "working late." The same eight months I've watched him come home smelling like vanilla and lies. "Cassian, I can explain—" "Can you?" I tilt my head, genuinely curious. "Because I'd love to hear how you explain coming home at three a.m. with her perfume on your collar. How you explain the phone calls you take in the other room. How you explain forgetting our anniversary because you were so busy with pack business." I pause. "Is that what we're calling her? Pack business?" His jaw tightens. "You don't understand." "Then help me understand." I spread my hands. "I'm right here. I've been right here. You're the one who left." "I never left—" "You left the moment you touched her." The words come out quiet, but they hit like thunder. "You just didn't have the balls to tell me." Maren edges toward the door. Smart woman. Thorne doesn't even notice. His attention is locked on me, his Alpha instincts screaming at him to fix this, to command me, to force the bond back into place. But the bond is a living thing. You can't command it. You can only kill it. And I've been killing it slowly, carefully, for eight months. "I need you to leave," I say. "Like hell—" "You're not my emergency contact, Thorne. You're not my anything." I turn to Maren. "Stitch me up. He can go." "Cassian—" "That's Luna to you, Alpha." The formal address stops him cold. I've never used it before. Not once in five years. "Now get out of my clinic." The silence stretches. Thorne stares at me like I'm a stranger. Maybe I am. Maybe I've been a stranger for eight months and he's only just now noticing. He leaves without another word. Maren's hands tremble as she reaches for her supplies. "Luna, I—I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said—" "It's fine." I lie back on the table, stare at the ceiling. The silver poison pulses through me with every heartbeat, burning away the last threads of what we used to be. "Just make it quick." She works in silence, her needle quick and efficient. The physical wound will heal. The other one won't. I don't tell her that I can still feel the bond, thin as spider silk, connecting me to Thorne. I don't tell her that I feel it stretch every time he goes to her. I don't tell her that tonight, when he came through that door, the bond finally snapped.