I swallowed hard, forcing a smile that didn’t reach my eyes.
“It’s fine,” I said, though my voice came out hollow.
It wasn’t fine. Nothing about this was fine. But what else was I supposed to say?
Elder Elisse stopped beside me, her gaze lingering on my face as if searching for something. Perhaps she was looking for the strong Luna she had once believed I would be.
Instead, all she found was a broken woman barely holding herself together.
“I didn’t think he would go this far,” she murmured.
Neither did I.
My gaze drifted back to the cake.
A bitter memory surfaced. There was a time when Alpha Cain would never have done this. A time when he looked at me the way he was looking at that woman now.
A time when I was his entire world. I could still remember it so clearly. The way he pursued me relentlessly despite my origins. The way he ignored the whispers, the disapproval, the countless reasons why I wasn’t a suitable Luna for the Foreshadow Pack.
He didn’t care. He chose me anyway.