Rosalie
"The divorce papers are ready." Christopher threw a thin stack of papers on the desk and pinned them down with a sleek black ink pen he got as a gift from his late father. "Just put your signature here and it's done."
I could not bear to look at his face as he said those words. If anything, they sounded so muffled, so distant, that for several very long moments, I could not believe he was saying them to me.
I picked up the pen he so tactlessly threw on the desk, but my hand refused to move. Why was it so difficult to put a certain end to this relationship anyway?
Rosalie Ravenswood... As the only daughter of my father, the Alpha of the Moonshadow pack, and a beta in rank, I was not just one of the pack's shadows to frown upon.
On the contrary, I was beautiful, intelligent, strong, and quite talented in many aspects; my skills sometimes even rivaled those of my Alpha brother.
My only flaw was that I did not have a fated mate.
It was not really uncommon. More and more werewolves these days were troubled with the same issue as me, however, it was still a matter of pride, especially for my dominating and conservative Alpha father, Johnathan Ravenswood.
Luckily, neither my brother Saris nor my best friend and soon-to-be fiancé found their mates as well, and that was when this sudden deal was struck. I had to marry Christopher in order to secure his position as an Alpha of the Moonshadow pack as my father's support could offer him protection from the claims both within his own pack and the rival packs outside.
Distressed by the fact that his daughter was not Christopher's "true" mate, the marriage deal was quite beneficial for both my and Christopher's father. After all, when it comes to the selective marriage of any alpha, it is nothing more than a political deal.
With a long, embarrassingly audible sigh, I pulled the papers closer to my side and stared at the empty box that had been waiting for my signature.
'That's it,' I thought to myself as my eyes slowly moved over every stroke of Christopher's signature. 'My first marriage is over. After only one week.'
I had been expecting this to happen but now that it had, it felt as if my entire being was coiled up in a protest against my future actions.
'I did not expect him to be ready with the papers so soon... Has he been waiting for this all along?'
It was a perfectly normal thing to wonder about and if I was gutsy enough to voice that question out loud, Christopher would probably have a reasonable answer ready.
My mind drifted back to the day my father announced my impending wedding. It had only been a couple of weeks since I had returned from my trip to Hawaii after graduating from the Academy with honors.
It was a little treat I granted myself for having worked so damn hard to please my father, but the first thing I heard from him had managed to erase that little relaxing trip almost instantly.
"The tension around the pack's borders continues to grow. Alpha Daniel, Christopher's father, keeps getting worse these days. We cannot let any rivalry within the Moonshadow pack bloom because of this... You are to marry Christopher and become his chosen mate."
Those were the first words my father said to me when I entered his office after not seeing him for months.
I had to get married. And it was decided without me.
The only silver lining I could find in that impending union was the fact that I was marrying my friend.
When Christopher's mother died in an accident during one of the patrols she was leading, his father, Constantine, could not get a hold of himself for quite a while. As his friend and trusted ally, my father took Christopher in, and up until he turned fifteen and finally shifted, Christopher and I were growing together almost like close siblings.
It almost seemed like a childish pinkie promise between our fathers to get us both married to each other in case we could not find our mates and yet, it was true. For the first time in a while, a beta woman of one pack had to marry an alpha male of another in order to secure the alpha's powers.
Now, just a day after Alpha Constantine's funeral, my husband stood before me and demanded a divorce.
"Well?"
His tone snapped me back to reality and I felt a slight chill running down my spine as I realized how unwelcoming and cold his office seemed now.
Still struggling to focus my eyes, I shifted them upwards and finally clearly saw my husband's face: pale, clearly exhausted, he had dark circles under his big gray eyes that were hiding behind the color lenses.
With his arms crossed at his muscular chest, he looked imposing and dominant, just like he always did, however, this time, as I ran my gaze over his neatly styled black hair and impeccable charcoal-colored suit, I felt as if I was in the presence of a family lawyer rather than my friend.
I parted my lips in an attempt to answer but my tongue suddenly felt so heavy as if it was covered in lead.
'Roxie,' I asked my wolf internally, but once again, I heard no response. She walked out on me the moment I said "yes" to marrying Christopher.
"Both you and I," my husband started again, growing tired of my continuous silence, his thick black eyebrows twitching impatiently. "We did not want this marriage. And you know it too... you never loved me anyway."
My chest tightened as if an invisible band had snapped around it. Heat pricked at the corners of my eyes, and no matter how hard I blinked, the tears threatened to spill over.
His words cut through me like a rusty knife and I felt my soul shatter into a million pieces.
I would have endured it if he only wished to divorce me because he himself never loved me at all. But he went as far as to accuse me of not loving him, and that was the single thing I could never stand for.
Without saying a word, I jerked my hand with a visible air of annoyance and left an almost incomprehensible scribble that only faintly resembled my signature.
Now, it was done. Now, I am a mateless woman, a Luna in name only, cast aside a week after my wedding, before I could even find my footing in the role I never really asked for.