The pack training grounds always smelled of churned earth, sweat, and bruised pine needles.

As contracted Luna, my place was two paces behind Harrison’s right shoulder. Close enough to look like a united front for the pack warriors, far enough that he didn't have to look at me. I stood with my heels together and my back straight, running through old dance counts in my head to keep my fingers from trembling.

Bethany showed up halfway through the drill.

She wore a tailored cream coat that set off her fiery copper hair, walking across the mud as if the dirt wouldn't dare touch her boots. My sister had never cared about Delta training before. But over the last two weeks, she had become a regular fixture.

She approached the fence where Harrison stood watching the young wolves spar.

"You're working them hard today, Alpha," Bethany said. Her voice was like warm honey, soft and teasing.

Harrison made a brief, dry comment about winter patrols. It wasn't particularly funny, but Bethany let out a bright, melodic laugh. She reached out and placed her manicured hand directly on his forearm.

A sudden gust of wind swept across the field, cutting between them and blowing straight toward me.

The scent hit my nose.

It wasn't Bethany's usual heavy vanilla perfume. It was something else—faint, sweet, and laced with a cold, crisp undertone. A sudden pang shot through my skull, an echo so familiar it made my chest ache, like a childhood memory slipping through my fingers before I could grab it. I couldn't name it. But it felt like home. It felt like something stolen from my own skin.

Before I could breathe, Harrison reacted.

His entire frame locked up. His jaw tightened so hard I heard the click of his teeth. He turned his head toward Bethany with a violent, desperate jerk—the look of a starving man who had just caught the scent of water in a desert. His dark eyes flared wide, dilated with raw, unvarnished hunger. For fifteen years, he had been searching for the ghost who had pulled him out of the fire at summer camp.

Now, his gaze bore into Bethany as if she held his very soul in her hands.

Bethany smiled up at him, her fingers curling slightly against the fabric of his sleeve.

Behind them, in the cold breeze, something terrifying happened inside my chest.

My dormant wolf didn't whimper. She didn't scratch at my ribs. She went completely, utterly silent. A heavy, suffocating stillness settled over her—the kind of quiet a wild beast makes right before the trap snaps shut.

***

Two days later, Daniel Mercer, Harrison's Beta, knocked on my bedroom door and told me the Alpha wanted to see me in his study.

I walked down the quiet hallway, smoothed the front of my simple gray dress, and pushed the door open.

Harrison was sitting behind his mahogany desk. The room was immaculate, everything aligned with military precision. File folders neatly stacked, ledger open, a glass of water on a slate coaster. The air was thick with dark cedar and cold iron—the scent that still made my pulse race with hollow, unrequited longing.

He looked up as I stepped in.

"Sit, Estrella," he said.

"I'm fine standing," I replied, resting my hands at my sides. My dancer's posture was the only shield I had left.

Harrison didn't argue. He set his pen down, interlacing his fingers on the blotter. He looked like an executive about to deliver a quarterly performance review. Calm. Detached. Efficient.

"There is something we need to address regarding our arrangement," he said evenly.

"The council audit?" I asked.

"No." He paused, his dark eyes studying my face for half a second before sliding away toward the window. "It’s about Bethany."

A cold knot formed in my stomach. "What about her?"

"I have reason to believe she may be my fated mate," Harrison said. The words rolled off his tongue without hesitation, smooth and certain. "The scent she carries... it matches the one from summer camp fifteen years ago. I intend to investigate the connection fully."

The air vanished from the room. My throat went dry as dust.

He didn't know. He had no idea that every drop of my blood had recognized him the moment I stepped into this house. He didn't know that my silent wolf was suffocating beneath my skin, unable to cry out that he was looking at the wrong sister.

"I see," I said. My voice was remarkably steady.

Harrison picked up his pen again, tapping it against the blotter. "You don't need to worry about your father. The terms of our contract will be honored. Bloodfang will not touch you, and you will remain under my protection until the year concludes. When the time comes, we will dissolve the agreement quietly. Nothing changes for your daily routine."

He didn't ask how I felt about it. He didn't ask if I minded my own sister taking my place beside him. To him, this was simply an adjustment in logistics. A minor footnote in his grand destiny.

He tilted his head slightly and scented the air once, an absent, mechanical reflex. He caught nothing from me, as always. Just soap and empty space.

Satisfied, he looked down at his open ledger and began to write.

"That's all, Estrella."

I usually hummed under my breath when my nerves began to fray—a quiet, private habit to steady my pulse before walking onto a stage. But now, my throat was locked tight. No sound came out.

I lifted my chin. "I understand, Alpha."

I turned on my heel and walked out of the office.

The heavy oak door clicked shut behind me, cutting off the cedar and iron.

I stood alone in the dim hallway, the carpet muffling the sound of the house. I pressed a trembling palm against my chest, right over my sternum.

Deep down in the dark, my wolf didn't stir. She pressed herself completely flat against the floor of my soul, curling into a tight, shivering ball.

It wasn't dormancy. It wasn't the broken numbness I had lived with since I was thirteen.

It was grief. Pure, suffocating grief.

The banquet hall was filled with crystal glasses, white linen, and the low hum of pack elders discussing our southern border alliance. As Harrison’s contracted Luna, I wore a modest navy silk dress. My job was simple: sit at the head table, keep my posture straight, and smile when someone looked our way.

I didn't eat. The scent of cedar and iron rolled off Harrison's tailored suit, tight and suffocating. It settled in the back of my throat, reminding me of a bond only one of us could feel.

Across the room, Bethany sat among the young warriors. She wore an off-the-shoulder crimson gown that caught every light in the room. Every time the heavy oak doors opened, a cold draft pushed her perfume across the floor. It was that sickening, synthetic ghost-scent. A pale copy of something stolen from me, laced with heavy vanilla to cover the seams.

Then, the stained-glass terrace windows exploded.

The sound tore through the room like a bomb. Shards of colored glass rained down on the hardwood. High-pitched screams cut through the music as four massive rogue wolves leaped through the opening, snapping their jaws, foam and blood dripping from their jowls.

"Rogues!" someone shouted.

Warriors scrambled. Tables flipped over, dishes crashing into ceramic dust.

Before my breath could catch, a deafening crack echoed beside me. Harrison didn't bother using the stairs. He shifted mid-stride, his bones snapping and reforming in a split second. A massive black Alpha wolf burst from his shredded clothing, black fur bristling with lethal power.

My heart leaped into my throat. For half a second, I thought he would turn to shield the head table. I thought he would shield me.

He didn't even look my way.

With a thunderous snarl, Harrison leaped entirely over the banquet table and launched himself across the hall. He tore through two Delta warriors, barreling straight toward the eastern pavilion.

Toward Bethany.

A rogue lunged at her. Harrison met the beast in midair, his jaws clamping shut on its throat with a sickening crunch. He threw the body aside like a rag doll, spun around, and planted his massive paws on either side of Bethany's crimson dress.

He didn't hunt the other intruders. He didn't direct his fighters. He simply curled his body over hers, teeth bared, pressing her flush against the wall.

I stood completely alone at the head table.

Around me, pack warriors engaged the remaining rogues, their claws gouging the floorboards. A spray of dark blood hit the edge of my white tablecloth. No one came to my side. I had no wolf to protect me, no claws to raise, and the man who wore an alliance ring on his finger was fifty feet away, burying his muzzle into my sister’s neck.

From across the smoke and chaos, I saw Bethany's hands reach up. She buried her manicured fingers deep into Harrison’s thick black fur. Her shoulders trembled with delicate, practiced terror. She leaned her throat directly against his nose, letting that stolen scent drown him at point-blank range.

The fight ended as quickly as it began. The remaining three rogues were pinned and dragged away by our Deltas. The hall fell into an eerie, ringing silence, broken only by heavy panting and the drip of blood onto the floor.

Harrison shifted back. He didn't care that he was bare-chested and covered in soot. He hauled Bethany up by her waist, keeping her tucked against his side. His chest heaved. His pupils were completely dilated, swallowed by amber light. The adrenaline of the kill had mixed with the perfume on her skin, setting every childhood memory inside him on fire.

He raised a blood-streaked hand. "Listen to me!"

His Alpha tone slammed through the room, heavy and absolute. Every wolf dropped their head in submission.

"The Moon Goddess has shown mercy tonight," Harrison called out, his voice ringing against the vaulted ceiling. He pulled Bethany closer. "For fifteen years, I have searched for the girl who pulled me from the fire at summer camp. Tonight, her scent was the only thing my wolf answered to. She is my fated mate."

A shocked beat hung in the air. Then, the room erupted.

Cheering broke out among the warriors. Carl stood from his seat, clapping with a smug, victorious grin. Virginia dabbed a tissue at the corner of her eye, beaming at her eldest daughter. Bethany buried her face in Harrison’s chest, weeping with perfect, breathtaking grace.

Then Harrison turned his head.

His eyes locked onto mine across the wreckage of the hall. The warmth vanished from his expression, replaced by a cold, clinical detachment. He walked two paces forward, leaving Bethany, and faced me.

The pack went dead silent.

"I, Harrison Brooks, Alpha of the Ironveil Pack," he announced, his voice steady, flat, and loud enough to scrape the walls, "reject you, Estrella Bishop, as my mate and future Luna."

The words hit my chest like a cluster of silver wire.

A tearing, ripping agony exploded behind my ribs. It wasn't clean. Because my wolf was dormant, the one-sided bond didn't snap cleanly—it shredded my flesh from the inside out, burning hot as molten iron.

My vision flared white. My breath was cut off at the root.

I stumbled back. My knees buckled, and my heel caught on the hem of my gown.

*No!* a voice howled soundlessly inside the dark vault of my soul.

I caught the edge of the head table with one hand. My knuckles turned stark white. Blood rushed to my ears, pounding like a war drum.

I looked down the row of elders. Carl caught my eye and gave a small, satisfied nod. Virginia kept her gaze glued to the Persian rug, refusing to meet my stare. Not a single person moved. Not a single hand reached out to steady me.

To them, I was just an Omega whose contract had expired early.

Harrison stood watching me, his jaw tight, waiting for the tears. Waiting for me to fall to the floor and beg.

I didn't fall.

Deep inside my chest, right where the bond had torn loose, the suffocating grief suddenly shifted.

The cold ache turned boiling hot.

My dormant wolf didn't whimper. She didn't curl up to die in the corner.

She stood.

A savage, guttural snarl ripped through the back of my mind. It was a sound I had never heard in twenty-one years of life—deep, wild, and vibrating with an ancient, terrifying fury.

My internal temperature spiked so violently that beads of sweat instantly broke across my forehead. A jolt of electric current surged from my spine down into my right arm.

My fingers clamped down on the table edge.

*Crack.*

The two-inch-thick solid mahogany splintered beneath my bare fingertips.

A tiny hairline fracture shot through the polished wood under my palm.

I stared down at it in distant, stunned disbelief. A wolf's strength. But my skin was smooth. No fur. No shift. Just an invisible, molten fire burning beneath my marrow.

*Not yet,* my instincts whispered. *Not here.*

I forced the fire down. I drew a slow, shuddering breath of soot-filled air and loosened my grip on the ruined table.

Harrison was still watching, his brow furrowing slightly, as if he sensed a sudden shift in the pressure of the room.

I didn't give him the satisfaction of a word.

I straightened my spine. I squared my shoulders. I lifted my chin, locking into the exact, proud posture I had drilled for hundreds of lonely nights in the ceremonial dance studio.

Without lowering my head to a single soul, I turned my back on the Alpha, on my sister, and on my parents.

I walked out of the banquet hall under my own power, the sound of my heels clicking sharply against the bloody floor, completely in silence.

The sound of clinking glasses and raucous laughter drifted up from the banquet hall below. Down there, the Ironveil Pack was celebrating a fated union. They were drinking expensive wine to toast their Alpha and his shining new Luna.

Up here, the back stairwell was cold and narrow.

I took the steps one by one, keeping one hand against the wall. The rejection vow still throbbed behind my ribs like an open, seared wound. My fingertips still tingled from that split second of terrifying, impossible heat at the mahogany table.

"Going somewhere, little sister?"

The voice was soft, but the sweetness was completely gone.

I froze on the third-floor landing.

Bethany stepped out from the shadows near the linen closet. She had already kicked off her heels. In the dim yellow light of the wall sconce, her red gown looked dark, like drying blood. There was no trace of the trembling, delicate maiden who had wept in Harrison’s arms ten minutes ago.

Her lips were curved into a flat, cruel line.

"I was going to pack," I said, my voice hoarse.

"Pack?" Bethany laughed, a short, dry snap. She closed the distance between us, her bare feet silent on the cold stone. "You really think you get to just walk away with your chin up? Like you're still someone?"

"Harrison rejected me," I said, forcing my spine straight. "You got what you wanted. What else is there?"

"What else?" Bethany stepped closer, crowding me back until my shoulder blades hit the rough plaster. Her eyes glittered with venom. "You existed, Estrella. That’s what else. For twenty-one years, I had to share a roof with you. The broken bloodline. The pathetic, wolfless freak who somehow still got to dance under the full moon while everyone watched. And then you dared to walk into Harrison’s office and offer him a contract."

She tilted her head, looking me up and down with raw disgust.

"You sat in my chair," she whispered viciously. "You breathed his air. You carried his title. It was wasted on you. All of it. The noble bloodline, the Luna seat, his regard—it belongs to me. It always did."

"You stole the scent," I rasped, the truth clawing up my throat. "I smelled it on you. You took it from my—"

"Shut up."

Her hand shot out, shockingly fast. Her wolf’s strength pinned my shoulders against the wall so hard the back of my skull cracked against the stone.

Before I could draw breath to scream, her other hand came out of the folds of her dress.

Between her manicured fingers sat a small glass vial filled with a thick, violet liquid that gave off a sharp, metallic reek.

Concentrated wolfsbane.

My stomach plummeted into icy terror. "Bethany, no—"

"You're not dancing anymore, Estrella," she snarled. "And you're never going to get in my way again."

She jammed her thumb into the pressure point beneath my jaw. My mouth reflexively gasped open in agony. In that split second, she shoved the glass rim between my teeth and tipped it back.

The poison poured down my throat.

It felt like swallowing crushed glass and liquid fire.

The heat didn't just burn my esophagus—it surged straight into my blood, boiling hot, black, and toxic. It raced through my veins, screaming toward the deep vault in my soul where that wild, newborn wolf had just begun to stir.

*No!*

A silent, agonized shriek echoed in my mind. The wolfsbane slammed into the fragile thread connecting me to my wolf. I felt it snap. It didn't just tear—it shattered like frozen crystal, plunging my inner world into pitch-black, suffocating darkness.

Bethany let go.

I collapsed onto the stone landing, my body violently convulsing. Thick, burning bile rose in my throat, spilling past my lips. My hands clawed at the cold floor, fingernails tearing against the stone as spasms ripped through my spine. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't scream. My limbs jerked helplessly.

Bethany stood over me, looking down at my writhing body as if I were a cockroach dying in the dust.

Absently, she reached up and touched her own copper-furred wrist once—a small, nervous tell. Then she turned and walked toward the stairs, smoothing her crimson dress.

"Help!" her voice suddenly shrieked, instantly morphing into panicked, weeping terror. "Harrison! Someone help me! Please!"

Footsteps thundered up the stairwell. Heavy, frantic, lethal.

Harrison rounded the landing, his Alpha aura rolling off him in suffocating waves. His eyes were wide, scouring the dim space until they found Bethany huddled against the banister.

"Bethany! What happened?"

"She... she cornered me!" Bethany sobbed, pointing a trembling hand at me. Tears streamed down her cheeks with flawless precision. "Estrella attacked me! She said if she couldn't have you, neither could I! I had to push her off—she took something, Harrison, she swallowed something to hurt herself!"

Harrison’s dark eyes whipped toward the floor.

I lay there, shivering uncontrollably, my vision blurring in and out of darkness. The violet tang of wolfsbane burned on my lips and chin. I tried to speak. I tried to tell him that she had forced it down my throat, that she had poisoned me.

All that came out was a wet, shuddering gasp.

Harrison stepped toward me. His nostrils flared, scenting the sharp, unmistakable stench of wolfsbane. A dark, terrifying disgust settled over his features. He didn't bend down. He didn't touch my pulse. He looked at me the way an executioner looks at a condemned criminal.

He had made his choice. He believed her. He would always believe her.

"Enough," Harrison said, his voice cold as a winter grave.

Daniel Mercer, his Beta, appeared on the stairs behind him, breathing hard.

Harrison didn't look back. "Strip her of her ceremonial titles. She will never dance for this pack again."

"Alpha?" Daniel asked, hesitating for half a second as he took in my convulsing form.

"She is a danger to the Luna and to herself," Harrison ordered, his Alpha tone slamming down, absolute and merciless. "Lock her in the Omega basement quarters. Indefinitely. No visitors. No medical staff unless she stops breathing."

"Understood," Daniel said quietly.

Harrison turned his back on me. He wrapped a protective arm around Bethany’s waist, whispering soft reassurances against her copper hair as he guided her up the stairs. Up toward the third floor. Toward the lavish Luna suite that had been prepared for her.

I watched their shadows disappear around the corner of the landing.

Daniel crouched beside me. He didn't speak. He reached down, grabbed me roughly by the upper arms, and hauled my convulsing body off the cold floor. My heels dragged uselessly against the stone as he pulled me down the stairs, deeper and deeper into the dark belly of the pack house.

Down past the banquet hall. Past the music. Past the light.

He dragged me into the damp, windowless corridor of the Omega cells, unlocked a heavy iron door, and dumped me onto the thin cot inside.

The lock clicked shut with a heavy, final clatter.

The room was pitch black. The stone walls smelled of mildew and cold dirt.

Above my head, three floors up in the very same building, Bethany was walking into the Luna suite, surrounded by silk sheets, cedar scents, and total adoration.

Down here, the poison burned through my silent veins.

I curled into a ball on the hard cot, pressing a shaking hand against my ribs. Deep inside, the bond was gone. The connection was dark. But somewhere beneath the ash of the wolfsbane, an ember remained—buried so deep no poison could ever touch it.

And in the dark, that ember began to smoke.