"She's not just the daughter of some servant. She's the reason my mother is dead. And you expect me to bare my throat and beg her forgiveness?!" The words tore from my throat like shrapnel, and somewhere beneath my ribs my wolf threw herself against her cage.

Mirella didn't even have time to part her painted lips. Lucan's eyes went glacial, the cold, flat stare of a wolf who'd learned to kill his own instincts long before he'd learned to kill anything else.

"I warned you," he said, his voice like steel dragged across frozen stone. "Don't test my patience."

Then he turned to his enforcers and gave the order with the casual cruelty of a wolf born into blood. "Go to the funeral den. Bring her mother's body back here."

Every word was a fang dipped in venom.

"She won't learn until she's broken." His lip curled with contempt as he looked at me, looked through me. "You think someone like you deserves to stand as Luna of the Bloodfang Pack?"

"Feed the corpse to the dogs." He meant every syllable.

His pack moved without hesitation, their heavy footfalls echoing through the stone foyer like a death march. These weren't wolves who questioned orders. These were enforcers who'd buried bodies in unmarked graves at the edge of the territory and slept soundly after.

"No! No, please!" I lunged forward in blind panic, only to be seized by another enforcer. His grip crushed my arm with practiced brutality. I heard the crack before I felt it.

Agony exploded through me like wildfire through dry brush, and my wolf's snarl twisted into a sound I'd never heard her make.

Tears blurred the carved beams overhead into smears of gold and shadow. I cried so hard I couldn't draw breath, couldn't think, couldn't do anything but beg.

"Lucan, please! Don't do this to my mother. She's, she's already gone. Isn't that enough?!"

Mirella tilted her head with saccharine sweetness, barely concealing the triumph curving at the corners of her mouth. Beneath that overripe jasmine of hers, the sweet rot underneath turned my stomach.

"Lucan… the dead deserve their rest. Perhaps we should show mercy?"

He turned to her with a theatrical sigh, his hand finding the small of her back with easy possession. "You're too soft. That's why she walks all over you."

Then his attention snapped back to his enforcers, who had paused at the threshold. "Well? What are you waiting for? Do I need to draw you a map to the funeral den?" The bark of command rolled off the walls of the Bloodfang den, and his Alpha aura cracked through the air like a whip, every lower wolf in the room flinching toward the floor.

His voice cut through me like shattered glass, scattering the last fragments of the love I'd clung to for ten desperate years.

He knew. He knew my mother was my only weakness, the single soft place in my armor. And he didn't hesitate to drive the fang straight through it.

I broke.

I bowed.

My spine bent, my head dropped, my pride bled out onto the cold stone floor at Mirella's designer heels. My wolf went silent inside me, and that silence was worse than any howl.

"Please," I whispered, tears falling in hot rivers down my cheeks. "Please just leave my mother in peace. Let her rest."

Each word was a razor in my throat. "I'm sorry. I was wrong."

Wrong for hoping for fairness in a world built on blood debts and Moon Goddess oaths.

Wrong for believing, foolishly, pathetically, that maybe, just maybe, he'd choose me over her.

As I bent forward in supplication, the blood-soaked collar of my robe pulled away from my skin, baring the wounds beneath.

Lucan's eyes flickered. For a split second, something almost human surfaced in those dark depths, surprise, perhaps, or the ghost of the boy he'd once been.

"Is this enough for you?" I straightened with every last ounce of strength left in my shattered body, meeting his gaze with a disgust I could barely keep behind my teeth.

His jaw tightened. He gestured sharply to his Beta's bound advocate. "Bring the oath."

Only when I pressed my bloody fingerprint onto the parchment, signing away my bloodline claim to the pack's holdings, signing away my mother's legacy, did the tension finally ease from his brow.

"You're bleeding," he observed, as if noting a change in the wind. "I'll send for a healer."

He released Mirella and moved toward me, reaching out with the hand that had once cradled my face like I was something precious.

I slapped it away.

"Save your concern for your precious half-blood," I spat. "Better hurry. Wait any longer and those theatrical bruises might fade before anyone important sees them."

I turned to leave, my vision swimming, my legs threatening to buckle.

Mirella's foot shot out with serpentine precision.

I tripped hard, pitching forward toward the unforgiving stone.

Lucan's instincts fired, the reflexes of a wolf trained since pup-hood to protect what was his. He reached out.

Then stopped himself. His hand froze inches from my falling body.

He stepped back.

"Fine." His voice was ice. "Handle your wounds yourself."

I forced myself upright, swallowing the scream that clawed at my throat as pain lanced through every nerve.

He watched me from the threshold, Mirella tucked possessively against his side, the scorched-oak and copper of his scent now soured with cold ash. "I'll accompany you to choose your ceremonial robe tomorrow," he said, as if we were discussing the night's hunt. "The mating ceremony won't plan itself."

He turned and was gone, the door of the den swinging shut on his impassive face.

My body swayed, the dizziness from blood loss rising in nauseating waves. The lanterns above fractured into a thousand spinning shards of light.

In the blur of agony, memory dragged me backward, back to a different time. Back to when we were young and the world hadn't yet taught us its cruelest lessons.

Lucan was just nineteen when his sire began grooming him to inherit the pack. He'd worked through endless nights learning to lead, the running of the territory and the darker dealings both, his eyes perpetually rimmed with exhaustion. One evening, I burned my hand making broth for him in the den's kitchen. Just a small blister, barely worth mentioning.

Yet somehow, he found out. He broke off a sitting with three of the Council Elders and ran the whole way home as if a rogue pack were at his heels, tearing through the dark of the territory in his fur.

He took my hand and cradled it like I was made of spun glass.

"I'm so sorry. I should've protected you," he said, his voice rough with guilt, a low rumble breaking under the words. "I swear before the Moon Goddess, as long as I'm breathing, I'll never let anything hurt you again."

Then he pulled me into his arms. Warm. Strong. Trembling just slightly with the force of his conviction. That embrace, and that oath sworn under the moon, had branded themselves into my memory like a scar.

But that boy was long dead.

He'd grown into a cold, calculating wolf who looked at me like I was nothing. Like I was disposable. Like I was a loose thread waiting to be cut.

Now, he was the one hurting me the most.

I stumbled toward the side entrance of the den, the one the Omega servants used. The edges of my vision darkened, collapsing inward like a dying star.

But before I hit the ground, I fell into someone's arms.

A stranger's arms. Firm and unfamiliar, carrying cedar and cold iron and the static hush before a thunderstorm. Something darker beneath it. Something dangerous.

Before the blackness swallowed me whole, I heard a single whisper against the shell of my ear, a voice like smoke and shadow.

"Do you want revenge?"

The words curled around me like a devil's bargain, offered at the crossroads of desperation and death.

"In exchange for that bloodline claim you just signed away… I'll help you find the proof of who really killed your mother."

Tears carved silent rivers down my face as I clung, half-conscious, to the stranger's shirt, the fine wool damp beneath my trembling fingers. His scent wrapped around me, cedar and cold iron and the static hush before a thunderstorm, the only solid thing in a world that had gone to ruin.

"Re… venge…" The word escaped my lips like a dying Moon Goddess invocation, barely formed, yet heavy with the weight of a blood oath. Somewhere deep inside me, my wolf stirred against the dark and answered with a low, broken sound.

When I opened my eyes again, all I saw was white, too bright, too sterile. The bitter sting of healing herbs and silver-scrubbed stone flooded my senses, the air of the Healing Hall a stark contrast to the darkness that had swallowed me whole.

I turned my head slowly, wincing at the dull ache that radiated through every fiber of my body, and reached for my crystal communicator. A message from Lucan waited on the screen, sent the night before.

[I've got Pack business to handle tomorrow. Go try on the ceremonial robe by yourself. Our bonding is approaching, so pull yourself together. Stop with the dramatics and bind yourself into the Bloodfang Pack with some dignity.]

I stared at the message for a long moment, my face an unreadable mask, then dragged my finger across the screen and watched the words disappear into oblivion.

But just beneath it, something else caught my eye, a post from Mirella's spirit-network account.

Lucan had taken her on the Pack's storm-hawk to chase the northern lights in some frozen corner of the wildlands, far from prying eyes.

In the ethereal green haze of the aurora, their silhouettes stood close together, intimate as conspirators. Matching moonstone bands glinted on their fingers, fingers tightly intertwined like the roots of a poisonous vine.

The caption pierced through me like a stiletto blade:

[He told me I'm the only one for him. He promised to protect me from all the cruelty in this world. How could I ever let go of a man like that?]

Below it, a cutesy account bearing cartoon couple avatars had commented:

[And no matter how far you try to run from me, I'll find you. I'll tie you to my side forever. So don't even try, silly girl.]

I didn't need to verify the source. I knew that tone, that possessive flair, that dark promise wrapped in honeyed words. That was Lucan.

I could tell from the typing style alone.

I remembered the day I asked him to use matching couple avatars with me. He had rolled his eyes, his handsome face twisting with contempt.

"What are you, a fresh-shifted pup? Can't you see I'm handling Pack affairs? Now leave!"

And yet I had once dreamed of running beneath the stars with him along the high ridges, a stolen moonlit moment away from the shadows that governed our lives. I had planned every step of it. He said he was too busy. Every time, that was the excuse: too busy.

Now I finally understood the truth that had been staring me in the face all along. He could be romantic. He could be tender and devoted. He just never chose to be that way with me.

I set the communicator down on the stiff Healing Hall linen, trying to blink back the sting behind my eyes.

That's when I noticed the envelope sitting quietly on the bedside table, cream-colored and costly.

Inside it was a storm-hawk passage. Departure in two days.

And a small note, written in an elegant hand:

[You're welcome. Hope you like the gift. For your mating —D.]

So I was right. The man who had carried me through the darkness and delivered me to safety was none other than Dorian Ashmoor, the ghost who had returned from the dead to become Lucan's worst enemy. The sole survivor of a slaughtered bloodline, come back to collect.

I sent him a quiet thank-you, my fingers hovering over the keys longer than necessary, and signed myself out of the Healing Hall not long after.

Then the mating coordinator called. The ceremonial robe my mother had ordered for me, commissioned from the finest Omega seamstress on the edge of the territory, paid for with years of her modest savings, had been altered to fit. It was ready.

It was the last gift she left me before the Bloodfang Pack let her die. I had to claim it.

But when I stepped into the seamstress's den, the soft chime above the door ringing out, I froze.

There stood Mirella, twirling in my robe. The air went thick with overripe jasmine and that sweet rot beneath it, honey poured over something dead.

"Selene… you came." She spun before the gilded mirror with a saccharine smile, her voice dripping with venom disguised as honey.

"I just had to make sure it fits, you know. Trying to help you out."

She tugged the neckline lower with deliberate provocation, revealing fresh marks scattered across her chest like a constellation of sin, the bruised imprint of teeth at her throat where no true bond should sit. Her tone turned mockingly bashful.

"Oh no, it's Lucan's fault, he's just too passionate. I told him to be gentle…"

I stared at her performance, cold and unblinking as a statue carved from marble. My wolf had gone utterly still beneath my skin, the way prey goes still.

"You really did inherit your mother's talent for stealing other females' mates."

Her smile twitched, then curved into something crueler, the mask slipping to reveal the predator beneath.

"Oh? Didn't you hear?" She placed a hand over her stomach with theatrical tenderness. "I'm carrying Lucan's pup. His heir."

"And your blood oath?" She laughed, the sound like shattering crystal. "It's fake."

She flashed a recording on her crystal orb. The dim back room of some pack hall. Mirella draped across Lucan's lap like a trophy.

He was drinking, his lips brushing against her temple with casual affection.

"Do your best and bring the pup into this world. When it's born, I'll gift him the Bloodfang territory. Everything. Every hunting ground, every claim."

Mirella asked in a coy voice: "But… what about my sister?"

Lucan chuckled, the sound dark and dismissive. "I never truly bound myself to her. There's no mark on her neck and there never will be. I've been slipping wolfsbane suppressant into her milk for moons. She can't conceive, can't even take a heat. When the time comes, I'll just claim we took in a stray pup."

It was like being struck by lightning. My head spun. My legs nearly buckled beneath me, and I had to grip the edge of a display case to stay upright. Inside me my wolf let out a single thin whine and folded down into silence, as if it too had finally understood there had never been a bond to grieve.

So that was it.

Whatever love had existed between us had died a long time ago. I was just too blind, too desperate to believe in the fairy tale, to notice the corpse rotting at my feet.

I sucked in a sharp breath, straightened my spine with the dignity my mother had taught me, and forced a smile onto my face.

"Well, congratulations. Becoming the next Luna of the Bloodfang Pack is just around the corner."

"But that robe is mine. Take it off," I said, my voice dropping to ice.

I lunged forward to reclaim it, but before my fingers could even brush the fabric, one of her guards, a brute Lucan himself had set at her side, drove his boot into my stomach.

The force knocked me flat against the polished floor. Pain exploded through my gut like a grenade. I could feel everything twisting, shifting, as though my organs had been rearranged by the brutal impact.

Mirella picked up a pair of shears from the seamstress's table. Her tone was gleeful as she traced the blade over the delicate silk, savoring the moment.

"Lucan said no matter what I do, he'll clean up my mess. That's what it means to have the protection of the Pack."

The sharp edge tore through hand-stitched lace. Slashed through soft silk that my mother had saved for years to afford. With each cut, she shredded the last gift my mother had ever given me, the only piece of her I had left, and beneath the shears I caught the fading ghost of her scent woven into the cloth, silver cherry-blossom and warm hearthsmoke and clean linen left in the sun, thinning into nothing with every stroke.

I just lay there on the cold floor, watching the pieces flutter down like snowflakes in a graveyard.

Even my hatred felt dull now, numbed by the crushing weight of everything I had lost.

Mirella strutted out of the den, her heels clicking against the stone like a victory march, leaving nothing but wreckage in her wake.

I dragged myself back to the cliffside den… or rather, what used to feel like home.

Once I got there, I tore open every drawer and chest with trembling hands, yanked out every gift Lucan had ever given me, the jewels that now felt like silver shackles, the fine pelts and bags that were nothing but gilded cages, the soft stuffed creatures from those early days when I still believed his lies.

One by one, I threw them all in the refuse.

Behind me, I heard footsteps approaching.

Familiar ones.

Lucan paused at the door, one hand resting against the carved oak frame, claws catching faintly in the grain. "What did you throw away?"

I didn't even look at him.

"Just some garbage I should've gotten rid of long ago."

He didn't seem to care. As if suddenly remembering something, he added casually, "I heard Mirella accidentally damaged the ceremonial robe. But don't worry. I've had the den-weavers rush a new one. It'll be ready in time for the bonding."

He slung his jacket over one shoulder, the silk lining catching the dim light. The faint sour note of ash gone cold drifted off him, scorched oak and copper, and not once did it carry anything of mine.

"Remember, tomorrow night's the gathering at the ancestral den. Don't be late. I've got pack business, so I'm not running home tonight."

He took his keys and left. Not once did he glance at the overflowing bin behind me, the one filled with everything he'd ever given me.

The next night, eight bells past dusk.

I arrived at the Bloodfang Pack's grand hall alone.

The moment I stepped into the moonlit garden, I saw them.

Lucan and Mirella.

Dressed in matching ceremonial finery, bathed in the warm lantern-light like a pair holding court before the Council. The cream of the great packs milled around them, goblets of moonwine glinting like scattered ice in the evening air.

Vesper Bloodfang's face twisted the moment she scented me. Her smile dropped like a cracked mask. Cold bergamot and polished iron rolled off her, frostbitten lily sharpening as her gaze ran over me with undisguised disdain, cataloguing every flaw, every perceived slight against her precious bloodline. She wore a collar of pale stones Mirella had gifted her, a gaudy thing that screamed of new blood trying to buy the honor of old.

"You're an hour late. No surprise. No manners at all, just like your mother the thief."

But Lucan told me the gathering started at eight.

I clenched my fists, my nails biting into my palms, my own wolf going taut and silent beneath my skin.

A long time ago, I'd mentioned in passing that Mirella's mother had been a kept she-wolf, one who'd bared her throat for a mated male. The next day, Vesper Bloodfang's missing jewels had "miraculously" surfaced beneath my mother's pillow.

Lucan knew my mother had been framed.

He never defended me. Not once.

But now, I didn't grovel. I didn't lower my gaze or drop my shoulders the way a good little Omega servant's daughter should. I looked straight into Vesper Bloodfang's cold eyes, then right at Mirella's smug little face.

"I'm not here to be insulted," I said, my voice cutting through the garden's polite murmur like a blade through silk. Then I looked Mirella dead in the eye. "My mother was not a thief. She didn't raise me to seduce males like some she-wolves raise their daughters."

The words had barely left my mouth when a vicious slap exploded across my cheek.

My ears rang. My body hit the ground hard, the trimmed grass cold and damp beneath my palms.

The metallic taste of blood filled my mouth.

Lucan stood over me, expression cold and condescending, the face of a male raised to believe his word was law, his judgment absolute. For one breath his eyes flashed amber, and the weight of his Alpha aura pressed down over the garden like a sudden drop in temperature.

"You spread rumors about her! Don't you know it makes her suffer? How long are you gonna keep this going? Do you want her to kill herself?"

I pushed myself up, my face burning with rage.

"She suffered? She?!" I barked out a laugh, bitter and broken, the sound of something inside me finally snapping. "She suffered from her own stupid choices! And you, you know exactly what she did. My mother is dead! I lost everything and you're just going to stand there and let her play the victim?!"

The whispers started, quiet at first, like a ripple across still water, then louder as the gathered wolves leaned in, ears pricking toward the scent of fresh scandal. In this world, gossip was currency, and I'd just handed them a fortune.

Lucan's jaw clenched tight, a muscle ticking beneath his skin, a low growl threading under the words.

"Leave," he growled, his voice barely above a whisper but carrying the weight of a threat. "Go calm yourself down. You've embarrassed yourself enough in front of the guests."

The garden buzzed with the chatter of the great packs, every connected wolf of the bloodlines watching the spectacle with barely concealed delight.

Mordecai and Vesper Bloodfang quickly stepped in with goblets of moonwine, smiling stiffly, smoothing over the disruption like masters covering a crack in the den wall.

"Let's not ruin the evening. Come, everyone, drink up!"

Wolves swarmed Lucan and Mirella with congratulations.

"To the bonded pair!"

"Blessings on the future Alpha and his Luna, such a perfect match!"

Lucan had always said he wanted our betrothal to be a "surprise."

He never told a single soul about us.

And now?

He smiled like a gentleman, standing beside Mirella as if she'd always been the intended mate, as if the blood debt his pack owed my mother before the Moon Goddess had never existed.

He didn't even try to explain.

She clung to his arm like she belonged there, her fingers curled possessively around his sleeve, her overripe jasmine and that sweet rot beneath it twining through his scorched-oak scent until I couldn't tell where one ended and the other began.

Under the glittering lanterns, they looked like a picture-perfect pair, the Alpha-heir and his beautiful Luna-to-be, a bond that would strengthen the Bloodfang name for generations.

While I stood there like a wet stain on a white pelt.

I let out a breathless, bitter laugh and turned to go, but a hand blocked my way.

Mirella.

She smiled like she'd already won, like she'd been winning since the day she first bared her throat for my intended.

"Leaving so soon?" she cooed, her voice dripping with false sweetness. "But I haven't told you how that old woman died."

My heart stopped.

The garden noise faded to a dull roar, replaced by the thundering of my own pulse. Somewhere deep beneath my ribs, my wolf went utterly still, the way prey goes still before a snare closes.

"What did you just say?"

She leaned in close, her perfume cloying and thick, sweet rot crawling up the back of my throat, her voice low enough that only I could hear, a whisper meant for the damned.

"I told her if she wanted the money back, she'd have to film herself doing something… special. You know, the kind males pay for." She grinned, her teeth white and sharp in the lantern-light. "But she got all high and mighty. She refused and even had the nerve to insult me and my mom."

A twisted laugh escaped her painted lips.

"So I gave her what she deserved."

She sighed dramatically, as if recounting a minor inconvenience rather than a murder.

"Did you know? She barely made it through fifty males before she collapsed. Still had the nerve to clutch my leg and beg, beg me to return the money to her 'sweet daughter.'"

She made a clicking sound with her tongue, savoring the memory like fine moonwine.

"Pathetic, really."