Talia's POV

The morning passed in a blur of grease and gray water.

I was sent to the kitchen before sunrise, scrubbing pots while the pack prepared for the Alpha's arrival. The sun rose. The hours crawled. I stayed invisible, just like always.

But something was wrong.

I noticed it the way you notice a change in weather-not all at once, but in pieces. Servants whispering in corners. Guards exchanging looks they did not think I could see. The air itself feeling heavy, charged, like the moment before a storm breaks.

Then the whispers reached me.

"The bonding stone did not react to Celeste."

"She is not his mate."

"The Alpha is furious. He demanded to see every woman in the household."

I kept scrubbing.

Not because it was not my concern. Because it was not my problem. There is a difference. Concern means you care. Problem means you bleed. And I had learned, fifteen years deep, to only bleed for things I could not avoid.

I thought about the last time I had been this afraid. Two years ago. The night Celeste locked me in the root cellar with the rats. I had screamed for hours. No one came. That was the night I stopped screaming. That was the night I learned that crying never helped, and silence never failed.

So I scrubbed harder.

The pots were endless today-bulk dishes prepared for a ceremony that was supposed to crown Celeste as Luna. I scrubbed until my hands were raw and my arms ached. The water in the basin turned gray from grime, and I dumped it out and filled it again. The same cycle. Every day. Every year. Fifteen years of gray water and raw knuckles and no one ever saying thank you or even enough.

I added that to the list behind my teeth.

Entry four thousand, two hundred and eleven. The day the pots never ended.

Piper's warning echoed in my mind. Vivienne is planning something. But what? And why would it involve me? I was nobody. I was invisible. I had nothing anyone would want.

Unless they wanted to hurt me.

Which was always a possibility. But Vivienne had been hurting me for fifteen years. Why would today be any different?

A younger servant named Mira brushed past me, eyes wide, barely slowing. "They say the Alpha threw a chair," she whispered. "Through a wall, Talia. Through a wall."

Then she was gone before I could ask more.

I held my breath. The world tilted, just slightly, like the floor had shifted half an inch beneath my feet. I knew, in the way you know a bone is broken before the pain arrives, that nothing would ever be the same after this moment.

I scrubbed harder, because thinking about it would not change anything, and surviving was the only thing that mattered.

Then Marta grabbed my arm.

"You," she said. "Come with me."

She did not wait for me to set down the pot. She did not wait for me to dry my hands. She dragged me out of the kitchen, through a hallway I had never seen, past doors I had never opened.

The walls were lined with portraits of wolves I did not recognize. Dead Alphas. Dead Lunas. Their painted eyes followed me as Marta pulled me along, and I felt like a prisoner being led to her execution.

My heart hammered. My palms went slick. I did not know what was waiting for me in the main hall. I did not know why the Alpha wanted to see every woman in the household. But I knew one thing.

Whatever was happening, I was not prepared for it.

Marta pulled me into a small room with a rack of dresses and shoved a plain gray one into my hands.

"Change. Now. Hurry. The Alpha wants to see you."

The words came out in a rush, clipped and breathless, like she was afraid of being overheard.

I did not argue, even though I had a hundred questions stacking up behind my throat. Because arguing only made things worse, and because the look in Marta's eyes told me this was not a request.

I changed as fast as I could. The dress was too big-just like all my dresses-but it was cleaner than what I had been wearing. I pulled it over my head, tucked my necklace safely beneath the collar, and let Marta grab my arm again.

She pulled me toward the main hall.

"The ceremony was interrupted," she muttered, half to me, half to herself. "Celeste is not his mate. Now he wants to see everyone. I mean everyone. Every single woman in this pack."

I did not ask questions. I just followed.

The main hall was packed with wolves.

The ceiling soared high above, lost in shadow. Chandeliers of crystal hung from the rafters, catching the torchlight and throwing fractured rainbows across the walls. I had never been in this room before. Servants were not allowed here. Only the family. Only the important wolves.

But today, I was here.

And every wolf in the room was staring at me.

The heat of their bodies pressed against me from every direction. Perfume and fear-sweat mixed into a smell that turned my stomach. Someone coughed directly into my ear. Another wolf laughed-a sharp, mean sound, like a blade dragged across stone.

I felt their eyes on my skin, on my ugly face, on my too-big dress. I heard their whispers.

"Who is she?"

"Look at her."

"She does not belong here."

They were right. I did not belong here.

But here I was.

I had never seen so many wolves in one place. They filled every corner, bodies pressed together, voices buzzing like flies over something dead. Some looked afraid. Others looked curious. And some looked like they wanted to run.

Marta pushed me through the crowd, and wolves stared as I passed. But I kept my head down. Shoulders hunched. The same posture I had worn for fifteen years like armor made of smallness.

And then-

I looked up.

And I saw him.

Talia's POV

He stood at the front of the hall.

Tall. Broad. Shoulders filling out his black suit like he had been carved from something harder than stone. His hair was dark-almost black-and his jaw was sharp enough to cut glass.

But it was his eyes that stopped me.

Gray. Not a soft gray like morning fog. Not a warm gray like old silver. A hard gray. Like steel. Like ice. Like something that had never been warm in its entire existence and never would be.

Kaelen Frost. The Alpha of Shadowfang.

I had never seen him before. I had never even seen a picture of him. But something inside my chest pulled-a tug, a string, a hook buried somewhere behind my ribs that yanked hard toward him like my body knew something my mind did not.

I did not understand it.

His gray eyes locked onto mine.

Something flickered across his face. Just for a moment-so brief I might have imagined it. A widening. A recognition. A fracture in all that ice.

Then his expression sealed shut again, cold and unreadable.

But I saw it. And I knew, with a certainty that had no business existing between two strangers, that he had felt the pull too.

I looked away first. I had to. Because I did not want to draw attention to myself, and I was already drawing more than I could handle.

The elder gestured for me to approach.

I walked forward on shaking legs. The bonding stone sat on a pedestal of black marble-smooth, dark, like a piece of the night sky had been carved into a perfect circle. Every wolf in the hall held their breath as I stepped closer.

I stopped in front of it.

The stone began to glow.

Soft at first. A pale blue shimmer, like moonlight trapped under water. Then brighter. Then brighter-so bright I had to raise my hand to shield my eyes. The light filled the hall, washing over every face, every wall, every shadow. Wolves gasped. Someone screamed. The crystal chandeliers above us caught the glow and shattered it into a thousand silver needles.

Then the light faded.

And the silence that followed was louder than any sound.

What I did not know-what no one would tell me until much later-was that before I was pulled from the kitchen, other servants had already been made to stand before the bonding stone. Nothing happened. Celeste had stood before it. Nothing happened. Kaelen's fury had grown so vast that Marta, desperate, had dragged me from the grease and the gray water as a last resort.

I was not chosen.

I was leftover.

The elder stared at the stone. His mouth opened. Closed. Opened again.

"Alpha Kaelen," he said, and his voice was barely a whisper. "This woman... Talia Ashford... she is already bonded to you."

A pause. The kind that swallows rooms whole.

"From two years ago."

The world stopped.

My mind raced. Two years ago. That was when I turned eighteen. I remembered that year vividly-the year Piper snuck me a book about the outside world. The year Celeste broke my favorite cup just to watch me cry. The year I stopped hoping my father would ever look at me.

But I did not remember any ceremony. I did not remember leaving Cresswood. I did not remember meeting anyone, let alone an Alpha. Let alone this Alpha.

How could I be bonded to someone I had never seen?

It made no sense. None of this made sense.

But the stone did not lie. The elder said so himself-the bond was registered, and it was unbreakable.

I was tied to Kaelen Frost. A stranger. A cold-eyed Alpha who looked at me like I was a problem he had not asked for and did not know how to solve.

"The ceremony has already been completed," the elder said again, louder this time, for the hall to hear. "Two years ago. The bond is registered. It is unbreakable."

I shook my head. "That is not possible. I have never met him. I have never left Cresswood. I have never-"

But no one was listening.

Celeste was screaming. Vivienne was arguing. And Edmund-my father-stood frozen, saying nothing, his hands hanging limp at his sides like a man who had already given up on everything, including me.

Celeste's face was red, her perfect makeup ruined by tears. "This cannot be happening!" she shrieked. "She is nobody. She is nothing but trash. I am the one who deserves to be Luna. I am."

Vivienne grabbed her daughter's arm, trying to calm her, but her own face was pale with fury. Her eyes found mine across the hall. And I saw it there-pure, burning hate. The same hate she had fed me for fifteen years, spoonful by spoonful.

"The stone is wrong," Vivienne insisted, turning to the elder. "There must be a mistake. We demand another reading."

The elder shook his head. "The stone does not make mistakes."

Edmund still said nothing. He just stared at the floor.

And Kaelen Frost was still looking at me.

His gray eyes did not leave my face. His expression did not change. But I knew he felt the pull too. He just did not show it. He wore his silence like armor, the same way I wore mine.

I was confused. I was afraid. I had spent fifteen years keeping my head down, staying invisible, surviving. And now this-a bond I did not remember, to a man I did not know, in front of every wolf who had ever called me worthless.

I did not ask for this.

But I also knew one thing, standing there in my too-big gray dress with raw hands and a bruised cheek.

Whatever was coming, I would survive it.

I had survived fifteen years of them.

And I still had a list to finish.