Chapter 1

The entire pack knew my story: I was Alpha Lucian Black's staunchest follower, and his fated mate.

Ninety-nine times, he tried to break our bond—all for his delicate childhood friend, Violet. I left a pregnancy test proving I carried his pup, then vanished in a cruise ship catastrophe.

Five years later, I returned to this North American metropolis as a renowned top designer. Our old story was now a silly joke, passed around in hushed whispers.

Word had it Lucian went mad. He threw himself into the freezing sea for me, found nothing. He emptied every resource he had to search, in vain.

We met again at a charity auction. His bloodshot eyes locked on the boy by my side. His voice was hoarse and ruined. "A miracle… He's my child."

I sipped red wine calmly, a cold smile on my lips. "Lucian, there are no miracles for traitors."

The hundredth rejection? I'll be the one to make it.

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Seraphina

In the Amber Pack, everyone knew I had once been Alpha Lucian Blake's most loyal shadow.

I was the one who could read his silence before he ever spoke, the one who stood half a step behind him during pack trials, and the one and only fated mate recognized by the sacred resonance of his bloodline.

For years, that title had been enough to keep me alive.

Until the day he chose her.

Violet.

The fragile human girl the pack had taken in when she was young, the so-called childhood friend who had grown up under the protection of Amber Pack and learned, with remarkable skill, exactly how to make every powerful wolf around her soften on command. She cried, and elders pitied her. She trembled, and warriors defended her. She looked at Lucian with wide, helpless eyes, and he forgot I was the woman bound to him by the Moon Goddess herself.

That day was the ninety-ninth time.

The ninety-ninth time he bared his fangs at me, let his Alpha pressure crash against my chest, and demanded that I stop "making things difficult" for Violet.

And when he looked me in the eye and told me that, if I truly loved him, I should agree to sever our mate bond so Violet would no longer feel "unsafe" around me, something inside me finally died.

I did not scream. I did not beg.

I simply left behind a pregnancy test report on his desk, turned my back on the mate who had rejected me, and disappeared from his world in a carefully orchestrated cruise ship accident.

The sea swallowed my name. The flames swallowed the evidence. And by the time Lucian understood what I had left behind, I was already gone.

Five years later, I returned to the elite circles of the North American wolf packs.

Time had sharpened me into someone new.

The girl who once waited outside Lucian's office for a single approving glance was dead. In her place stood a woman the upper circles now called "S," an internationally celebrated designer whose name alone could start bidding wars in New York, Toronto, and Vancouver before sunrise. I had wealth, status, influence, and something far more precious than all of them combined.

I had my son.

"I heard she was already three months pregnant with Lucian's pup when she jumped into the sea."

"And after waking up, Alpha Lucian declared Violet his fiancée. That human girl had saved the Alpha's life."

"Alpha Lucian never gave up searching for Seraphina. Rumor has it that he used every connection he had along the coast to track down anyone who had ever seen Luna Seraphina, but all his efforts ended in failure."

"Perhaps it was all for the sake of completing the rejection. After all, Violet was Alpha Lucian's true love."

Our reunion happened at a Moonlight Charity Auction.

His eyes glowed an unnatural red, fixed on the little boy at my side. "They all said you were carrying my child when you left." His voice was rough and dry. "Tell me it's true. So this child... he's a miracle, isn't he?"

I took an elegant sip of the Bordeaux in my glass, letting the rich liquid slide down my throat before meeting the burning intensity of his gaze with a faint smile.

"Lucian, miracles never come to men like you, men who reject their mates."

His handsome face visibly darkened. The pressure of a powerful Alpha spread silently through the room, making several low-ranking wolf attendants nearby shrink back.

"Stop."

The command cracked through the air behind me, sharp as a whip and edged with unmistakable Alpha authority.

"Seraphina," Lucian said, his voice turning glacial, each syllable a deliberate wound, "since you are not dead after all, who gave you permission to come back with a bastard pup of unknown origins?"

My steps halted. In my palm, I felt Leo's little hand tighten ever so slightly.

I didn't turn around. My voice remained level and calm. "Watch your language, Alpha Blake. This is my son."

"Your son?" He let out a short, mocking laugh and crossed the distance between us in a few long strides. The shadow of his body fell over Leo and me, possessive and hostile at once. "Over these five years, perhaps you learned many useful things. Hiding, lying, attaching yourself to a new male. You certainly learned how to spend my money while disappearing."

Leo instinctively shifted half a step closer to me, but kept his chin high.

Good boy.

"In the past five years," I said coldly, "I have not touched a single account under your name."

Lucian arched a brow as if amused by my audacity. Then he pulled out his phone, dialed a number, and said, without taking his eyes off me, "Freeze every subsidiary account, trust access, and linked credit authorization under Seraphina Winters. Immediately."

He ended the call and slipped the phone back into his pocket.

The corner of his mouth tilted upward, cruel and satisfied. "Now let's see what you plan to use to raise that little thing."

For a moment, I almost laughed.

Those cards had been cut into pieces and flushed away five years ago, before I threw myself into the sea and left his world behind. If he had bothered to check a single statement in all this time, he would have known I had never spent one cent of his money. Not after the night he chose Violet over me for the ninety-ninth and final time.

Now my design contracts were worth more than every gemstone gift he had ever pressed into my hands in apology.

But men like Lucian only noticed what fed their pride. Truth interested them far less than control.

Before I could answer, the auctioneer's voice rang across the hall.

"Ladies and gentlemen, we have reached tonight's final lot. Presenting the sapphire necklace known as Tears of the Deep Sea."

The world inside me stopped.

My breath caught so sharply it hurt.

On the velvet display beneath the white spotlight rested a necklace of deep blue stones shaped like falling tears, set in old silver carved with moon-vine patterns I would have recognized anywhere. It was elegant, rare, impossible to mistake.

My father's necklace.

The only thing he had left me before his death.