Chapter 1

Three days before the wedding, Grandma lay in her hospital bed with the curtains half drawn and the late afternoon sun trembling across her blanket.

Her body had become impossibly small. The woman who had once carried me through snowstorms, hidden me from rogue wolves, and taught me how to conceal my scent from enemies now looked as fragile as a pressed flower.

But when her fingers closed around my wrist, her grip still held the stubborn strength I remembered from childhood.

"Selena," she whispered. "You're getting married in three days, aren't you?"

I smiled before my tears could betray me.

"Yes, Grandma."

Her cloudy eyes brightened. "To Victor? Alpha Victor Blackwood?"

My heart tightened around his name.

I lowered my lashes and nodded. The lie tasted like blood.

Grandma did not notice. Or maybe she noticed and chose to believe mercy over truth. She stroked the back of my hand with her thumb, smiling to herself.

"He is a good boy," she murmured. "He fought in the Alpha Tournament for you. He won the championship ring. I remember how proud he was when he told me he would put it on your finger. He said my Selena would become Luna before the whole pack."

The champion's ring.

The symbol of honor, strength, and the right to choose a Luna.

Victor had sworn he would bring it back to me.

He had brought it back.

He had simply given it to someone else.

I turned away from Grandma so she would not see my face collapse. The hospital room smelled of antiseptic, bitter herbs, and the faint sweetness of the honey candies she kept tucked in her pillowcase. I had hated that smell as a child. Now I wished I could bottle it and keep it forever.

My name is Selena Moonstone, the last surviving bloodline of the Silver Moon Pack.

Once, the Moonstone family had been respected among old packs. My parents had guarded the border between human territory and wolf lands. They died when I was six, ambushed by rogues during a storm. Grandma took me away that same night. She hid me in the human world and raised me alone, teaching me to lock my wolf deep inside my bones, to walk like a human girl, to smile when wolves from other packs mocked me, and to never let anyone know how much bloodline remained in me.

For years, it was just the two of us.

Then Victor found me.

I was seventeen, cornered behind a training hall by three young wolves from a minor pack who thought a girl without parents made easy prey. I still remembered the moment Victor stepped between us, the scent of cedar and smoke cutting through my panic.

"Who dares touch my mate?" he had growled.

Mate.

The word had struck me like moonlight.

The bond awakened so suddenly that my knees almost buckled. Victor caught me before I fell. His arms had felt like safety. His eyes, gold with Alpha power, had softened when he looked down at me.

"There you are," he whispered, as if he had been searching all his life.

For years after that, I believed him.

Victor was young, powerful, and beautiful in the effortless way dangerous men often are. He was the newly appointed Alpha of the Blackstone Pack, ambitious enough to terrify his enemies and tender enough, I thought, to protect what he loved.

He treated Grandma with respect. When her wolf spirit began to weaken, he imported rare herbs from overseas and brewed them himself, sleeves rolled up, the kitchen filled with steam. He trained until his knuckles split because he said no one would look down on his Luna. He brought me to pack meetings and introduced me without hesitation.

"Selena Moonstone," he would say, his hand warm at my back. "My mate. My future Luna."

On my twentieth birthday, beneath a sky full of silver stars, Victor knelt in front of me and took my hands.

"The Alpha Tournament begins next month," he said. "I will win the champion's ring. When I come back, I will propose to you in front of both our packs. I will mark you under the full moon. You will be my one and only Luna."

I had cried then, foolishly happy.

While he was abroad competing, I handled pack affairs in his place. I reviewed supply ledgers, resolved disputes, arranged patrol rotations, and soothed elders who still whispered that a woman raised in the human world could never become a proper Luna. I worked until dawn more nights than I could count, because I thought I was building a home for us.

Victor returned with the ring.

He also returned with Mira.

Mira arrived beside her mother, Mary, wrapped in a pale cloak and looking as if the wind might break her. Victor said he had found them near a foreign training ground. Mary was gravely ill, he said. Mira had no family and nowhere to go. She might have rare white wolf blood, a gift the pack could not ignore.

"I couldn't abandon them," Victor told me. "You'll understand, won't you? You have always been kind."

I wanted to be the woman he believed I was. So I let them stay in the villa.

On the first day, Mira broke my mother's moonstone necklace.

It was not valuable in the way diamonds were valuable. The chain was old, the clasp tarnished, the moonstone beads worn smooth by my mother's skin. But it was the last thing I had that still carried her scent.

Mira gasped when it fell. The beads scattered across the marble floor like spilled tears.

Before I could speak, Mary dropped to her knees.

"Miss Selena, forgive us," she sobbed. "Lowly rogues like us should never have touched the belongings of nobility. We will leave right away. Mira, pack your things. We don't belong near people like her."

Mira knelt beside her, clutching her mother as if I had raised a whip.

I stood there, stunned.

Victor walked in at that exact moment.

Relief rushed through me. My Alpha was here. He would ask what had happened. He would see the broken necklace, see the performance, and understand.

Instead, he pushed past me and helped Mira and Mary up.

"Selena," he said, voice sharp with disappointment. "What are you doing?"

"They broke my mother's necklace," I whispered.

"It was an accident."

"You didn't even ask."

His jaw tightened. "They have suffered enough. I brought them here because I thought you were different. Have you lived in comfort so long that you've forgotten what mercy is?"

The words landed harder than a slap.

"Comfort?" I repeated.

His expression flickered, but he did not take it back.

"If I hadn't protected you," he said, "you would be no different from a rogue yourself."

Mira lowered her head against Mary's shoulder. I saw the faint curve of her mouth before she hid it.

Victor saw my tears and sighed, already tired of them.

"Selena, Mira is like a younger sister to me. Since you clearly can't tolerate her, I'll arrange for them to stay in my private villa. But don't worry. I will still propose to you as promised. Is that acceptable?"

Acceptable.

As if I had negotiated for scraps.

That night, Grandma held my hand and begged me to be patient.

"The mate bond is not always smooth," she said. "A strong bond will be tested. If Victor truly loves you, the Moon Goddess will guide him back."

I wanted her to be right.

So I waited.

On the evening Victor had reserved for his proposal, I wore the white dress he once said made me look like moonlight. The restaurant's private room was filled with pale roses, silver candles, and a violinist who kept glancing nervously at the empty chair across from me.

Victor did not come.

My tea went cold. The candles sank lower. Every minute felt like another hand closing around my throat.

Then laughter erupted outside.

Someone shouted, "An Alpha is proposing in the street!"

My wolf went still.

I rose from my chair and walked out.