Chapter 1:

OLIVIA

I spent the whole morning cleaning the house. The dishes, the sitting room, the stairs, the kitchen floor... everything. Clara hadn't lifted a finger. Apparently, she was too busy sitting by the window, painting her nails while humming to herself like she didn't have a care in the world.

I stopped complaining about it a long time ago. The last time I asked why I was always the one doing all the work, my father looked me straight in the eye and reminded me that Clara was his real daughter. Funny how those words still stuck at the back of my head.

Clara and I shared the same mother, but not the same father. My father died when I was six. A few years later, my mother married a beta from the pack and had Clara. From that day on, it felt like my place in this family became smaller and smaller until there was barely any room left for me.

Clara was everything people admired. She was tall, slim, and beautiful in a way that made people want to stay a little longer just to keep looking at her. And then there was me — 5'8", 257 pounds, built like an apology nobody wanted to hear.

I mopped the kitchen floor for the third time, even though the floor had been clean since the first pass. I just needed something to do with my hands, something to keep me from walking into the living room and saying something I'd regret.

"You missed a spot."

Clara's voice came from the doorway. She didn't even look at the floor. She was holding her hand out in front of her, blowing gently on her freshly painted nails while turning her hand from side to side to admire them.

I looked where she pointed, there was nothing there. Still, I mopped the same place again.

"Mom wants the good plates out for tonight," she said as she walked inside. She opened the cabinet, pulled out a glass, and poured herself water without once glancing at me. "You'll know which ones."

"I'll get them after I finish the floors."

"You better." She took a sip before looking at me. Her eyes slid over me from head to toe, stopping for just a second around my waist before she smiled. "Oh... and maybe wear the gray dress tonight. The one that doesn't, you know. Pull anywhere."

She smiled like she'd just given me the sweetest sisterly advice in the world. I lowered my eyes and kept mopping, completely ignoring her.

She left the kitchen humming something under her breath still with the glass in hand, already forgetting the conversation had happened at all. I stood there another moment before looking at my reflection in the window above the sink.

I was putting on a shirt that clung to my skin. It wasn't that body-hugged, only that my body decided to make itself a public display in whatever dress I put on. Regardless, I had learnt to appreciate my body the way I am, even though my mother and Clara kept giving me more reasons not to.

By the time I finished cleaning, the pain was telling at my back. I climbed the narrow stairs to the storage room to get the china my mother wanted for tonight's dinner. I had just reached the middle step when I heard her voice from the sitting room below.

"I don't know what I did wrong with that one." I stopped walking. "Clara barely has to smile and the boys already circle her like she's made of something sweet." My mother laughed softly. "But Olivia..." She sighed, like mentioning my name alone made her weak. "Well, at least she's good at housework. The Moon Goddess had to give her something, I suppose."

I refused to cry. The more I let them see the weakness in me, the more reasons I give to them to hurt me more. I just let out a soft laugh, stared at the plates in my hands and slowly continued my walk downstairs as if I hadn't heard a single word.

I set the table the way my mother liked it, facing every plate in the same direction. When she walked past and nodded in approval, I smiled and asked, "Is this okay?"

She didn't even look at me. "It'll do."

I was happy she replied, because most of the time, she never did. She'd rather keep shut and make me look like a complete fool, than say anything to me. In the end, I get yelled at for not asking questions before taking a simple decision.

I had told myself not to let any of this bother me, and whenever Damien's face popped into my mind, I felt every tiredness, pain and sadness in me disappear like they were never there in the first place.

Damien has been more like a solid rock to me, the one person who understood me in a way my family couldn't. He was the reason I came to understand myself more than I ever tried to, giving me reasons to love myself more and care less about what anyone said. Whenever the other girls mocked me, he was always there to defend me, and prove to them that I was even much better than they would ever be.

I remembered the first time he brought me a strawberry tart. I was sixteen then, hiding behind my mother's bakery after a group of girls spent half an hour laughing about how much space I took up whenever I walked into a room. I remember staring at the ground like it had suddenly become the most fascinating thing in the world, pretending I couldn't hear them, pretending the heat crawling up my neck wasn't humiliation but just the sun.

Then Damien appeared out of nowhere and handed me the pastry.

"Why are you giving me this?" I asked.

"Because you look like you need it."

I laughed, more out of disbelief than amusement. "You think food is the answer to everything?"

"No." His eyes dropped briefly to the untouched tart in my hand before returning to my face. "I think everybody deserves at least one good thing on a bad day."

Nobody had ever said anything like that to me before. Eight years later, I still had that paper, wrapped and tucked safely inside the bottom drawer of my dresser. Every time I'd thought about throwing it away, I couldn't. Because whenever I looked at it, I remembered the first person who ever made me feel seen. The first person who looked at me and didn't think I needed to spend my entire morning jogging half a thousand miles just to fit into his space.

Tomorrow, that same man would stand before the Moon Goddess and the entire Redwood Pack to claim me as his mate.

The thought made my heart flutter so hard I had to press a hand to my chest, because I still couldn't believe it. I still couldn't believe someone like him had chosen someone like me.

So when I looked at the way things were, I reminded myself that despite the hate, someone out there still loves me. Someone who will, and can never, look down on me because of my body size.

I stood in front of the mirror, staring at my reflection, and for a moment I almost didn't recognize the girl looking back. My gaze shifted to the emerald dress hanging beside it. It had cost nearly six months of savings, six months of skipping meals and telling myself I didn't need new shoes yet, of walking past that shop window over and over just to stare at it through the glass, terrified someone else would buy it before I could.

I walked over and ran my fingers across the fabric. For most of my life I have avoided beautiful things. I had trained myself to believe beautiful things belonged to girls like my sister Clara, girls who could accept a compliment without wondering if someone was mocking them.

A knock sounded against my window, and I already knew who it was before I even turned around. Only one person in this entire pack climbed through my bedroom window like he owned the place. He stepped inside wearing that same smile, the one that made my chest do that ridiculous stumble it always did whenever he was near.

"Thinking about me again?" he asked.

"I wasn't," I lied, even as the smile on my face widened on its own, like it had never once listened to me.

For a second, I just looked at him. This was the future Alpha, the most desired man in the pack. The man every girl dreamed about, and somehow — impossibly — he wanted me. Even after all this time, I still couldn't fully wrap my mind around it. Maybe that disbelief was exactly why I loved him the way I did, like something I was terrified to lose the second I stopped earning it.

He crossed the room and stopped in front of me, and then his gaze landed on the dress. I watched his expression soften, and warmth spread through my chest at the sight of it. I was happy, so happy, that he loved what he saw.

"That's the one?" he asked, and I nodded, unable to speak past the lump forming in my throat.

Something flickered across his face. Was it pride, or possession, or satisfaction? I couldn't tell which, and at the time, foolishly, I mistook all three for love.

Slowly, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a velvet box. I gasped before I could stop myself. I hadn't expected this, hadn't expected anything today at all.

"Damian—"

"Open it."

My hands were shaking as I lifted the lid. Inside was a silver necklace, and at its center was a moonstone pendant ringed with tiny emeralds. For a moment I simply couldn't speak. I knew exactly how much something like this cost. It cost more than what my family earned in months, maybe longer.

"It's so beautiful," I whispered, trying not to cry even though my eyes betrayed me. "Thank you. Thank you so much."

His gaze never left my face. "Tomorrow, I want you to wear it."

"Really?"

"So everyone knows who you belong to," he said, without a single moment of hesitation.

Those words did something to my heart I still can't fully explain, like he was handing me a kind of love I had never been shown before, a love that confirmed that building a life beside him would be the sweetest thing I would ever know.

"You don't have to keep proving yourself to me," I said softly, even as some quiet, hungry part of me loved every second of him doing exactly that.

Something strange flickered behind his eyes, leaving so fast I almost believed I'd imagined it. Then he smiled again, dissolving the moment like it had never happened.

"You still don't get it, Olivia." His fingers brushed against my cheek. "You're the best thing that has ever happened to me."

Hot tears escaped my eyes before I could stop them, rolling down my cheeks. I hated crying in front of people, but Damien always seemed to know exactly which parts of me cracked, and somehow, he always knew exactly what to say to hold them together.

He pulled me into his arms, and I laughed, burying my face against his chest while I listened to his heartbeat against my ears. And I believe, with my whole heart, that nothing could ever take this happiness away from me.