Chapter 1

My name is Elena, and I died at twenty-two. My parents forced me to take my foster sister’s place and traded me for a territorial alliance. My mate was the most volatile heir of the wolf packs.

Beaten bloody and fading fast, I made my eighth call for help.

At my adopted sister Seraphina’s birthday party, she played the recording of my final, groveling plea—and laughed.

My parents listened to those desperate calls with nothing but irritation, dismissing each one as theatrics, an inconvenience unworthy of their time.

My brother snarled over the phone, “Then just die already!”

So I did.

In the end, it was my three-year-old daughter who made the final call—using her smartwatch to video my mother, live-streaming the freezer where my severed head lay.

Now, my spirit watches from above as they all, one by one, begin to unravel.

...

I knew I was finally going to die. So I called my family.

My mom answered.

She was in the middle of a face mask, her voice muffled and edged with impatience. “What is it now, Elena?”

I clutched my bleeding neck. The warm, coppery scent of my own blood filled the air, thick and suffocating.

“I’m… I’m dying,” I whispered. “Can you come get Mira?”

Mira was only three, asleep upstairs, completely unaware of the carnage in the living room.

The bleeding wouldn’t stop. Shards of a crystal decanter—once filled with expensive bourbon—were scattered around me, glittering like cruel stars.

My mate, Kael Volkov, was sprawled on the couch, already snoring, passed out after his latest bout of violence.

“Elena, for the Moon’s sake, not this again!”

The phone was snatched away. My brother Caden’s voice cut through, sharp and inhuman with irritation.

“You’ve been mated for four years. Every time you call, it’s either ‘I want to sever the bond’ or ‘he’s going to kill me.’ How pathetic can you be?”

I fell silent.

Maybe it was the blood loss, or maybe I was just numb, but a deep, ancient tiredness settled into my bones. A tiredness I’d known for years.

Ever since I was a pup, forced to yield my toys, my treats, my parents’ attention to Seraphina, the clever, cunning foundling my parents adored.

Forced to suppress my own wolf, to be smaller, quieter, less everything so she could shine brighter.

At eighteen, I was traded like breeding stock to Kael Volkov—the unstable heir of the most powerful pack in the territory. A political alliance.

I’d tried to be a good mate, to soothe the beast in him. I’d failed.

Every day became a careful calculation—how to hide bruises, how to force my healing to work faster before the next moonrise, how to survive just one more night.

At twenty, the darkness inside my own mind grew into a forest thicker than any wilderness I had ever run through.

Only Mira’s smile kept me from getting lost in it forever.

Now, at twenty-two, a shard from Kael’s favorite decanter had torn through my carotid artery.

Strangely… the exhaustion was gone.

For the first time in years, I felt something close to peace.

“I’m not playing this time, Caden,” I said softly, my voice wet and fading. “I’m really dying. Please… just come. I don’t want Mira to find me.”

In seven years—since they chose Seraphina over their own blood—I had only called seven times.

Three times to beg them to let me sever the mate bond.

Four times because I was hurt.

This time made it the eighth.

Eight.

That’s not too many… right?

“Then just die already!” Caden snapped, his voice a final, merciless growl.

“If you’re dead, we’ll come collect the pup.”