Chapter 2

His eyes went wide, as though he'd never expected to hear that from me.

I turned to go.

He caught up from behind and seized my arm again, his voice much gentler. "Talia, don't do anything rash.

"Don't fight Brynn for the Luna's position. There are plenty of eligible males in the pack. Promise not to cause trouble, and Father and I will find you the best mate we can other than Silas. You won't be losing anything."

The sheer absurdity made me turn back to face him.

"All of you seem to have forgotten that Silas was my mate to begin with.

"He betrayed me. Why should I be the one to step aside? Does the fact that I am a low-ranked Omega give him the right to break his oath to the Moon Goddess?"

Rian's mouth opened and nothing came out.

He lowered his head, and I couldn't tell whether what was on his face was guilt or something else.

A memory from long ago surfaced.

It was my second year in the Moen pack, and the pack held a winter hunt.

I was too weak then. I couldn't keep pace or hold prey in my jaws. For three straight days, I caught nothing.

On the fourth evening, I returned to camp empty-handed and found Rian by the fire with an entire skinned deer before him.

He saw me, said nothing, cut off a haunch, and held it out to me.

He was barely more than a boy himself that year, still half-grown and hungry.

He went hungry through that entire hunt and gave me more than half of everything he caught.

That lasted until Brynn arrived.

Now every prime kill he made went straight to her.

He no longer spared me a glance.

"Nothing to say, Rian?"

His throat bobbed. Then he caught my arm again and pulled me toward the sled.

Once we were aboard, he looked at me as though he had finally made up his mind.

"Ten days. Just ten days. Once Brynn gets what she wants, I'll restore your honor."

The sled started again.

I leaned back against the seat and looked out the window.

The snowfield stretched white to the horizon, with moonlight glaring coldly across it.

The intimate marks Silas had left on me the night before the ceremony were fading, each one a reminder that my mate had rejected me.

I found myself thinking about my true origins.

I came from a pack destroyed long ago. I was the sole remnant of its bloodline.

The System found me when I was close to death and told me.

[Talia, all you have to do is make the next Alpha of the Moen pack love you, and you'll live. You'll have a family, status, a mate, everything.]

I said yes.

So the System led Sterling Valentine to that snowfield.

When my father picked me up, I was frostbitten all over and shaking in his arms.

He said, "Don't be frightened. The Moen pack is your home now."

He took me back to the Valentine home. My mother made me broth while Rian crouched beside the bed and stroked my hair.

I ran fevers several times that winter, and every time somebody sat up with me all night.

I thought I was the luckiest child alive.

I had a home. I had a mother, a father, a brother, and later, Silas.

I worked to complete my assignment and forge genuine bonds with them. In the process, I truly came to love them.

But after Brynn returned, every trace of that warmth vanished overnight.

She was the orphaned daughter of my father's old friend, and Silas and Rian had known her since childhood.

They all agreed that Brynn had suffered through years of exile and deserved to be compensated.

So she took my room the moment she arrived.

I protested and questioned them, only to have my family and mate accuse me of being unreasonable.

My father said, "Haven't we favored you for enough years already? Why can't you yield this one thing to poor Brynn?!"

The tenth time I grew angry over the intimacy between him and Brynn, Silas said with weary resignation, "Talia, don't you think you're worrying over nothing?"

Even when Brynn took the first gift Rian had ever given me, he said, "She's suffered enough out there. You have other gifts."

They looked at her as if she were a treasure they had thought lost forever.

From the day she came back I lived in fear.

Sure enough, at my own mating ceremony with Silas, Brynn finished stealing everyone who mattered to me.

Each new disappointment added to the last until all I wanted was to flee the pack that had once given me such warmth.

The sled stopped in front of the Valentine house.

I got down and went straight in without looking back.

Warm yellow firelight spilled through the windows, carrying voices from inside.

Rian called after me with a wounded edge to his voice. "Talia."

I didn't stop.

His voice roughened. "I hurt my leg for you. You're the best one here with herbs. Don't you want to treat it?"

I stopped and turned around.

He was standing in the snow with the blood on his trouser leg frozen hard, holding on to the sled.

His face wore an aggrieved expression I had never seen before.

I gave a scornful laugh. "You jumped after me because you were afraid I'd run away and go after Brynn. I didn't ask you to jump. That was your choice."

I turned and pushed the door open.

My father sat beside the fireplace, writing in its glow.

As his pen scratched across the page, he murmured, "...the gown in moon-white, to suit her bloodline. The ceremony on the east side of the altar, out of the wind. Extra offerings of berries and honey."

He was writing to Silas.

As one of the elders, he fussed over every detail of the marking ceremony, terrified that Brynn and her noble bloodline might be slighted.

"The gown should be formal. Something that flatters her figure."

He added that line underneath.

I stood in the doorway a long time.

The roaring fire stung my eyes until they turned red.

I turned and escaped into my own room.