THE BONDING CEREMONY

CHAPTER 1

On the night the pack chose its future, I wore my mother’s dress and tried not to look like someone who could be thrown away.

The fabric was soft ash-gray, simple, too plain for ceremony—but it was all we had. My mother had repaired the seams until the thread looked like veins. She brushed my hair until it shone, then pinned it back the way she used to when I was little and still believed gentleness was a law of nature.

“Aria,” she said, hands pausing at my shoulders. “No matter what happens, you keep your head up.”

My throat tightened. “Why would anything happen?”

Her mouth pressed into a line. She didn’t answer.

We both knew why.

Tonight was the Alpha Heir’s Bonding.

Tonight, Kieran Vale would stand before the pack and accept his mate—chosen by tradition, confirmed by scent, sanctioned by the Moon.

And everyone said the Moon had chosen me.

I didn’t know how to hold that truth. I didn’t know how to carry it without breaking.

Because I wasn’t important. I wasn’t highborn. I wasn’t even loud.

I was the healer’s daughter. The girl who ground herbs, stitched wounds, and kept her eyes down when Alphas passed.

And yet—every time Kieran came near, my blood turned to heat.

Not desire exactly. Not yet.

Something older.

Like recognition.

The ceremonial clearing blazed with torches. Elders sat carved into the front row like judgment. The pack gathered in rings, the air thick with anticipation and wolf-scent—pine, musk, smoke, metal.

Kieran stood at the center.

He looked like the kind of man the world makes stories about: tall, broad-shouldered, midnight hair, a scar slicing through one eyebrow like a signature. His eyes were steel-blue, but tonight they were darker—storm-heavy.

Beside him, Alpha Rowan Vale watched with a careful expression. Not proud. Not relieved.

Careful.

And that was the second warning the world tried to give me.

I ignored it.

The priest lifted a silver bowl of Moonwater. “Let the bond be revealed,” he announced.

The pack hushed.

Kieran’s gaze swept the crowd.

It landed on me.

My lungs forgot their job.

Everything inside me leaned toward him, wolf and girl both, as if the air itself had turned into a tether.

His jaw flexed.

And for a flash—only a flash—something raw cracked through his control.

Hunger.

Need.

Then it was gone, sealed behind a hard stare like a door locking.

The priest began the chant, old words shaped by old power. The torches flickered like they were listening.

“Kieran Vale,” the priest intoned, “do you accept the mate chosen for you?”

Kieran didn’t answer immediately.

His eyes didn’t leave mine.

I swallowed. My palms dampened. My mother’s hand found my wrist in the crowd, a silent tether back to earth.

Then Kieran spoke.

Clear. Cold.

“No.”

The clearing didn’t just go silent.

It froze.

The priest blinked, as if he’d heard wrong. “Alpha Heir—”

“I said no.” Kieran’s voice sharpened. “The pack needs stability. An alliance. A future that can’t be questioned.”

Whispers began like wind through dry leaves.

I felt every gaze pivot toward me—curious, hungry, cruel.

The priest looked rattled. “The Moon chooses—”

“And I choose,” Kieran cut in, stepping closer to the priest, closer to the silver bowl, closer to the line he was about to cross.

His eyes burned as he spoke the words that would split a girl from her destiny.

“I reject Aria Marrow.”

The sound that came out of my chest wasn’t a sob.

It was my wolf—small, startled, wounded—making a noise I didn’t know she could make.

My mother’s grip tightened until it hurt.

My vision blurred.

Kieran’s gaze flicked down, like he could feel something snap between us—like a thread breaking under too much strain.

His nostrils flared.

For one heartbeat, he looked like he might take it back.

Then the Beta stepped forward with a daughter at his side—tall, polished, wearing a ceremonial gown like she’d been born into it.

Selah Dorne.

Her scent rolled across the clearing like roses over rot—too sweet, too sharp, too deliberate.

Kieran faced her without looking away from me.

“I accept Selah Dorne,” he said, as if the words didn’t cost him anything.

The priest hesitated—then lifted the bowl, forced by politics, by pressure, by the pack’s watching eyes.

The Moonwater shimmered.

And then—

It turned black.

A ripple spread across the surface, dark as bruised ink.

The priest flinched, almost dropping the bowl.

Gasps tore through the crowd.

Elders stood so fast their chairs scraped wood.

Alpha Rowan’s face went pale, his gaze snapping to me like I’d just become something dangerous.

Kieran’s eyes widened—just slightly—as if he’d just realized he hadn’t rejected me.

He’d triggered something.

The torches dimmed.

The wind changed.

And in the pit of my stomach, my wolf lifted her head—no longer small, no longer wounded.

Something inside me opened like a locked room finally remembering its key.

A voice—not human, not pack—pressed against my bones like thunder behind skin.

Not him.

My breath caught.

The Moon’s presence coiled through the clearing.

And in that blackened bowl, beneath the surface, a bright flame moved—circling—circling—

Recognizing me.

Choosing me.

Not as a mate.

As something else.

Something older.

Something the pack had tried to bury.

Kieran took one step forward. “Aria—”

My mother’s voice snapped like a whip. “Don’t.”

I blinked, trying to steady my shaking.

Kieran’s gaze held mine, desperate now, as if he could pull me back with sheer will.

But the bond—whatever he’d broken—had left a scar.

And the Moon’s black water was a warning written in ink.

I lifted my chin.

And I did what my mother taught me.

I kept my head up.

Then I turned.

And walked out of the circle.

Behind me, the clearing erupted—elders shouting, wolves snarling, Alpha Rowan barking orders.

But I didn’t look back.

Because if I looked back, I might see Kieran’s face.

And if I saw it, I might remember the way my body leaned toward him like home—

Even as he burned it down.