Chapter 1: The wrong name

I was really trying not to be nervous.

That’s what I kept repeating as Mira worked the laces on the back of my ceremonial dress. Her hands moved fast and sure, the silk tightening across my ribs with each tug. The Mating Ceremony? I’d been prepping for years. I watched three girls do it before me, stood in that circle, knew exactly how it was supposed to go. Knew what to expect.

What I wasn’t ready for was me being the one in the spotlight.

Stop it, I thought. You earned this.

I did. Five years, training with Zevran. Ran the same routes, bled on the same ground, ate at the same table. The pack watched, nodded, called me Luna before any ceremony. You know how it is, everyone just assumes, so no one needs to say it out loud.

“Hold still,” Mira snapped, nearly at the end of the laces.

“I am still!”

“Your shoulders are hunched.”

I forced them down. She finished, circled in front, and the look on her face, her smile barely there, softer than usual, said she knew exactly what was going on inside my head.

“Kaelis.....”

“Don’t.”

“I wasn’t going to say anything.”

“Good.”

But she straightened my left strap anyway, smoothing it out with her thumb. Classic Mira, always fixing things even when nothing needs fixing, just because she doesn’t know what else to do with her hands.

“You look like his mother,” she murmured.

I raised an eyebrow.

“She had that same stillness before big moments,” Mira said. “The face where you can’t tell if she’s about to cry or bite someone.”

“I’m not crying.”

“I know.” She stepped back. “That’s what worries me.”

I turned to the mirror. White and gold dress, the pack’s colors. Hem embroidered with my bloodline’s mark. Hair pinned up with my grandmother’s bone clasps. My reflection, gray eyes steady, hair dark, posture straight.

I looked ready.

I felt like the floor was tilting all day, and nobody else noticed.

“They’re calling for us,” someone shouted from the hall.

Mira squeezed my hand, hard. “Go show them.”

So I walked out.

The clearing sat at the edge of pack territory, open to the sky. Ceremony was always at dusk, moon already high, torches blazing, elders seated in their stone chairs. The rest of the pack waited beyond them, crowded together. Wolves go quiet when something matters, that deep, tense silence where you can almost feel everyone holding breath.

I stepped into the circle.

Zevran was already there. Standing across the flame pit, shoulders squared, jaw set. Deep grey, Alpha colors. He looked exactly like the future leader he was supposed to be. His brown eyes locked on mine, and something in my chest eased. That was him. Right, this felt right.

I nearly smiled.

He didn’t.

I noticed, but refused to think about it. Ceremonies trip everyone up. We’re all allowed nerves.

Head Elder Coran stood. Old as dust, hair ash-gray, eyes pale gold, the wolf’s mark after years running the pack. He raised his hands, and the last murmurs stopped.

“We gather,” he called, voice echoing to the trees, “to witness blood’s binding. To witness the naming.”

Old words. I’d heard them too many times. My pulse loud in my ears, but my breathing steady. Kept my chin up. Stared at Zevran.

He looked away.

I caught that, too.

“Zevran Greycliff,” Coran intoned, “future Alpha, mark-bearer. You stand before your pack. Speak your claim.”

This was it.

This was where Zevran would say my name.

He hesitated. That pause, just a heartbeat too long. I felt it, and so did everyone else. The woman beside me sucked in a breath. That little hitch, the collective sense of something off.

Then Zevran said, “I claim Selene Vane.”

The world didn’t explode. It just stilled, unnaturally, painfully quiet.

I couldn’t move. I was rooted, hands limp at my sides, breath still coming but with something hollow inside. Something essential just torn out, and my body hadn’t caught up.

Selene.

My cousin. My blood.

I heard her gasp, soft, rehearsed, pretty. The sound of a girl who knew she’d be chosen and wanted everyone to see it. She stepped from the crowd in a silver dress I’d never seen. Blonde hair loose, face glowing. She looked beautiful, prepared.

She joined the circle. Never even glanced at me.

I stood there.

For a second, everyone watched me, waiting for my reaction. Elders. The pack. Even Coran, his hands down, body rigid. They watched like wary animals, careful and distant.

I turned and walked out.

Nobody stopped me.

I kept walking, past the torches, letting the dark swallow me. When I reached the edge of the trees, I stopped, pressed both palms to an oak trunk, and tried to breathe.

Selene.

Five years training beside Zevran, five years of being measured for this role. My mother had dressed me. My grandmother’s clasps in my hair. I did everything asked and more, because that’s what Vanes do, we finish the job.

But he’d said her name.

Selene, always quick to smile and brush Zevran’s arm at dinner when she thought nobody noticed. Selene, who came to my room two weeks ago, perched on my bed, said, whatever happens, we're still family. I took it as kindness. Thought she was nervous for me.

How naive.

My hands shook. I pressed them harder against the tree, focused on the rough bark digging into my skin.

You’re not falling apart at your own rejection ceremony, I told myself. Not here.

The bite of bark helped. I locked onto it.

Behind me, the ceremony rolled on. I could hear Coran’s voice, deep and droning. Sealing words. My cousin becoming what I was supposed to be.

My jaw ached from clenching.

I pushed away from the tree, headed back toward the pack grounds. Not because I wanted to, but because standing in the dark felt like hiding, and I refused to hide, not tonight, not in front of them....

Then I heard voices. Low, close, from between the storage hall and the elders’ meeting house. Would’ve missed it if the wind hadn’t shifted.

I paused.

“....can’t afford to let her stay now that she knows .....”

“She doesn’t know anything.”

“She will. That’s the prophecy, Coran. The girl wakes. We don’t get to choose when or how, just whether she’s here when it happens.”

I held my breath.

“The ceremony was the cleanest way,” the first voice said, Elder Voss. Youngest, always watching me with those cold eyes at meetings. “Greycliff cooperated.”

“He was afraid,” Coran replied. “There’s a difference.”

“Same result.”

A pause.

“What if she won’t leave?”

Long silence. My lungs burned.

“She’ll leave,” Coran said. “One way or another.”