CHAPTER 2

I smoothed the cheap white lace of my slip dress, the fabric thin against my skin. It wasn't a wedding gown; it was a shroud for the life I used to want. I didn’t waste silver on a real dress. Every shard of coin I possessed had to go toward the Bayview Medical Center to keep Ruth’s failing heart beating.

I had braided a few stems of white baby’s-breath into my hair with a scrap of silk ribbon. In the dim, cold light of the Lawson Estate’s private chapel, I looked like a sacrificial lamb.

The pews were mostly empty. The air smelled of damp stone and old incense, but beneath it, the heavy, metallic scent of Alpha blood hung over my father like a suffocating shroud. He kept checking his watch, his jaw tight.

"Stop pacing, Brooke," Richard Lawson muttered, not even looking at me. "He’s probably just navigating the mist. He’ll be here."

My chest felt hollow. I knew the rumors about the man I was traded to. Logan Pierce. A "hollow" Alpha, a man cast out from the Pierce Compound, a gutter-wolf who spent his nights in the fighting pits of the Shifter Citadel. They said he was more beast than man now—unstable, violent, and dirt poor.

"Why is the groom’s side of the chapel a graveyard?" Evelyn Lawson hissed. She was draped in silk the color of a bruised plum, her scent—lilies and cloying honey—masking the disdain rolling off her. "It’s an insult. The Pierce bloodline clearly considers this a joke."

I didn’t care about the insult. I only cared about the price. I stepped closer to her, my voice a low rasp. "The moment the ritual is sealed, you transfer the credits to Ruth’s account. That was the blood-oath."

Evelyn flicked a speck of dust off her sleeve, her eyes darting to the door. "We are family, Brooke. Stop acting like a common merchant. You’ll get your money when the contract is signed. Don't test my patience."

The heavy oak doors creaked, and my stomach did a slow, sickening roll.

Madison sauntered in, her hand clamped firmly around Jason’s arm. She was dressed in gold, shimmering like a taunt. Jason looked like he wanted to vanish into the floorboards. When his eyes met mine, a flicker of guilt crossed his face, but he didn't pull away from her. He couldn't. She carried the heir he’d used to buy his way into the Lawson inner circle.

"Oh, look," Madison chirped, her voice cutting through the silence like a jagged blade. "The bride is waiting, but the beast hasn't arrived. Maybe he forgot he was getting a wife today, or maybe he’s passed out in a gutter somewhere."

Jason’s grip on her arm tightened, his gaze lingering on the way the white dress clung to my frame.

"Eyes on me, Jason," Madison snapped, her scent turning sharp and acidic with jealousy. "What’s there to look at? She’s marrying a stray. A bastard who can't even show up on time because his own family won't lend him a carriage."

She turned her sneer back to me. "I almost feel bad for you, Brooke. To be dumped by a real wolf and handed over to a failure. You two can rot in the Harbor View ruins together. You'll fit right in—two broken things with no pack."

I looked at my sister—the girl who had taken my mate, my future, and now my dignity. The "quiet grit" they said I had snapped. I stepped toward her, my shadow stretching long across the stone floor.

"Mind your tongue, Madison," I said, my voice cold enough to frost the air. "We are in a sacred place of the Great Wolf. Don't let your lack of manners stain what’s left of our name. Or does the baby in your belly make you forget how to act like a Lawson?"

Madison gasped, her face flushing a deep, angry red. The chapel went deathly silent. My father stepped forward, his hand raised as if to strike, but the sound of the Great Hall’s outer gates groaning open stopped him.

The heavy doors at the back of the chapel swung wide.

The morning sun flooded in, blinding us all. A silhouette stood there—tall, broad-shouldered, and radiating a sudden, violent shift in the room's pressure. The air didn't just move; it thickened.

As the doors settled, the man stepped into the shadows. He was dressed in a charcoal suit that fit him like armor, the fabric stretching over powerful, coiled muscles. He didn't look like a gutter-wolf. He looked like a storm given human shape.

His eyes—dark, piercing, and terrifyingly intelligent—swept the room, landing on me with the weight of a physical blow. He moved with a predatory grace that made the Alphas in the room look like pups. He adjusted his cufflink, his expression a mask of icy calm that didn't hide the raw power thrumming beneath his skin.