CHAPTER 2

Rhea's POV

The dress on the bed was the color of dried blood, dark red silk that shimmered in the candlelight like something alive. I stared at it for a long time before my hands stopped shaking enough to touch the lace, tracing the delicate pattern with fingers that felt numb and disconnected from my body.

Ten years since my mother married Alaric Blackwood, since she dragged me from our tiny London flat to this sprawling manor in the Alps because she thought she'd found her fairy tale. She didn't know she was walking into a wolf's den, didn't know the charming aristocrat she'd fallen for came with three sons who looked at me like I was contaminating their bloodline just by breathing the same air. I spent my teenage years hiding in the library, staying small and quiet and out of the way, and now my mother was dead from a hiking accident I never believed in, and the boys were men.

Dangerous men who wanted to own me.

The door creaked open, and I didn't turn around because I knew that scent, expensive bourbon and something sharper underneath, something that always meant trouble.

"Still sulking, Rhea?" Rodger's voice was lazy, amused. "You'll get wrinkles."

I looked at him through the vanity mirror and remembered the boy who used to put salt in my tea and spiders in my bed, except now he was taller and leaner with a smirk that could probably charm anyone into anything. He strolled in and kicked the door shut behind him, then picked up a lock of my hair and wound it around his finger like he had every right to touch me.

"Get out, Rodger."

"Is that any way to talk to your favorite brother?" He tugged gently on my hair, his reflection grinning at mine. "You've grown up. The skinny little girl who used to cry in the pantry is gone."

"I stopped crying the day your father forced my mother into that accident," I snapped, jerking my hair free.

Rodger's smile didn't fade, but his eyes shifted, turned a dark, bruised violet that made my stomach drop. "Careful, accusations like that get people buried in the woods, and besides, you should be thanking us because Killian wanted to hand you over to the Council, and Malachi wanted to do something worse. I'm the only one who fought to keep you here."

"Keep me like a pet?"

"Like a prize." He leaned down until his breath was warm against my ear. "Do you know why Killian kissed you downstairs? It wasn't just to assert dominance; he was checking something."

"Checking what?"

"If you've shifted yet."

I froze, my hands going still on the vanity. "I'm human, you know that, I've never had a scent or turned or any of it."

"That's what we thought." His fingers traced the silver collar locked around my neck, the metal cold against my skin. "But you're twenty now, the age of the Awakening, and if you're what we think you are, if your mother lied about who your real father was..."

"She didn't lie!"

"Then why did Alaric leave a clause in his will saying you had to be claimed by one of us to keep the Blackwood fortune from being seized by the High Pack?" Rodger straightened up and met my eyes in the mirror, his expression serious for once. "He meant a mating bond, Rhea, or at least the closest thing we can get to one."

The door flew open hard enough to crack against the stone wall, and Malachi filled the doorway, all muscle and scars and silent menace. He was the largest of the three and the quietest, his face a map of violence I'd never asked about because I was too afraid of the answers. He didn't speak, just pointed toward the hall with one scarred hand.

"The Alpha is waiting," Malachi said, his voice a low rumble that seemed to come from somewhere deep in his chest.

"He's always so impatient." Rodger sighed and squeezed my shoulder, his fingers lingering. "Put the dress on, Rhea, or Malachi will put it on for you, and trust me, he's not as gentle as I am."

They left, and the lock clicked behind them, that sound of metal sliding home that meant I had no choice. I put on the dress, and it fit like it had been made for me, the slit up the side showing too much leg and the neckline cut low enough to make me feel exposed. When the guards finally came to bring me down to the Great Hall, my heart was hammering so hard I thought I might be sick.

The furniture had been pushed back, and the room felt cavernous, empty except for Killian sitting in a leather chair in the center with a bottle of dark liquor on the table beside him. He was shirtless, and the tattoos covering his chest and arms seemed to move with each breath, wolves and runes and things I didn't recognize.

"Come here," Killian said, and it wasn't a request.

I walked toward him, and my heels clicked too loudly on the marble, each step echoing while Rodger and Malachi stood behind Killian's chair like sentinels. When I got close enough, Killian stood, and his eyes roamed over me with a hunger that made my skin prickle and burn.

"You look acceptable," he said finally. "Do you know what happens tonight, Rhea?"

"Rodger mentioned a claim." I forced myself to meet his eyes. "Just tell me the price."

Killian walked toward me with that slow, deliberate grace that reminded me of predators on nature documentaries, the ones that took their time because they knew their prey couldn't escape. He stopped close enough that I could feel his heat and reached into his pocket to pull out a small silver dagger that gleamed in the candlelight.

"The price is blood," he whispered, and before I could move or scream or do anything, he grabbed my hand and sliced a shallow line across my palm. The pain was sharp and immediate, and I gasped, watching red well up along the cut. He did the same to his own palm without flinching, then looked at me with those gold-threaded eyes.

"If you're human, the wounds won't react," he said, his voice tight and controlled. "But if you're one of us, if you've been hiding a wolf inside you all this time, our blood will recognize each other."

He pressed his palm against mine.

For a second, nothing happened, and I thought maybe this was it, maybe I really was human, and they'd let me go. Then a jolt of pure electricity shot up my arm, not pain exactly, but fire, and my vision blurred into hazy glowing white. A sound ripped from my throat that wasn't a scream but something lower and more guttural, something that didn't sound human at all.

Killian's eyes went wide and turned molten gold, and he gripped my waist and pulled me flush against him as the air in the room began to hum with power. I could feel his heart pounding against mine, could feel something wild and dangerous rising between us like a living thing.

"I knew it," Rodger whispered from somewhere behind us, his voice full of awe and something that might have been jealousy.

"Killian, stop," I gasped, but my voice came out weak, and my heart was racing so fast I thought it might burst. "What's happening to me?"

Killian didn't answer, just buried his face in the crook of my neck with his fangs grazing the skin right above the silver collar. His entire body was shaking, and I could feel the restraint it was taking for him not to bite down, could feel how close he was to losing control.

"You're not our step-sister," he groaned, his voice breaking with something raw and primal. "You're the Lunar Heir, the one the legends said would come to destroy us all."

He pulled back, and his hand moved to my throat, but he wasn't choking me; he was cradling me like I was something precious and fragile. His thumb brushed over my lips, and for the first time, I saw actual fear in the Alpha's eyes, fear and something else I couldn't name.

"And now I have to decide," Killian whispered, "whether to kill you to save my Pack or keep you and let the world burn."

Outside, the first full moon of winter broke through the clouds, and a chorus of howls erupted from the forest, wild and hungry and getting closer. Killian's grip tightened, and his lips were inches from mine, close enough that I could feel each word he spoke.

"Run, Rhea, I'm giving you five seconds because if you stay in this room, I won't be able to stop what comes next."

I didn't run because I couldn't, because as I looked at him, something began to glow on my shoulder, hot and bright and impossible. I looked down and saw a mark burning into my skin, the same tattoo that was etched over Killian's heart, wolves and runes forming a pattern I'd never seen before but somehow recognized.

"I can't run," I whispered, and my voice was shaking so badly I could barely get the words out. "Killian, why do I have your mark?"

Killian froze, and his face went deathly pale as he stared at the glowing ink on my skin, and for a moment, he looked like he might be sick or scream or both.

"Because you aren't just a bride," he rasped, "you're my fated mate, and I just signed your death warrant."

The heavy front doors of the manor burst open with a crash that echoed through the hall, and the sound of silver-clad boots hit the floor in perfect military rhythm. The Council had arrived, and from the way Killian's entire body went rigid against mine, I knew that whatever was about to happen was going to be so much worse than anything that had come before.