Chapter 1

LYRA

"Congratulations, Alpha Darius." The doctor extended the bundle to my husband. "A healthy male. Your heir."

After eighteen hours, my son was born.

He screamed. Just once — a furious, perfect sound, the most alive thing I had ever heard. I reached for him from where I lay — arms shaking, barely able to lift them. Darius said one word to the nurse, and she walked out of the room with my son.

The door swung shut.

His cry was on the other side of it. Muffled, then fainter. I had spent nine months imagining the sound of his voice. I had not imagined it moving away from me.

"Wait." I tried to push myself upright. My arms gave. "Please — I haven't held him—"

"You won't need to."

Darius pulled a chair to my bedside and sat. He folded his hands on his knee. Then he looked at me and smiled.

Not the smile I knew. Not warmth, not relief, not the expression of a man who had just watched his child come into the world.

This was something else — the particular satisfaction of a man whose plan had gone exactly right. Scheming. Pleased with himself. Every trace of love I had ever thought I saw was simply gone.

I had never seen his real face before. Three years, and I had never seen it.

"You've completed your role," he said. "A male heir. Exactly what was required."

"In three weeks, the wedding will proceed. I've kept Serena waiting long enough."

Serena.

I knew that name. Every woman in this pack knew that name. Serena Vale, another Alpha's daughter, the kind of woman Darius escorted to ceremonial dinners while I stayed home and called it duty. He said her name differently than everything else. Softer. Like it was made of something he didn't want to break.

He told me about the betrothal. Arranged when they were children. He told me she was fragile, that she couldn't bear children. Then he said the thing that made everything rearrange.

"If Serena hadn't been unable to conceive, the Luna position would never have come to you."

The room went very still inside my head.

I had not been chosen. I had been used as a workaround. The title, the home, the three years. All of it had been a placeholder for my husband's childhood sweetheart.

"That damned Lycan King is waging wars everywhere, plagues are spreading, newborns are scarce. But you—you're fertile. Easy pregnancies, no complications."

"You should be grateful you can bear children," he said. "Not every woman gets the chance."

He said it like he was doing me a favor.

I loved him, that was the part I couldn't get past. I gave everything to him, to the pack. I rebuilt the supply lines before winter, worked until my hands cramped, and handled most of the logistics and survival issues during the war. Because I believed this was my home, my pack, my people.

"So." My voice came out ragged, scraped out of my throat. "I was a tool. A container. That's all I ever was to you."

He looked at me with the patience of a man explaining something obvious.

"A wolf-less orphan with a pretty face." He stood. "Your greatest value was your womb. Your body. Nothing more. Serena is the one I chose, she always was. You were a borrowed solution to her inconvenience." A pause. "You were the third party. Not her."

"You bastard!"

He wasn't even offended. He just looked at me with that same calm, victorious expression.

"You lied to me," I said. My voice was shaking now. "You looked me in the face every day and lied. The Goddess will curse you for this."

"Enough." He straightened to his full height. "What we had is finished. Serena will be my new Luna."

The air thickened. Alpha power, aimed at me for the first time in three years.

I made myself hold his gaze.

"I, Darius Holt, Alpha of the Holt Pack, reject you — Lyra."

The pain started at the bond and detonated outward. My vision fractured. I pitched sideways over the mattress and retched until there was nothing left. My whole body shook and didn't stop.

But I was still here.

I bit the inside of my cheek until I tasted blood and held onto that. Just the copper. The one thing I still controlled.

He wanted me to go under. I was not going to go under.

"I, Lyra, accept your rejection."

His phone rang once. He answered without stepping away.

"It's done." His voice went somewhere I had never heard it go before. Softer. Almost reverent. "Yes, Serena. He's ours now. Our son."

Then he smiled. Small and private. Whatever she said put it there.

In three years, I had never made him smile like that. Not once.

Our son.

Something broke at those two words—something rejection couldn't. Rejection was pain. This was worse. He stood over me, still bleeding from childbirth, and handed my son to the woman he actually loved.

I pressed my palms flat to the mattress. I willed my arms to lift me. They didn't respond.

My son's cry came through the wall again.

Mothers know their baby's cry. He had lived inside me for nine months. He knew the sound of my heartbeat before he knew anything else in the world, and right now he was out there — small and new and frightened, crying because the one person whose smell meant safe wasn't coming.

He didn't know I was trying.

He's mine. I grew every inch of him. I have not held him once. He doesn't have a name yet, and I'm the only one left who will give it to him. I am not going to let them keep him. I am not going to let this be the end—

The darkness came up fast.

I fought it. Not for myself. For him — because a newborn shouldn't have to learn that the world doesn't come when he cries. Not on his first day. Not ever.

It took me anyway. The last thing I heard was my son, crying for me.