Chapter 4

Freya

The night of the Starlight Ball had arrived, and my heart had not stopped hammering since the sun went down.

I stood at the front of a long line of Trial women outside the great double doors of the ballroom, listening to music seep through the walls. Behind me somewhere, I could hear Celeste laughing with whoever was unfortunate enough to be standing next to her. She had clearly dressed herself for maximum impact and was planning her grand entrance with the kind of focus most people reserved for very important things.

I had my mask on.

It was a masquerade ball , all of us wore them. Mine was made of small black beads that caught the candlelight, designed to match the gown I was wearing. Lily had lent me the key without another word, and I had dressed carefully, grateful down to my bones for that little girl and her quiet acts of courage.

The gown fit me like it had always been mine. I did not let myself think about what that meant.

When the doors opened, I took one slow breath and stepped into the line.

We descended a wide staircase, one by one, into the grand ballroom below. Candles burned everywhere , hundreds of them, casting warm, dancing light across the stone walls and the marble floor. The room was full of guests dressed in dark evening wear, most of them watching with interest as each woman came down the stairs.

My eyes found Alpha Adrian before I had taken three steps down.

He was standing at the foot of the staircase. Black suit, sharp shoulders, dark hair neatly back. He looked powerful and cold and perfectly put together, the kind of man who never looked out of place anywhere.

And he was already looking at me.

Not at the woman in front of me. Not at the crowd. At me.

I kept walking, one step at a time, my chin level, my hands still. When I reached the bottom I gave him a small, careful smile. He held my gaze for a long, unreadable moment before turning as the next woman came behind me.

But as the evening went on, I kept catching him looking back.

Each woman came down beautifully dressed and perfectly poised, and he gave each one a polite, brief nod. When Celeste descended in a deep emerald gown with a long train, sweeping down the stairs like she owned the whole building, he looked at her for exactly half a second before his eyes drifted back to me.

I saw her notice. I saw her jaw tighten.

Once the entrances were done and the room opened up for mingling, I found myself standing near the center of the dance floor while an older woman talked at me about how meaningful the Luna Trial tradition was for the whole pack. I smiled and nodded and said the right things at the right times.

Then the crowd shifted. Parted.

Alpha Adrian was walking toward me through the room like there was no one else in it.

“May I have this dance?” He offered his hand.

I placed mine in it.

We moved out onto the floor as the string quartet at the far end of the room began to play. He led easily, turning me with confidence, and I followed without stumbling, which I considered a small victory given how my heart was behaving.

He did not speak for a long moment. He just watched me the way he had been doing all evening , with something careful and measuring behind his eyes. The music swelled, and he leaned in close.

“How dare you wear that gown,” he said softly, very near my ear.

Before I could answer, he spun me out at arm’s length with one swift turn, then pulled me back in until we were close again.

I lifted my chin and kept my voice steady. “It was locked in a glass case. That dress was not made to sit in the dark. It was made to be worn.”

He was quiet. His grip on my waist stayed firm, but I felt something in it shift , a loosening, like a breath let go. His eyes moved over the gown slowly, taking in the lines of it, the beads, the careful details.

“You’re bold,” he said, and the sharpness in his voice had softened into something else.

“The woman who made that dress was extraordinary,” I said. “I didn’t want to see it forgotten.”

He twirled me again, slowly this time. “She was.” His voice went somewhere quiet. “She always said her work was meant to be lived in, not kept behind glass. I think she would have approved.”

He dipped me, and when he brought me back up, there was the faintest edge of a smile on his mouth. “I have to say, I almost don’t recognize you from our first meeting. You look quite different without that expression of total panic.”

“To be fair,” I said, “I wasn’t panicking. I was calmly reconsidering every choice I had ever made.”

He let out a short, quiet sound that might have been a laugh. Then in one smooth movement, he reached up and removed my mask.

I held still.

His eyes changed as recognition came. That brief warmth pulled back like a tide going out.

“It’s you,” he said.

I said nothing. There was nothing useful to say.

From across the room came a voice like a blade. “Freya!”

Celeste had spotted me. I could see the color rising in her face from here. She knew now , she knew the Alpha had all but ignored her entrance, and she knew who he had been dancing with all night.

She started pushing through the crowd toward us.

Then a small hand shot out of nowhere and grabbed mine and threw it up in the air.

“I declare Freya the winner!” Lily shouted. She was standing right beside me in a white dress with a matching bow, cheeks flushed and eyes lit up with pure joy. She looked absolutely sure of herself in the way that only children can be.

Celeste stopped in front of us, breathing hard, her composure cracking at the edges. “Who gave you permission to speak?” she snapped down at Lily. “You are just a child. A rude, worthless little , “

“Who are you calling worthless?” Adrian’s voice cut across the room like ice breaking.

Every sound in the ballroom stopped. The music, the conversation, the soft clink of glasses , all of it, gone. Celeste looked between him and Lily. Her face went the color of chalk.

“I didn’t , I didn’t know , “ she started.

“Leave,” Adrian said. Just that one word.

Celeste turned and walked out of the ballroom fast, nearly stumbling over her own gown. A ripple of murmurs ran through the crowd behind her.

Lily was still holding my hand, grinning up at me like she had just won something important.

And maybe she had.

I looked down at her, something warm and broken and hopeful all tangled together in my chest. I had barely been holding myself together since the garden, since I had seen that small pale crescent on the back of her neck and felt the world tilt sideways under my feet.

She could not be my daughter. There was no way it was possible. The Alpha of Moonshadow Pack could not have taken a baby from a hospital seven years ago. It made no sense.

And yet.

I was still looking at her when she turned her head slightly, and her curls shifted, and I saw it again , clear and small and shaped exactly like a moon.

My breath caught so hard it almost hurt.

Could she really be mine?