Chapter One: Tonight of All Nights

~Amber’s POV~

It is expected that I begin with something intriguing, right?

Something absolutely gripping that captures attention from the very first line.

Preferably something entertaining.

Well it is unfortunate that I would have to disappoint, because there was nothing entertaining about the gasp caught in my throat as I stood frozen at that door  watching the man I loved driving mercilessly into someone that was very obviously not me.

"Ian?"

I hated how my voice came out as a squeak but watched, still unable to move my feet as his body went completely still and his head turned just enough that I caught the flash of pure guilt in his eyes.

But then the woman, whoever she was arched beneath him, her hands tangling in his hair, pulling him back to her with a soft moan and suddenly like he couldn’t help himself, he looked away from me,  tightened in her hair, yanking her head back, and he drove into her even harder. 

That was when I saw her face.

Melissa.

It felt as if the entire world paused and when it kicked back into motion, the laughter burst out before I could stop it and both their heads snapped in my direction this time.

I watched the guilt slam back on his face as if he was truly just realizing I was really standing here then it mixed with shame before he pulled out of her, quickly reaching for his pants. 

He opened his mouth like he was going to say something but Melissa's hand shot out, gripping his wrist, and whatever words he had died before they could form.

Then she pushed herself up, wrapping herself in a blanket as if I hadn’t seen her naked hundreds of times before.

Because she was supposed to be my best friend.

"I guess I shouldn't be surprised." I said into the deafening silence, the laughter still sitting strange in my voice,  hollow and almost manic. "It is a typical tale, isn't it? Girl falls in love. Gets betrayed by the man and her best friend. Classic."

"Ambre, it's not what you—" Melissa started.

I took the words right out of her mouth.

"Not what I think?" My voice cracked on the last word and I didn't even realize I was crying until I felt it. "I didn't just walk in on you f*cking the man I am getting mated to tonight. Tonight Melissa."

She flinched.

"You helped me pick out my dress yesterday." The words came out shattered.

And it was hurting so much. Like someone had plunged their hand directly into my chest and was ripping my heart into pieces and I was so terrified that if I looked at Ian directly, the pieces would disappear entirely.

But I forced my eyes to him anyway.

They clashed with his and if it was any other situation, I would havec found it almost comedic how his eyes kept flickering between guilt, shame, hopelessness and then acceptance that this was how it was going to be.

"Melissa and I..." He paused, and for the briefest moment, his eyes met mine with something that might have been regret. "We just discovered we are fated mates."

Melissa stepped closer to him, her hand sliding up his arm, and I watched his jaw tighten, watched the last trace of hesitation drain from his face.

"The mating ceremony under the full moon tonight will be ours." His voice came out firmer this time, like he was convincing himself as much as me."

Melissa stepped toward me. "We were going to tell you. We just couldn't find the right time." Her voice was soft. Careful but I had known her for three years, long enough to know the difference between when her words were true and when they were theater.

This was a performance worth a standing ovation.

I looked back at Ian, forcing the steadiness that I didn’t feel into my voice. "I thought we were in love.”

Something flickered in his expression. His mouth opened, closed, and for a heartbeat I thought, I genuinely thought, he might take it back. Might tell me he was sorry. That this wasn't what he wanted.

But then Melissa moved.

She pressed herself against his side, her fingers trailing down his chest, and I watched his pupils dilate, watched his breathing change and it hit me.

The full moon. The bond. It was pulling at him, drowning out everything else.

When he looked at me again, whatever softness had been there was gone. "What could you possibly have to have given up? You are nothing but an Omega."

With that single sentence,  it felt as if every trace of the man I had fallen for three years ago vanished from his face like he had never been there at all.

Three years.

I had left everything behind. Given up the life I had known, the person I had been  all for him to notice me. 

And finally, finally, he had. And I had been so sure,  so certain that in three days our mating ceremony was going to be the happiest moment of my life. The one moment that would do the one thing that had never happened.

Prove the most powerful man in our world, my father wrong.

As if the universe felt the need to underscore everything happening in this room, the phone still in my hand,  I hadn't even realized I was still holding it, that my hands were shaking lit up. The thread between my father and I still open from moments ago.

"The countdown to the end of three years has begun. Conceding defeat yet?"

"Not a chance. Hope you are  ready to eat your words." The grin that had been on my face when I typed my reply seconds before I walked into this room eager to tell him the truth.

Tell him that I was the Princess of the realm and I had made a bet with my father after I fell in love with him at first sight but my father only agreed to bless the union if Ian fell in love with me, not my title.

So for three years, I hid who I was under the guise of an Omega in Ian’s pack.

That grin felt like it belonged to a different lifetime.

I stared at the screen a moment longer. And as pathetic as it might have seemed to anyone watching,  not that I cared  I let the words fall out.

“I understand the pull of a mating bond. I understand that you couldn't help it." I moved, reaching for him. "But it doesn't erase what we have. You love me. I love you. We can work through it.”

Surprise flickered in his eyes again, different this time. Not angry. Almost... hopeful? 

But his wolf was fighting it, I could see it in the way his hands clenched at his sides, the way his breathing hitched.

"Ambre..." My name came out rough, uncertain, and I knew, I knew in that moment that part of him still loved me.

But Melissa knew it too.

She moved before he could finish, stepping between us, her hand cupping his face and turning him toward her. "Ian," she whispered, but it wasn't soft. It was commanding. 

I watched his eyes go hazy. Watched the bond take hold and when he looked back at me, it was like he wasn't the same man anymore.

“There is nothing to fix.” The words landed flat and final and his voice had dropped to something I didn't recognize, something filled with so much ice that cut through the room.

"The only thing you have done for the last three years, ever since you were lucky enough to be let into this pack, was follow me around like a lost puppy." He looked at me like I was something he had tolerated far.

"Please," she whispered, stroking his hair, her voice dropping to something meant only for him as she looked at me. "You have to understand. Today is the best time to have the strongest pup, we would have come to find you otherwise.”

And I had genuinely thought that walking in on them had been the worst of it. That everything after was just aftermath but then he leaned down and kissed her. Hard. 

Like I wasn't standing three feet away. Like I had already ceased to exist and something in me broke that I already knew I would never fully put back together.

Melissa pulled away from his face and there it was finally. A smile that flickered across her lips before the pretense shot back up. "I'm sorry Ambre, but this is how it is. It would do you good to remember your place from now on." She tilted her head toward the door. "You should go."

I don't know how or why I obeyed her words when I felt my brain completely shut down.

I just moved. Forward, without registering the motion, without any real awareness of where I was going and I knew without a doubt that I wasn't going to make myself stop.

Because the moment I did, everything would crash into me at once.

And so the universe, I guess, decided to do it for me.

The growl. No. Growls in plural.

They came without warning, snapping my brain back into the present so fast it felt violent. Unfortunately, it was already too late, because the only thing I had time to register was that my feet had carried me far past the borders of Ian's pack.

Into territory that did not belong to anyone I knew.

Three wolves stepped out of the treeline, yellow eyes catching the moonlight, feral, and locked completely onto me.

Rogues.

The realization crashed alongside the only second I had to breathe before Roxanne, my wolf ripped through me, tearing against everything with pure instinct, and I lunged at the threat. 

More emerged from the shadows, too many, all at once, but I wasn’t an Alpha’s female for nothing and I kept fighting even as they kept coming, even as my muscles screamed and my breath came ragged.

But they were too many and I was getting tired.

Then something else slammed into me.

Not a rogue. Not a blow. 

Something different, something that rippled through my entire body like a wave I didn’t understand, weakening me from the inside out. 

My senses went haywire, overwhelmed, and my vision started to blur at the edges just as Roxanne let out the strangest sound I had ever heard from her.

A purr.

Soft. Wanting. Completely wrong for the moment.

And before I could understand what was happening to her, to us, she receded without warning, forcing me back into my human form in the middle of the fight, leaving me naked and defenseless and surrounded.

I could hear the growls closing in from all sides.

Feel their eyes on me.

Knew with absolute certainty that I was about to be ripped to shreds.

Then a voice, deep and commanding, suddenly  tore  through the night. 

"Don't you dare touch her!"