Chapter One

**Chapter 1: The Betrayal**

MERIS

The letter shook in my hands. I read the first line twice, then a third time, because my brain refused to process it on the first pass.

"Congratulations. We are pleased to offer you the position of Marketing Assistant at Connor's Industries."

I didn't wait to read the rest. My heart slammed hard against my ribs, overwhelmed with something so pure it almost hurt.

The sound came out before I could stop it, somewhere between a laugh and a sob, loud enough that the woman nearest to me turned to stare. I didn't care.

Two years after graduating, I'd finally been given a chance to work in Connor's company. My fated mate. My fiancé.

I grabbed two glasses of wine from the nearest server, ignoring the looks, and downed them both before he could blink. The warmth spread through my chest like a slow bloom. I deserved it. I'd worked hard for this job, even though Connor was rich enough to ensure I never worked a day in my life if I chose not to.

My eyes swept the ballroom. Masked faces. Exquisite clothing. The sharp scent of expensive perfume cutting through the music.

I spotted my father, the alpha, across the room with his new wife, his hand resting on her back like she was the only woman who'd ever mattered. My chest tightened with the familiar old anger. I chose to look away before he felt my eyes on him. Tonight wasn't about him.

Connor had arranged all of this for me, and my mind kept drifting back to this morning, the way he'd turned too fast when I walked into the room, his hand moving toward his jacket pocket like he was shielding something.

A ring box. I was almost certain.

Even with every face masked, I could recognize Connor anywhere. I scanned the bar, the dance floor, and the entrance.

He wasn't there.

I exhaled slowly, figuring he must have stepped back to our lodge. My heart was already racing as I made my way through the crowd, the letter folded carefully in my hand, the urge to see his face when I showed him almost unbearable.

Then my feet stopped.

I stared at the door in front of me.

Room 108.

I blinked. Maybe I'd counted wrong.

"Yesss… yesss… just like that… oh God… yesss…"

Connor's voice ripped through the door. The low, rough groan that followed it made my stomach drop.

The letter crumpled in my fist.

"Yes, Nadia. I love it. I love how you ride me."

My stepsister's voice answered him, high and breathless and completely unbothered. Not guilty. Not afraid. Like she'd been waiting for me to hear this for a very long time.

"She's nothing to me. Nothing compared to you, Nadia. You're so sweet."

I stood there for a moment. Just one. Because some part of me still needed to be sure before I destroyed everything.

Then I kicked the door open.

The scene on the other side was exactly what I'd already known it would be. Nadia on top, Connor beneath her, both of them turning at the sound. Connor scrambled upright and came toward me, but I stepped back, both hands out, stopping him before he could close the distance.

"Don't. Don't you dare."

My voice came out smaller than I wanted it to. Not because I was breaking, but because two years of my life had just folded in on themselves in the space of a single second.

"I'm sorry. It wasn't meant to happen. This is nothing, Meris."

My eyes snapped to Nadia. She hadn't moved to cover herself. She sat there watching me, satisfaction plain on her face, her eyes holding something I hadn't expected.

Pride.

"Come on, Connor." Her voice was almost bored. "Just tell her. Tell her what this party was actually for."

Connor's expression shifted. Something in it hardened, went cold. Not ashamed. Not sorry.

"Fine." He looked at me then, really looked. "You should know by now I wouldn't marry you. Didn't you get the email?"

I stared at him.

"I wouldn't marry you."

"What are you talking about, Connor? You're sleeping with my sister."

"For maybe a year now." Nadia said it like she was correcting a small factual error. "Deal with it."

Connor scratched the back of his neck, his eyes finally sliding away from mine.

"It's not my fault you're seeing this now. I sent you an email. I told you I was rejecting you, that we couldn't be together anymore."

An email. He'd ended our two-year bond over an email that had gone to my spam folder.

"So the party…"

"Was for Nadia." He said it without flinching. "I needed her father's blessing. I needed your father's blessing. I told Nadia you'd cause trouble if you came, but I thought you would have left by now."

He'd never wanted me here. I would have found out about their engagement on television.

"The job," I said. My voice had gone very quiet. "You offered me a job."

"I just wanted to give you something. You've always wanted to work. I thought…"

"You never even let me touch you." His tone shifted, just slightly, just enough. "That's part of why I stayed as long as I did. I'd never actually marry a woman whose own father rejected her. Whose own mother…"

The slap landed before the thought had fully formed. His head snapped sideways.

Then Nadia's palm cracked across my cheek so fast I didn't see it coming.

"Don't you dare lay your powerless hands on my husband."

Husband.

I looked at her. Then at him. Connor was already pulling her back, his arm around her waist, his eyes on me, and the expression in them was something I'd never seen in two years together. Not anger, exactly. Something colder than that.

Disgust.

He'd marked me. Two years, and we'd never gone beyond a kiss because I'd wanted to wait. He'd agreed. He'd pressed his mouth to my neck and marked me as his and then spent a year sleeping with my stepsister and rejecting me over a message that never reached me.

"I reject you, Meris Volkov," he said. "And I choose Nadia."

He cut off whatever I'd been about to say. The bond broke the moment the words left his mouth, every quiet, invisible thread that had connected us snapping apart at once, sharp and sudden as a bone.

I didn't cry. I put my mask back on, and I walked out.

Behind me, I heard Nadia laugh.

* * *

The party was still going when I stepped back into it. I grabbed another glass of wine and drank it without tasting it.

My father was laughing near the far end of the room, his head thrown back, completely at ease. He'd known. I could feel it now, the same way you feel the cold the moment a window opens, sudden and undeniable. He'd known about Connor and Nadia, and he'd let me walk into that lodge.

I was still standing there, glass in hand, when I felt it.

A gaze.

It landed on me from across the ballroom like a hand pressed flat between my shoulder blades, still, deliberate, impossibly warm. I turned slowly.

The man was standing near the entrance. Perfectly tailored suit. Dark hair. A metallic black mask with intricate devilish designs covering most of his face, the kind of thing that should have looked theatrical but somehow didn't on him. He wore it like a second skin.

He looked like he wanted to leave. But he hadn't moved.

Something tugged at the edge of my memory, quiet and wordless, the way a scent sometimes pulls you toward something you can't name.

I looked away.

Connor walked onto the stage with Nadia at his side, their fingers laced together. My father raised his glass. He wasn't surprised. Not even a little.

I turned before Connor could drop to one knee.

My body walked straight into what I thought was a wall.

It wasn't.

The man caught me before I could stumble, his hands landing at my waist, steadying me without effort. Up close, the mask was more striking than it had seemed from across the room, but it was his eyes that stopped me. Dark. Steady. And underneath that steadiness, something that felt, inexplicably, like recognition.

Something inside me went very still.

Not the wine. Not the grief. Something older than both.

I could hear the applause starting behind me, my father's voice among the others, congratulating them. I felt something crack quietly in my chest.

He still hadn't let go of my waist.

"Kiss me," I heard myself say. "Please."

I didn't plan it. I didn't even understand it. I was begging a masked stranger for a kiss in the middle of my own unraveling, and the worst part was that it didn't feel strange at all.

It felt like the first honest thing I'd done all night.