His Hidden Warrior Queen

I'd spent two hours getting ready.

Two hours of standing in front of my mirror in a dress — a fitted black thing with thin straps that I kept tugging at because the neckline felt too low.

Tonight was different. Tonight, Max and I were supposed to become chosen mates. I'd come early to surprise him.I walked to his house with my heart hammering. I practiced my smile the entire way.

I had this stupid little fantasy: I'd knock, he'd open the door, and his jaw would drop. He'd never seen me look like a girl before.

The sounds hit me three feet from the door. A rhythmic creak. A breathy moan.

And then a laugh I'd been hearing since the day I was born.

Stephanie.

My hand froze on the doorknob. Everything inside me went cold, starting at the scalp and draining straight down through my feet.

"Goddess, Max — don't stop." Stephanie's voice, breathy and theatrical. Then a laugh. "I bet she doesn't even know how to do this. Your little tomboy girlfriend — does she even own a skirt?"

My jaw locked. My back hit the hallway wall. My knees tried to buckle and I locked them straight.

"Can we not talk about her right now?" Max sounded strained.

"Why not?" Stephanie laughed. "You still have feelings for her?"

"What? No." Max scrambled to recover, the way he always did when Stephanie's voice turned sharp. "I've wanted to end it for months. "

"You know what pisses me off the most?" Max said, and something in his voice shifted."She beat me. In the training yard. In front of the entire pack. She just stood there like it was nothing."

I remembered that day. The sparring match went long and I'd pinned him with a shoulder throw he didn't see coming. I pulled the final strike because I didn't want to embarrass him.

I thought I was being kind. What a fool.

"No man can put up with a woman like that," he went on. "She's built like a soldier. Her wolf is twice the size it should be. It's not natural."

"You're right, baby," Stephanie cooed. "She's always been the family embarrassment."

Always.

My twin sister and I have same dark auburn hair, same hazel eyes. But that was where the similarities ended. Stephanie took after our mother — the mother we'd never met because she died bringing me into the world.

Stephanie was graceful, soft, the kind of pretty that made men trip over their own feet. I was taller, leaner, built like someone who ran five miles before breakfast and could throw a punch harder than most males in our pack. A different kind of beauty, Frannie always said. But Frannie was my best friend, so she had to say that.

Our father made sure I knew which kind mattered. Every new dress went to Stephanie. Every compliment, every seat at the head of the table. And I learned, the way you learn not to touch a hot stove, that wanting things only got you burned. So I stopped wanting. I threw myself into training instead, chasing the only dream that didn't require anyone's approval — becoming a Royal Guard.

Until Max. The first boy who brought me flowers, who said my callouses were cute, who kissed me behind the training barracks like I was something worth hiding. I thought it was real.

"She's nobody. She was never going to be Luna. The whole chosen mate thing was just — I was stringing her along, alright? Can we stop talking about her?"

Something inside my chest cracked clean in half.

I kicked the door open.

Max scrambled off the bed, yanking the sheet around his waist, his face draining white. But Stephanie didn't flinch. She sat up slowly, letting the blanket pool at her hips, and tilted her head at me with a smile I'd seen a thousand times.

"Oh, Melinda." She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "You're early."

The PTSD hit before the rage did. Stephanie at seven, holding up my favorite stuffed wolf — the only thing our mother had left me — and dropping it into the fireplace. Stephanie at twelve, kissing the boy who'd passed me a note in class. Stephanie at sixteen, wearing the dress I'd saved up for and shrugging when I cried.

She took everything. She always took everything.

"Melinda, wait — " Max reached for me.

"We're done." My voice came out flat and steady, which surprised even me. "And Stephanie? You and I both know you're using him. You've been chasing every man with a connection to the Royal Pack. The second you find a bigger fish, you'll gut him like all the others." I looked at Max. "She will throw you away. And you'll deserve it."

I turned and walked out before they could see the tears.

I headed for the woods. Technically, I wasn’t supposed to be out here alone, but I started running when I hit the tree line and didn’t stop, even as twigs snagged at my hair and scratched my face. The tears came hot and ugly and I let them fall because there was no one here to see.

"Stupid," I hissed through my teeth. "Stupid, stupid, stupid."

For believing it. For curling my hair and squeezing into a dress and thinking tonight would be different. For standing in front of a mirror and seeing someone worth choosing.

I collapsed against a tree and pressed my fists to my eyes. My wolf was thrashing inside me, howling, clawing at my ribs.

Then she stopped.

A scent broke through the haze of my grief. What was that? Something warm. I couldn’t figure out what it was, but I had to get more of it.

My wolf practically purred.

I straightened up, wiping my face. The forest was dark, the canopy blocking what was left of the moonlight. But my eyes had always been sharp, and I could feel someone there. Watching.

"Who's there?" My voice was raw.

A shape stepped out from the shadows between two oaks. Tall. Broad-shouldered. His eyes caught what little light filtered through the leaves, and they weren't the amber or gold I was used to seeing from shifted wolves.

They were red.

The scent rolled off him in waves, and every nerve in my body lit up. My wolf was pushing toward him with a single-mindedness that terrified me. The anger, the heartbreak, the humiliation — all of it dissolved in the space of a breath, replaced by something raw and nameless.

I went to him, moaning softly as he wrapped me in his arms. “Who are you?” I murmured.

His answer was to crash his mouth to mine.