Chapter 1

As human fertility rates kept falling, the government created a matching system between humans and beasts.

That was how I became engaged to the Blackwood brothers—two wolf beasts who never wanted me.

For a year, I made coffee for both of them every morning.The older brother, Adrian, kept his distance, but he always took the mug and thanked me quietly.

The younger one, Kieran, was all temper and sharp teeth.

He snapped at me, broke the mug, and acted like I was a nuisance.

I told myself this was fair.

If I treated them the same, maybe one day this arranged bond would feel like home.

Then my best friend saw it and asked, “Have you ever thought that treating them equally might be unfair to the one who’s actually kind to you?”

I thought about that all day.

Then one morning, I walked out of the kitchen carrying only one cup.

...

Adrian was the first to notice the change.

He didn’t say anything. As usual, he took the cup of pour-over coffee from my hands and thanked me in that low, quiet voice of his.

Kieran was slouched at the kitchen island, scrolling through sports highlights on his phone while the morning news murmured from the TV. It wasn’t until I set Adrian’s cup beside him and turned back toward the coffee station that he finally realized what was missing.

“Hey,” he called, frowning. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

I stopped.

His gaze moved from Adrian’s cup to my empty hands. “Did you run out of coffee,” he asked, “or did you suddenly decide only one of us gets any?”

Adrian carried himself with cool restraint. Kieran was all temper and teeth—volatile, arrogant, sharp enough to draw blood with a sentence.

“What?” he said. “You can see I’m right here.”

Whatever explanation I’d been about to give died in my throat.

My smile faded. “No.”

“No?” Kieran let out a short laugh. “Then what exactly is this supposed to be?”

A point?

My thoughts drifted back to a few nights ago.

My thoughts drifted back to a few mornings ago.

Adrian and Kieran had both been called out on an emergency response and had to leave at four in the morning. I was woken by the sounds of them washing up, jumped out of bed, hurried to the kitchen, and pulled breakfast from the warming drawer. I set out the roast chicken and potatoes I’d saved for them, then filled two mugs with hot pour-over coffee.

Kieran looked exhausted as he came downstairs, ready to head out. Dark circles shadowed his eyes, his hair was tousled, and he was still yawning. The moment I saw him, I stepped toward him, about to ask if he was okay.

I picked up one of the mugs and moved to hand it to him, but before I could speak, he shoved me away.

Wolf beasts were naturally stronger than humans. I hit the floor hard, and the mug slipped from my hand and shattered. Scalding coffee splashed across my legs and the hardwood.

Kieran froze for half a second, but the irritation came right back.

“For fuck’s sake,” he snapped. “Can’t you see I’m in the middle of something?”

I stared up at him, stunned. He didn’t sound worried that I had fallen. He sounded annoyed that I had interrupted him.

“Your clingy little act is bad enough on a normal day,” he said coldly. “But I’m dead tired tonight. I just got home, and you’re already all over me again like some pathetic stray.”

A stray.

So that was all my waiting and worrying meant to him. Not care, not concern, not love. Just something pathetic. Something that kept coming back no matter how many times it was pushed away.

The disgust in his voice cut straight through me. Heat rushed into my face so fast it burned, and I was too humiliated to even lift my head. I simply stumbled back to my room without saying a word.

A moment later, I heard a dull thud from the living room.

Adrian had punched him.

Not long after that, Adrian came into my room carrying the first-aid kit and knelt in front of me.

Only then did I realize the skin along my calf had gone red and swollen where the coffee had splashed me.

I had always known the Blackwood brothers resented me. Anyone could see I was the one who didn’t belong.

They were the golden boys of beast society—wolf twins, brilliant, beautiful, strong, admired everywhere they went. And I was soft, ordinary, the kind of woman people’s eyes slid right past.

If it weren’t for the compatibility score, the government never would have matched us. Our lives never would have crossed paths.

At first, I had been happy.

I grew up in foster care, and more than anything, I had always wanted a home. Back then, I had been foolish enough to believe Adrian and Kieran could become my family.

So no matter how cold they were, no matter how dismissive or cruel, I kept reaching for them anyway. I kept smiling, kept caring, kept trying.

Every time they ate the meals I cooked, I felt this ridiculous rush of satisfaction, as if I was needed, as if I finally belonged somewhere.

People need something to tether them to the world. For the longest time, Adrian and Kieran were mine.

The first six months were miserable.

They hated the match. Men like them were used to being envied, but once the Bureau matched them to me, everyone who had ever wanted to see them brought low finally had something to laugh at.

“So that’s who the Blackwood twins got?”

It was a humiliation they couldn’t swallow, so they made me swallow it instead.

Adrian was the steadier one. Most of the time, he acted as though I wasn’t there—cold, distant, polite only when absolutely necessary.

Kieran was worse.

Kieran was openly cruel.

He mocked everything: my clothes, my job, the way I spoke, the way I carried myself. To him, I was hopeless, embarrassing, never enough in any way that mattered.

And still, I stayed.

Then, little by little, things started to shift. I couldn’t even tell when it began.

Adrian stopped treating me like I was invisible. Whenever I set his coffee beside him in the mornings, he took it. Sometimes he even thanked me. Every now and then, he would glance at me and smooth a hand over my hair, almost absently, in a gesture so gentle it left me stunned.

I wasn’t used to tenderness, and every tiny bit of it felt enormous.

Kieran changed too, or at least I thought he had. He mocked me less. Sometimes he would jerk his chin toward the couch and tell me to sit down for the second half of whatever game he was watching, complaining the entire time that I didn’t know anything about sports. But if anyone on screen annoyed me, he’d immediately start tearing into them too, like my opinion mattered more than the game itself.

I thought things were getting better. I thought maybe I had finally gotten through to them. Maybe persistence meant something. Maybe while I was trying so hard to make this work, they were slowly learning to accept me too.

Until that broken mug.

It felt like waking up from a dream and realizing I had been the only one dreaming.

All those years of effort, all that warmth, all that care, all that humiliating devotion—in the end, Kieran had reduced it all to one pathetic little thing.

A stray.

Unwanted. Needy. Embarrassing.