Chapter 1

Sable's POV

The bowl slipped out of my hands a full second before Reva's palm caught my cheek.

It hit the floor first, shattering against the stone in a spray of white pieces. Then the sting came, sharp and sudden, my ear ringing loud enough to drown out whatever she said next.

"....costs more than you'll ever earn in this house," Reva finished, and I realized I'd missed the first half of it.

"I'll clean it up," I said, already crouching.

"You'll clean it up, and then you'll explain to me how a set that survived twenty years in this family didn't survive one night in your hands."

"It was an accident." I said

"Everything with you is an accident." She stepped back so the hem of her dress wouldn't touch the broken pieces. "Ten years, Sable. Ten years I've kept a roof over your head, put food in front of you, and this is the gratitude I get. A shattered bowl the night before the Ceremony."

I kept my eyes on the floor and my hands busy, gathering shards into my palm. Talking back never ended well. It only ever bought me a longer lecture, or worse.

Footsteps came down the hallway, unhurried, like whoever they belonged to already knew they'd find something worth watching.

Petra stopped in the doorway, arms crossed, dressed for bed in silk that probably cost more than everything I owned put together.

"What did she break this time?" she asked Reva, not even looking at me.

"The good bowls."

"Of course she did." Petra's gaze finally dropped to me, to the blood beading along my palm where a shard had caught me. "Careful, cousin. Keep breaking things and people are going to start saying you're cursed. Oh, wait."

Heat crawled up the back of my neck. I didn't answer her.

"Leave it," Reva said when I reached for the last piece. "You'll cut yourself worse, and then I'll have to deal with that too."

I stood anyway, palm stinging, shards cupped in my other hand.

"You know what tomorrow is," Reva said, and her voice shifted. "The Ceremony. Every eligible wolf in this pack stands in front of the Alpha and waits to see who the bond picks for them. And you." She gestured at me the way someone might gesture at a stain they couldn't get out. "You're going to stand there representing this house, whether I like it or not."

"I know what the Ceremony is."

"Do you? Because the last time anyone from your bloodline stood in front of an Alpha, half this pack ended up dead by morning."

My chest went tight. "That's not fair."

"Fair." Reva laughed, short and humorless. "Your parents brought rogues down on this territory. Don't stand there and pretend you don't know the story, Sable. Everyone in this pack knows the story."

"I was six years old."

"Old enough to leave a gate open." She said

The words landed exactly where she wanted them to. I didn't have anything to throw back at that. There wasn't anything left to say that hadn't already been said, by her, by Petra, by half the pack whenever they looked at me a second too long.

"I'm not telling you this to be cruel," Reva said, and the false gentleness in her voice was somehow worse than her temper. "I'm telling you so you understand why you'll keep your head down tomorrow. No mate wants a girl carrying that kind of history. So don't embarrass this house trying to be something you're not."

Petra pushed off the doorframe, satisfied, and drifted back toward her room.

I should have let it go. I always let it go. But something about the way Reva said it, like my whole future had already been decided before I even walked into the Ceremony, pulled the words out of me before I could stop myself.

"Maybe I won't embarrass anyone," I said. "Maybe someone will actually pick me tomorrow."

Reva's eyes narrowed to slits. For a second I thought she might hit me again. Instead, someone knocked.

Three sharp raps against the front door, formal enough that Reva's whole posture changed in an instant. She smoothed her dress with both hands, shot me a look that promised this conversation was far from over, and went to answer it.

I stayed by the broken bowl, palm still stinging, and listened.

"Beta Corwin." Reva's voice had gone syrupy sweet, nothing like the woman who'd hit me a minute earlier. "This is a surprise."

"Didn't mean to come by so late." Corwin sounded tired, like a man who'd spent his whole evening walking from door to door. "Alpha's orders. Every unmated omega in this pack registers for tomorrow's Ceremony. No exceptions this year."

"Of course. My daughter Petra's already on the registry, so…"

"Not just Petra." Papers rustled. "There's a second name tied to this house. Sable Kestrel."

Reva went still. "She's not well. I was going to send word that she'd sit this Ceremony out."

"Looks well enough to me," Corwin said, and I realized he could see straight past Reva, straight through to the kitchen, straight at me standing there with a bloody palm and broken pieces of a bowl at my feet.

"Pack law's pack law," he said. "Every eligible omega presents herself at sundown tomorrow. Alpha wants a full count this year. No absences, no exceptions, no excuses."

"Why the sudden interest in a full count?" Reva asked, and for the first time all night she sounded less angry and more careful.

"Above my say." A pause. "Just get her there."

The door shut. Reva stood with her back to me for a long moment before she turned around, and whatever sweetness she used on Corwin was gone completely.

"You heard him," she said. "You're going."

"I know."

"Don't you dare mistake this for good luck." She crossed the kitchen slowly, each step deliberate, until she was close enough that I had to tilt my head back to hold her stare. "You'll stand in that crowd tomorrow, you'll keep your eyes down, and you will not so much as breathe wrong in front of the Alpha. Because if you shame this house in front of the whole pack, Sable, I swear to you, you won't have a house left to come back to."

Some small, stupid part of me still wanted to believe tomorrow could go differently. I buried it before it reached my face. Reva had a way of finding hope and stepping on it before it could stand up straight.

"Do you understand me?" she asked.

I held her gaze even though every part of me wanted to look away first.

I opened my mouth to answer her.

That was when the howl cut through the night outside, long and close and sharp enough to rattle the glass in the windows.