Chapter 1

~ Maya ~

The sunlight gets me before anything else does—too bright, blinding, driving the headache deeper into my skull.

I glance around the room. I have absolutely no idea where I am.

Floor-to-ceiling glass, the elite city center laid out beyond it. Silk sheets puddled around my waist. A hotel, obviously, and an expensive one—the kind of suite that costs more for a single night than most people make in a month. Luxury isn't foreign to me; my family is among the richest in the pack. Waking up in it with no memory of how I got here—that's the part that scares me.

Clothes are scattered across the floor. Mine, at least they were. Every muscle in my body protests as I push myself upright, and that's when I feel it: an ache, low and deep in my core, that tells me plainly what happened last night.

My cheeks burn. Shit. We actually did it.

Five years of waiting. Five years of "after the ceremony, Derek, I promise"—and I couldn't hold out for the last two days. I gave him my virginity drunk enough that I can't even remember it happening. The urge to pull the blanket over my head and disappear rises so fast it stings. I breathe through it, slow and deep. It's Derek, and the ceremony is in two days, so what are two days against five years?

I rub my temples, trying to drag the memories of the night back. It comes in broken pieces, then stops. Lola and a couple of friends hauling me to the club for my bachelorette party. The club—too loud, too many people. Everything they love and I can't stand. Lola pressing a glass of champagne into my hand before we'd even found a table. After that, nothing. Not a single detail. I rarely drink, but one glass has never knocked me flat in my life.

Could Lola have drugged me? No freaking way. She's my cousin. My best friend since before either of us could walk.

I turn toward the mirror on the wall and gasp. I look like a wreck—hair tangled and wild, makeup smeared, bruises and love bites across my skin. And on my collarbone, one spot is burning. I twist to catch its reflection, and I freeze.

On my skin is a raw, angry indentation—a fresh mating mark, shaped like a small, dark wolf, swollen and humming with an energy I have no memory of receiving. I stare at it, terrified. I am marked.

The first shift and the marking are the two most sacred moments in any werewolf's life, and I've missed them both. My wolf has never woken. And this mark—I don't remember a single second of it. I suck in a breath, trying to slow my racing heart and my spiraling mind.

"Don't be dramatic, Maya," I try to soothe myself. "You're marked and mated by your fiancé. It's fine."

Because Derek loves me. He's the only one who ever looked past the flaw the rest of them hold against me. I have no wolf. To the pack, I'm the wolfless daughter of a proud Gamma line—well-bred, but a disappointment all the same. Someone who'll never shift, never run with them, never truly be one of them. Half of them think Derek should hold out for a better match. He chose me anyway.

Water runs in the bathroom, and my heart lifts. Derek is here. I just want him to wrap his arms around me and tell me everything will be fine. I gather the sheet around myself and swing my legs over the side of the bed—

The door slams open.

Derek stands in the doorway, chest heaving, his face white as if he's seen a ghost. Lola hangs off his arm, dragging at him, begging him to stop.

If Derek is in front of me… then who is in the shower?

The room tilts. I can't breathe.

"How could you do this to me, Maya?" he growls, his eyes glowing as his wolf surges to the surface. "Who is he? Who did you spread your legs for?"

I'm too paralyzed to speak. My throat goes dry as a desert, and I just blink at him. This can't be happening.

Finally I part my dry lips, and my voice comes out unnaturally high-pitched. "Derek, I—"

The bathroom door opens.

The man who fills the frame has to be close to seven feet, wearing nothing but steam and a towel that leaves little to the imagination. His scent reaches me before he says a word—cedar and sandalwood with a thread of grapefruit. His Alpha aura rolls out and presses the air from my lungs. And yet the sight of him sends warmth unspooling through me, and for one heartbeat the whole roaring room goes soft at the edges — like he’s the only thing in focus and everything else, even Derek, has blurred.

Something low in my chest pulls hard toward a man I've barely exchanged a handful of words with. Whatever this thread is, it doesn't care what I know. It tugs as though it has been waiting my whole life.

Even with my fiancé standing right beside me, I can't look away from the Alpha. Not because of his body, or his face—because of something deeper that I can't yet name.

For half a heartbeat, he goes still too. His nostrils flare. His head tips a fraction, his eyes narrowing—wary, and something he doesn't seem to want to feel, both at once. Then his face hardens.

His eyes are a deep ocean blue. The same blue as Derek's. And now those eyes drop to me—not even to me, but to the raw mating mark on my collarbone—with open disgust.

"Maya." Derek's voice drops, quiet and lethal. "You slept with my brother? Harvey—how could you touch my fiancée?"

Harvey only smirks, cold. "Your sweet little she-wolf drugged me." Each word lands like a slap. "Desperate to trap an Alpha. Desperate to be Luna. I imagine she thought she'd hit the jackpot."

The room goes silent. There's only the slow drip of water on the shower tiles and Derek's loud, furious breathing. My eyes dart between them—Lola rooted to the spot, speechless; Harvey standing there, unbothered, as if none of this touches him. Then I find Derek, and I cling to one last hope: that he'll defend me. He knows me. He knows I would never trade my love for him for a Luna's title. But the seconds pass, then a full minute, and the silence stretches until it's unbearable.

"I never—" My voice comes out strained and thin. "There's been a mistake. Please."

Lola's eyes drop to my throat. She gasps, her hand flying to her mouth. "Maya. You're marked."

Derek is shaking with fury, on the very edge of shifting.

“Even bearing my mark, you mean nothing to me," Harvey says, already dressing so fast it's as if the room is burning. "I'll reject you the second the Pack Council allows it. I have no intention of taking a scheming, wolfless disgrace as a mate. I'm betrothed to Georgina."

I don't care what Harvey thinks of me. I only want the person I love most to believe me. I turn to Derek, searching his face for the man who chose me.

"Derek. Please." I catch his hand. "I was set up. Someone did this to me, I swear it—"

For a moment a flicker of doubt crosses his eyes, and I truly think he'll make this nightmare end. But the hesitation is gone in a beat, and his features twist into pure disgust.

He shoves me. My back hits the wall.

"Stop." His eyes have gone cold in a way I've never seen. "You're not crying because you're hurt. You're crying because trapping the Alpha didn't work. We're done. The mating is off." He turns and walks out.

Five years together, and it took him minutes to brand me a liar and a cheater.

My face burns. Inside, I've gone to ice. I want to scream. To fight for the truth, for the love of my life walking out the door. But my body won't obey. I stay against the wall, mouth open, no sound coming.

"Babe, don't worry," Lola says at my side, brushing my cheek gently. "It's obvious you'd never cheat. I know you were framed. I'll speak with Derek and make him see sense." And then she's gone too, chasing Derek down the hall.

I stay wrapped in the bedsheet, motionless, lonely and humiliated, facing the Alpha who looks like he wants to tear me apart.

Harvey finishes dressing—a sharp suit, every line perfectly in place. He looks at me as though I'm dirt beneath his shoes.

"You like money that much?" He opens his wallet, pulls out a few bills, and lets them fall. "For last night's service."

The bills drift down between us.

And somewhere beneath the pain and the humiliation, something else flares to life—pure, clean fury. For one strange second my palms burn, as if a coal has been banked under my skin my whole life and someone has just breathed across it. Something deep in me stirs, lifts its head, and settles again—gone before I can give it a name.

I lift my chin and meet his eyes. "Pick it up."

He pauses at the door, caught off guard.

"You're very sure you know who I am," I say, and my voice comes out steadier than I have any right to expect. "You know nothing about me. PICK. UP. YOUR. MONEY. I'm not for sale—and if I were, you couldn't afford what you'd owe me."

For a breath, he says nothing. Something shifts behind those cold blue eyes, and the thread between us draws tight. Then he turns to leave.

"Be at the packhouse at three," he says from the hallway. "Formal rejection. And your punishment."

I slide down the wall to the floor. I already know the bitter truth—there will be no hearing. I've been judged guilty without a single question asked. For drugging an Alpha, the punishment is exile.

Fine. Then I won't be there to hear it. I'll go home, pack, and be off the territory long before three. The human city is four hours away—a place where I can start over. No pack. No shame. No one left to disappoint.

I'm wiping my face and rising to my feet when I hear footsteps in the hall, heavy and fast. My father's scent cuts through the gap in the door before he even reaches it, his aura thick enough to choke on.

He isn't supposed to know yet.

The handle turns.