Chapter 3

~ Harvey ~

The conference room smells of wood and old fashioned perfume, and I can’t sit still in it.

I take the chair at the head of the table anyway, because that’s what they expect, and greet the elders with a stiff nod I don’t feel. My thoughts are everywhere but here. Drugged. Sex with my brother’s fiancée. An explicit video of the two of us already crawling across every screen in the territory. My phone has buzzed against my thigh a dozen times—Gina, again. I can’t blame her; the rumors will have reached her by now, and she has every right to be furious. I’ll find a way to make it up to her. Later.

Derek’s chair sits empty. Too gutted by Maya’s betrayal to show his face, I assume.

“Alpha—” Elder James begins.

“Another vampire attack?” The strikes have been coming more often, and only ever against my pack—which makes no sense, since on paper we’re at peace with the vampires.

James clears his throat. “No. We’ve gathered to discuss how to proceed… with your new mate.”

The word mate scrapes down my spine. “There’s nothing to discuss. At three o’clock, I reject her and banish her.”

In the back of my skull, Zev bares his teeth. “She is ours.”

“Did you feel the bond?”

“No. Not the normal way.”

“Then she’s nothing to us.”

“Stop pretending you don’t feel the pull.”

I shove him down, but he isn’t wrong, and that’s what I hate. Even in that hotel room he paced and snarled at me to stay—to comfort a wolfless stranger I’ve traded maybe ten words with in my life. Her scent had filled the whole suite, watermelon and kiwi sharpened with cyclamen, and when she lifted those eyes to me—green, with a thread of gold around the iris—something in my chest pulled so hard it frightened me.

I shake it off. She’s nothing. One more she-wolf clawing her way towards power.

“Alpha.” Elder James again, careful now. “I don’t think you grasp how far this has spread. The video is trending across all territories. We can’t hand down a punishment without evidence.”

“She drugged me. She trapped me. Present that as the evidence.”

Across the table, Nico’s knuckles go white on the wood. An excellent Gamma—and, at the end of the day, her brother. He says nothing. Smart.

“That’s the problem.” Elder James doesn’t meet my eyes. “There is none. The club cameras were down. Your glass vanished before anyone could test it. Banish her now and it looks like an Alpha crushing an innocent girl to bury his own weakness.”

I’m on my feet before I decide to be, my palm cracking against the table. “How convenient—the proof simply evaporates. What do I pay my investigators for? My PR team? Bury the video. Find me whatever she put in that glass. We’re finished here.”

No one moves to leave.

Elder Kael rises instead, slow and grave. “With respect, Alpha—even if she drugged you, that drug only stirs the body. It doesn’t explain the mark.”

“Why did you mark her?” I throw at Zev.

He only wags his tail. “Because she is ours.”

That useless answer again. We were raised in the same pack. I saw Maya at the gatherings, at the mansion when Derek dragged her around. If she were mine, I would have known the day she turned eighteen.

“Dark magic, perhaps,” one elder murmurs. “Or a hybrid—a vampire who forced the mark through his mind—”

“Or she’s a unicorn who poked me with her horn until I gave in.” The table goes silent. “She’s wolfless. Both her parents are wolves and nothing more. No power, no secret—just a pretty face and an empty title to chase. That’s all she is.”

But the elders trade looks—the kind that say they’ve already settled on something and are working up the nerve to say it.

Finally Elder John stands and bows. “Alpha. A wolf marking a woman in a moment he can’t account for—your rivals will call that proof you can’t control your beast. It’s the one weakness that could unseat you. Banishment won’t bury it. It will announce it.”

I make myself breathe. “Then what do you suggest?”

“Make her your Luna.”

The words drop through me like ice water.

“We put out that you recognized Maya as your fated mate—that though she was promised to your brother, the Moon Goddess’s will outranks any betrothal. We hold the ceremony tomorrow. The scandal becomes a love story, and the matter dies.”

He says it brightly, as if he’s handing me a gift instead of chaining me to the woman who ruined my life—and costing me Georgina to do it.

“Absolutely fucking not.” The roar tears out of me; my aura slams across the room and half the elders flinch. “I am betrothed to Georgina. She will be my only Luna. Maya is rejected and banished. We’re done.”

I’m in the corridor before the door finishes swinging. My father is already there, waiting—because of course he is.

“Harvey.” Quiet. Steady. The voice he uses when he has already won. “Your pride is bleeding and you’re furious. But the elders aren’t your enemy. They’re trying to save you.”

“Save me? They’re not the ones being ordered to mate the snake who tried to destroy them.”

“If this scandal climbs to the High Council and they rule your wolf unstable, they strip your title.” He lets it land. “Everything you’ve trained your whole life for. Your pack. Your territory. Georgina. All of it—handed to Derek instead.”

The floor seems to tilt. I have all the strength and power in the world, but my hands are tied by politics. I have never felt so powerless in my life.

My father reads it on my face and softens, barely. “So mate her. For show. Let the noise die down—months, a year at most—then announce she failed to give you an heir. You reject her cleanly. You take Georgina. You lose nothing that lasts.”

A year chained to a scheming disgrace, or my title and my future signed over to my brother.

Both options taste like chewing glass.