Chapter 1: The Scent Of Ruin

The floorboards of the Crescent Moon packhouse were soaked in bleach and my blood.

"Scrub harder, you bitch."

Thorne's heel found my ribs. Same spot as yesterday. Same spot as always.

I bit my cheek until I tasted blood and swallowed the cry. I had done it ten thousand times before. What was one more?

Eighteen years old. Never shifted. A defect in a world that eats defects for breakfast. I was a property. Lower than humans. A punching bag Alpha Sterling kept breathing only because I worked for free. Cheap labor. Cheaper than a mop. Cheaper than the dirt under their claws.

Tonight was the decennial Alpha Summit. A fragile peace treaty between the continent's most dangerous packs. The plan was simple. Serve champagne. Stay invisible, and then disappear into the human world forever.

Thorne's footsteps faded down the hall. I leaned back on my bruised knees and let out a breath I didn't know I had been holding. The floor was clean. It was always clean. I spent my life making things clean for people who would never see me as anything but dirt.

Just survive tonight, I told myself. You've done it for eighteen years. One more night won't kill you.

I was wrong.

An hour later, I was stuffed into a black uniform that fit like a straitjacket, balancing a tray of crystal flutes like my life depended on it. Because it probably did. The Grand Hall glowed with gold, velvet, and predators. I kept to the pillars, to the shadows, to the places where people forgot to look.

Alphas from a dozen packs filled the room. Their scents clashed like thunder—cedar and blood, smoke and pine. It was suffocating, but I kept my head down and my tray steady.

Then the doors at the end of the hall slammed open so fast that I felt it in my chest.

Everything stopped. The music. The chatter. The breathing. All of it. Dead.

Two men walked in.

The space between them was enough to fit a whole pack. The air in that space didn't feel empty. It felt hostile. Like oxygen itself knew better than to get between them.

On the left: Alpha Kael of the Bloodhound Pack. A mountain of muscle wrapped in a dark tailored suit. A silver scar slashed across his throat, proof of the wars he had won. His eyes were the color of freshly spilled blood.

On the right: Alpha Ryker of the Silvermane Pack. Beautiful wasn't the right word. He was terrifyingly beautiful. The kind of beautiful that gives you goosebumps because you know it's dangerous. His silver-blonde hair caught the chandelier light, but his ice-blue eyes held a cruelty that made my stomach drop. He moved like the floor owed him something.

Sworn enemies. Centuries of bad blood. And here they were, pretending to be civilized.

I was terrified. Every wolf in the room had dropped their eyes. The weight of the two Alphas in the same space was like standing under a collapsing building.

But it wasn't their reputations that made my tray shake.

It was the smell.

It hit me like a physical blow. A fist straight to the place deep inside me where my wolf had been sleeping for eighteen years.

Pine needles. Sharp, green, ancient.

Dark magic. Something wrong. Something powerful. Something that shouldn't exist but did.

And then another one. Hitting at the exact same second, like two hands grabbing my throat from different directions.

Two scents. Two men. Both wrapping around my windpipe, my lungs, my blood. Sinking into my skin like they belonged there.

My wolf, the wolf I had thought was dead, the wolf that had been silent for years, the wolf I had stopped believing in, for the first time in years; screamed.

Not a whimper. Not a whine. A scream. So loud in my head I thought my skull would split.

One word. Over and over. The only word that mattered.

MATE. MATE. MATE. MATE.

No.

No.

Absolutely not.

The Moon Goddess wouldn't. She couldn't be this cruel. I was a defect. I didn't have a wolf. I didn't get a mate. I definitely didn't get two of the most dangerous wolves on the continent.

This should have been a dream.

It was a nightmare.

I stumbled backward, my shoulders hitting the cold marble pillar. I needed to run. I needed to breathe. I needed to disappear before they noticed the maid in the corner with the shaking hands, the borrowed uniform and the dead wolf that was suddenly very, very alive.

Too late.

In the center of the Grand Hall, both men stopped at the exact same moment. Like someone had hit pause on the whole world. The terrifying Alphas stiffened. The entire hall watched in silence as the two most powerful men on the continent flared their nostrils, inhaling sharply.

They caught my scent.

Kael's head snapped up first. His crimson eyes found me through the bodies, straight into my soul. A low growl vibrated from his chest, so deep it shook the glasses on my tray.

Ryker turned a heartbeat later. His ice-blue eyes pinned me to the pillar like a butterfly in a display case. No escape. He actually saw me. His jaw tightened. His lips curled into something worse than a smile. Something that looked like possession.

My fingers stopped working.

Crash.

The tray hit the floor. Crystal exploded everywhere. The sound echoed like a gunshot in the dead-quiet room. Every eye turned to me. Alpha Sterling looked ready to murder me on the spot, but I couldn't see him. I could only see them.

Kael and Ryker moved toward me together. Like they had rehearsed it. Like fate had choreographed this exact nightmare.

The crowd melted out of their way. Wolves threw themselves backward, dropping to the floor in total submission. The weight of the two Alpha’s auras pressed down on my chest until I couldn't breathe nor think.

My knees gave out. I fell flat to the floor.

Ryker reached me first. He ignored the mess. He ignored the crowd. He paid no attention to Alpha Sterling, who was boiling with rage somewhere behind him. He dropped to one knee right into the spilled wine and broken glass, his hand closing around my jaw.

His hand was burning. Like he had stood in sunlight for a thousand years and I was the first cool thing he had touched. Sparks shot through my skin. Actual sparks. I felt them everywhere, even in the place where my wolf was still screaming.

"Mine," he said. Like the universe had already decided and everyone else was just catching up.

Before I could breathe, think or process the drama that has been unfolding, a hand clamped down on Ryker's shoulder and violently threw him backward.

Kael.

He towered over me. The bloodlust in his red eyes was terrifying. It looked hungry and possessive. Like I was the only thing in the room worth seeing and every other thing could just burn.

"Get your hands off her, Silvermane." His voice shook the very foundation of the packhouse. He stepped closer, shielding my body from the rest of the room.

He leaned down and inhaled at the crook of my neck. He made a sound—a growl, a claim, something in between. It vibrated against my collarbone and traveled everywhere.

"She is MINE."

Ryker was on his feet in a second. A blade of ice formed in his hand like it had always been there.

"I will wear your skull as a trophy, Bloodhound." His voice was soft. Calm but absolutely certain. "The Goddess gave her to me."

"Try it." Kael's hands ignited with shadows. Dark fire that made the air feel sick and thin. "I will burn your pack to nothing. I will make sure they remember your name as the Alpha who lost everything because he couldn't keep his hands off what was mine."

The Grand Hall erupted into chaos. The peace treaty was dead.

And me?

I was on the floor at the center of it all. Glass in my palms. Blood on my calves. Two Alphas ready to kill each other over who got to claim me.

I closed my eyes.

But instead of darkness, I felt something else. A burning in my chest. A pull. Like something was tearing inside me.

My eyes snapped open.

The bond wasn't just connecting me to them.

It was killing me.