第2章

When we first started dating, Blake had truly treated me well.

My body was weak and I always came last in the fitness trials.

Some older wolves put a foot out to trip me and ground dirt into my clothes in front of everyone.

Blake charged them with red eyes and beat them bloody on the spot.

He put me behind him and wiped the tears off my face.

He declared in front of everyone, "Liora is mine. The next person who calls her weak will have their throat torn out!"

Back then, he was the brightest boy in school, captain of the football team and a gifted future Gamma warrior.

He held me tight and said in an unbearably gentle voice, "Whatever you turn out to be, I will keep you safe for the rest of my life."

I believed him.

I thought I had found the person who would always save me.

And all of it broke after the shifting ceremony last year.

At that ceremony, I gave everything I had, failed to call my wolf, and collapsed inside the circle.

By the time I woke in the hospital, Blake had changed completely.

He froze me out.

He stopped coming to me, and my messages went nowhere.

Even when we passed in a corridor, he avoided my eyes as though I carried the plague.

I did not know what I had done wrong.

I thought I was useless and had embarrassed him.

I made a salve for his injuries and took it to him, hoping to apologize and beg him not to shut me out.

And before I reached the door of his lounge, I heard him and his friends laughing.

"What rotten luck. I thought she was the Alpha's own daughter, carrying the purest Alpha blood. Mating with her was supposed to secure my future."

Blake's voice was cold enough to cut, with nothing warm left in it.

"And it turns out she's completely useless and can't wake a wolf at all!

"What use is blood on its own? She cannot even shift. I am ashamed to be seen with her!"

Outside the door, my world turned to ice.

There had never been love at first sight or any tenderness at all.

From the beginning, he had approached and protected me only to use my father's influence and my Alpha blood to climb higher.

The moment I became a broken wolf who could offer him nothing, I was trash he could not wait to discard.

He even posted anonymously on the pack forum from a second account.

"What do you do if your mate can't shift?"

The replies were all agreement and mockery.

"Throw her out. A broken wolf is worth less than the lowest servant."

"Get yourself a pretty Omega instead."

At the very bottom of the thread was a single reply.

"You do not deserve her."

The avatar beside it was that familiar black wolf's head.

A month ago my father, Aldric, called me into the Council's private chamber.

Moonlight came down through the skylight, and I had never seen him look as serious as he did then.

"Liora, there are things you should know now."

He put a hand on my shoulder and a warm strength came through with it.

"Your wolf is not dormant. She is going through a very rare evolution.

"When the evolution is complete, you will carry not only Alpha blood but the precious white-wolf line.

"Then this entire pack will become your responsibility."

He looked at me, his voice low.

"In a month I will announce it myself."

I did not yet know what becoming the next Alpha would mean.

But I remembered what was in my father's eyes.

And tomorrow was the day he would announce it.

I deleted the photographs of Blake and me.

My wolf roared again, as though trying to comfort me.

Blake's call came again.

I ended it and blocked him.

The screen had barely gone dark before it lit again.

The black-wolf avatar I had just accepted was flashing on the screen.

Eric.

[Seven tomorrow evening. Silver Moon Lodge.]

And one more line.

[I'll be waiting.]

Reading those words, my heartbeat quickened and my wolf seemed to tremble.

But she seemed to be... smiling.