CHAPTER ONE-The Engagement That Was Never Love

Evangeline.

"Don't be so cold, Evie. Smile. You're going to be a Luna someday."

My mother said that to me the night Kieran proposed. She fixed my hair with her fingers and turned me toward the room, all of them clapped as I walked in, and I smiled because that's what I did because I was told to smile.

The ring was beautiful. Everyone said so. I said so too. I held out my hand and watched the light catch the diamond. My nail polish had chipped on the thumb. I hadn't noticed until now.

I waited to feel something about the ring, excitement maybe but nothing came.

Kieran Greymark was exactly what a family like mine wanted. Younger son of Alpha Leviathan Greymark, he had manners and ambition and a jawline that made women stupid. He wasn't cruel to me, I told myself that a lot during those six months, and it was true, mostly. 

He opened the doors whenever I wanted to pass or get into a car. He called when he said he would. He introduced me to his friends with his hand on the small of my back like I was something he was proud of, and I let him, because what else was I going to do, make a scene?

That was enough. I was lucky. My family reminded me of that often enough that eventually I started saying it back to them before they even finished the sentence.

"Stability," my father would say, like a prayer he'd memorized badly. "Stability is what our bloodline needs right now, Evangeline. Not passion. Passion fades but status doesn't."

So I dated Kieran. I held his hand at pack events, sat beside him at dinners where our parents smiled at each other over wine and talked about the future like it had already been written down and signed. 

I wore the dresses my mother picked and I said the right things to the right people at the right volume and I kept my wolf sealed and quiet, the way I'd been trained to since I was twelve. That was the year my father decided an Alpha daughter who showed too much power was a liability and not an asset.

Kieran proposed on a Thursday in his family's estate with about fifty people watching. He got down on one knee and looked up at me with those pale eyes of his.

"Evangeline Nightmoor, I want you to be my Luna."

Not I love you or you're everything to me but I want you to be my Luna, that didn't sound romantic.

I said yes anyway. The room erupted. My mother cried. My father had the look of a man who'd just closed a deal, because he had. The beta of Greymark shook my father's hand hard enough that the sound of it cut through the applause. 

Later, upstairs, I gripped the edge of the marble sink and looked at myself for a while. The marble was cold under my palms. This is fine, I told the mirror. This is what you were made for. I almost believed it. Almost.

Three weeks after the engagement, Kieran told me he was leaving for Alpha training in Harrowfield. He said it would last for three months, he said it was mandatory, and he also said he’d be back before the ceremony planning started. 

He kissed my forehead at the airport and told me to be good. I told him to be safe. I don't remember if I meant it. Probably not.

I watched his car pull away and then drove home by myself and answered my mother's texts about florists and guest lists and told her everything was fine.

Six weeks. That's how long I lasted before I cracked. I don't fully know what I was hoping for when I booked the flight. Some part of me, the part I never let talk too loud, thought maybe distance had changed something. Maybe if I showed up he'd look at me like he'd actually missed me. Or maybe I just wanted an excuse to get out of my apartment for a weekend. I've gone back and forth on which one it really was.

I was twenty-two. I wanted one thing to be real. That was the whole plan, if you could call it a plan.

I found him at a place called Onyx, a nightclub packed into the basement of a tower hotel on the east side of Harrowfield. His location had slipped through on a pack app he'd forgotten I still had access to. I stood outside in my coat,telling myself this was romantic.

The VIP entrance was down a side corridor. The bouncer looked me over once and stepped aside without a word. That's the thing about the right clothes and a still face. People just assume you belong.

I heard him before I saw him. I heard his voice over the music and it was loose in a way I'd never heard from him. I stopped just outside the half-open door.

"Come on, she's sweet," someone said. 

"Nothing’s wrong with being sweet."

Kieran laughed. "Sweet. Yeah true. You know it took me six months just to get her to agree to a date? Six months. I felt like I had to file paperwork." He was already laughing at his own joke before he finished it. More laughter followed. Someone said she was worth it. Kieran made a sound that wasn't quite agreement.

"She's never going to sleep with me. I swear to god, it's like dating a glass statue. Gorgeous yet terrifying. You touch it wrong and it files a complaint." A pause, and then, without missing a beat, "Anyway, you saw the game last night?"

That's the part that stayed with me longer than the insult did. How fast he moved on. Like I wasn't even worth finishing the thought about.

"So why are you with her?" someone asked, dragging him back.

"The family wants a respectable Alpha girl, not some hookup." He looked…bored when he spoke. "Nightmoor blood's clean. No scandals, good bloodline, her dad and my dad want the alliance. Good for the pack."

"And after the alliance?"

He laughed again, easier this time. "When I get what I want out of her, I'm done. I'll find some reason. She'll cry about it for a week, marry some boring guy, and that'll be that."

I don't remember hearing the rest. Not because it got quieter but because everywhere became foggy and suddenly I lost my sense of hearing.

I walked back down the corridor. The street was cold. I took a cab to my hotel. I sat on the edge of the bed still in my coat and called my mother.

"Cancel the engagement," I said when she picked up. "I'm not marrying Kieran Greymark."

There was silence. Then, "Evangeline. What happened."

"It doesn't matter what happened. I'm not doing it."

"Did you two fight? Couples fight, that doesn't…"

"Call it off, Mom."

Her voice shifted. "Do you have any idea what calling this off would cost us? Leviathan Greymark is positioned to lead the Northern Council. If Kieran becomes Alpha…"

"I don't care."

"You will care," she said, her voice was steady, "when you're twenty-eight and unmated and this family's lost the only alliance keeping us protected. You'll care then."

"Mom…"

"All powerful men behave this way, Evangeline. That's not news. You endure it. You build something out of what you're given. That's what women in our position do."

I hung up on her. Which felt good for about four seconds. I wasn't ready for any questions. I sat there and stared at the wall and the word, endure! That word, how I hate that word now.

I'd been enduring my whole life. My wolf? sealed. Felings? managed.Choices?made by a committee.

Something that had been held together for a long time came undone quietly. I stood up and took off my coat.

Underneath was the dress I'd worn on the flight. It was black in color and tight, something I'd ever have worn in front of anyone. I'd bought it six months ago on impulse and shoved it to the back of my closet, because wanting things for yourself felt dangerous when you'd been raised to believe your whole value lived in your restraint.

I looked at myself in the mirror for a while. Longer than I meant to. If my restraint was all I was worth to any of them, I wasn't protecting it anymore.

I left the coat on the bed and went down to the hotel bar. It was quieter than the club. I sat down and looked around, and that's when I saw him.

Far end of the bar, he was alone, with a glass of something dark and amber in front of him. Scotch, maybe. He wasn't performing for anyone in the room, which was strange, because everyone else was. He wasn't young but he wasn't cold either. I couldn't decide if that made him more attractive or less, and honestly I still can't.

He was, without question, the most dangerous-looking man I'd ever found beautiful. I walked over before I could talk myself out of it.

"Can I get you to buy me a drink?"

He looked up slowly. He had dark eyes.

"Why me?" He said in a low and unhurried voice.

I didn't think about the answer before it came out. "Because you're the most handsome man in this room."

Something moved at the corner of his mouth.

"You're looking for trouble," he said. "Find someone your own age."

"I don't want someone my own age. I think I need someone older."

He studied me for a second too long. Then he picked up his glass and slid it across the bar without a word. I drank the whole thing in one go. It burned. I tried not to flinch and mostly failed.

I set the glass down. "I want you. I'll pay if I have to."

Something flickered across his face, there and gone. "That," he said, "is the first time a woman's offered me money." He leaned in slightly, voice lower. "Last chance, little one. Walk away if any part of you isn't sure."

I thought about my mother's voice, Kieran laughing and the ring on my finger, a lie I'd agreed to wear every day like it was nothing.

"I'm sure," I said.

He stood and I beheld his full height. This man was a 6 '5 man. My breath caught somewhere it shouldn't have.

He didn't touch me. He just tilted his head toward the elevator once and waited.

I followed him. The doors closed and the lobby disappeared, and I stood in that small bright box next to a stranger and felt, for maybe the first time in a while, like I was doing something that was actually mine. Something that was planned by my mom or the committee.

I didn't know his name. I didn't even asked.