Chapter 2: The Announcement

I made it to the pack meeting with twelve minutes to spare.

My hair was still slightly damp from the fastest shower of my life, but I had swapped last night's disaster for a clean navy blouse and pressed slacks, and my face was scrubbed raw and natural. When I walked into the council hall and took my seat at the long oak table, my father glanced at me from the head of the table with that look. The one that said I know you are hiding something, and I will find out.

But he did not say a word. Not in front of the elders. Not with every senior wolf of the Bright Moon Pack watching.

I kept my eyes forward and my back straight and tried to pretend my heart was not still racing from the events of the morning.

The meeting was routine. Territory reports. Border patrols. A minor dispute between two families over grazing land near the eastern ridge. I listened and nodded in the right places and said the right things when spoken to, but my mind kept drifting back to that hotel room, to the weight of Dominic's arm, to the sound of Grant Hollister's knowing laugh.

Then, as the meeting neared its end, my father stood up.

The room went silent instantly. When Alpha Richard Ashford rose to speak outside of the agenda, every wolf in the room knew it meant something important.

"I have one final matter to address before we close."

His voice filled the hall like thunder rolling across a mountain. He looked at the elders one by one, holding each of their gazes, and then he looked at me.

"My eldest daughter, Serena, turns eighteen at the end of this month. On that day, she will undergo her first transformation under the moonlight, and I will officially hand over leadership of the Bright Moon Pack to her."

A murmur rippled through the room, but it was warm. Approving. The elders nodded, some of them smiling at me with genuine pride.

"She has been raised for this moment since the day she was born," my father continued. "And I have no doubt she will carry this pack forward with the strength and honor it deserves."

I should have felt pride. I should have felt excitement, or gratitude, or determination.

Instead, all I felt was a cold, creeping terror in the pit of my stomach that I could not explain.

The meeting ended and my father was immediately pulled away by his Beta, Marcus, who whispered something urgent in his ear. Dad gave me one last look over his shoulder, part warning, part something softer, and then he was gone.

I walked outside into the sunlight and stopped on the front steps, letting the tension drain from my shoulders.

"Two hours," a familiar voice said from behind a stone pillar. "Two hours and fourteen minutes, to be exact."

I turned to find Weston leaning against the column with his arms crossed, trying very hard to look casual and failing completely.

"Did you wait this entire time?"

"What? No." He pushed off the pillar too quickly. "No, I just happened to be passing by. Had some errands in the area."

"There are no errands in this area, Weston. This is the pack hall. The only thing around here is the council building and a parking lot."

Before he could dig himself deeper, a red sports car pulled up to the curb and a driver in a crisp black suit jumped out to open the back door. Lillian stepped out like a princess descending from a carriage, her long white dress flowing around her ankles and her dark hair pinned up with little pearl clips.

My baby sister took one look at Weston, smiled sweetly, and then shoved him sideways with both hands.

"Move."

"Hey! What the hell, Lillian?"

She grabbed my arm and pulled me close, tucking herself against my side like a vine wrapping around a tree.

"I am taking my sister home," she announced, flashing Weston a look of pure victory. "You can go now."

Weston's mouth fell open. "I waited over two hours for her!"

"Sounds like a you problem." Lillian tossed her hair. "Should have been faster."

"I was here first!"

"And I am her sister. Blood beats friendship. Goodbye, Weston."

I pinched the bridge of my nose. "Both of you. Stop."

They both looked at me with identical expressions of righteous indignation, and despite everything, I almost laughed.

"Lillian is already here with a car," I told Weston gently. "I will call you later, okay?"

Weston stared at me for a long moment, then sighed and held up an "OK" sign before turning toward the parking lot. Lillian watched him go with the satisfied look of a cat who had just stolen the last piece of fish.

Once we were settled in the back of the car and pulling away, Lillian wrapped both arms around mine and pressed her cheek against my shoulder. Then she pulled back and stared at me with those wide, searching eyes.

"So." Her voice was dangerously sweet. "Where were you last night?"

I chewed my lip. I could lie to my father. I could lie to Weston. But I had never been able to lie to Lillian. She was my mirror, my vault, the one person in the world who knew every single secret I carried.

I pulled out my phone, opened the notes app, and typed slowly.

I got drunk last night. I woke up in a hotel room with no memory of what happened. I slept with someone. An Alpha. From another pack.

I held the screen up for her to read.

Lillian's eyes moved across the words once. Twice. Three times. Then she looked up at me, and her mouth opened so wide I thought her jaw would hit the floor.

"YOU WHAT?!"

Three weeks crawled by, and I buried that night so deep inside me I almost convinced myself it never happened.

Almost.

The morning of my eighteenth birthday arrived wrapped in golden autumn light, and the entire Bright Moon Pack buzzed with excitement for the succession ceremony. Everywhere I looked, there were flowers and banners and wolves dressed in their finest, all gathered to watch me step into the role my father had spent my entire life preparing me for.

I stood in front of my bedroom mirror in a floor length silver gown that caught the light like liquid metal. The makeup artist had painted my face into something regal and untouchable, sharp brows and dark lips and cheekbones that could cut glass. I looked like an Alpha. I looked like my father's daughter.

So why were my hands trembling?

"You look beautiful, sweetheart." My mother appeared behind me in the mirror, adjusting the clasp of my necklace. "Your father is already on stage. He is so proud of you."

I smiled at her reflection, but the smile did not reach my chest.

Something felt wrong. Something I could not name, coiled tight in my belly like a sleeping snake.

The red carpet stretched from the main hall to the outdoor stage where the ceremony would take place under the open sky. The pack parted for me as I walked, and I could feel hundreds of eyes on my skin, warm with admiration and expectation. My father's Beta, Marcus, walked beside me and guided me up the steps until I stood face to face with my father.

Alpha Richard Ashford looked at me with steady, proud eyes. The moon hung full and heavy above us, bathing everything in pale white light.

"Kneel," he commanded.

I knelt on the stone platform, the cold seeping through my gown and into my knees.

"Under the light of the Moon Goddess, before your pack and your blood, complete your first transformation. Awaken the wolf within you, and take your rightful place as Alpha."

I closed my eyes. I reached inward, searching for that spark I had been told about my whole life, the burning thread that connects every wolf to their true nature. I reached and reached.

Nothing.

I tried again. Harder this time, pulling from somewhere deeper, somewhere primal.

And then the pain hit.

It came like a fist clenching around my heart, sudden and blinding and so sharp that my vision went white. A searing heat exploded in my stomach, spreading through me like wildfire, and the last thing I heard before my knees gave out was the sound of my mother screaming my name.

When I opened my eyes again, the ceiling above me was not the open sky. It was the white plaster of my parents' bedroom. I was lying in their bed, and the faces surrounding me were heavy with fear.

My mother sat on the edge of the mattress, holding my hand so tight her knuckles were bone white. Lillian was curled up against my other side, her cheeks streaked with tears, her arms wrapped around me like she was afraid I would disappear if she let go.

"She is awake!" Lillian cried, pressing her wet face into my neck. "She is awake, oh thank God."

My father stood at the foot of the bed, his jaw clenched so hard the muscle in his cheek twitched. But beneath his iron expression, there was something I had rarely seen in his eyes.

Fear.

"Get the doctor," he ordered Marcus. "Tell him I want a full examination. Every test. Every scan. I want to know exactly what happened."

I opened my mouth to speak, but my throat was dry and raw, and nothing came out. Lillian squeezed me tighter, whispering soft reassurances into my ear.

"It is okay, Serena. You probably just fainted from exhaustion. You have been working so hard preparing for the ceremony. That is all it is."

But that was not all it was.

The moment the pain had hit, the moment that searing heat had bloomed in my stomach, I had known. Somewhere in the deepest, most terrified part of my mind, I had already known.

The doctor returned twenty minutes later carrying a thick stack of papers. His face was pale. His hands were shaking.

I looked at those trembling hands and the room started to spin.

No. Please no.

"Well?" my father demanded. "What is it?"

The doctor swallowed. He glanced at me, then at my mother, then back at my father. He opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again.

"Alpha Ashford." His voice cracked. "Your daughter is pregnant."

The silence that followed was the loudest thing I had ever heard.

My mother's hand went limp in mine. Lillian's body stiffened against me like she had been turned to stone. My father stared at the doctor as if the man had just spoken in a language he did not understand.

In the werewolf world, the rules were absolute. A she-wolf who conceives with anyone other than her true mate is branded as an inferior wolf. It meant exile. It meant being cast out to wander the neutral zones where rogues and outcasts scraped by on nothing. It meant a life of shame so total, so permanent, that even death was considered more merciful.

This was the fate I had always feared more than anything.

And now it was mine.

Lillian was the first to move. She shot up from the bed, grabbed the doctor by the collar of his coat, and yanked him forward until they were nose to nose.

"Check again." Her voice was shaking with a fury I had never heard from her before. "Run every test again. Because if you are wrong, I swear on the Moon Goddess I will make you regret every breath you have ever taken."