Chapter 3

Sylvia's POV

After the engagement banquet, I returned to my pack. I locked the door, pulled a notebook from the drawer, and sat down at the desk.

I wrote everything I could remember. I drew a single line under all of it and wrote what mattered.

I needed proof. Hard, undeniable proof that Damian and my stepmother were sleeping together. But gathering it on my own would be very difficult — Damian was a master of disguise, while Azrael could apply the pressure that would force him to slip, to crack, to reveal the truth I needed to capture.

I would collect the evidence piece by piece, and on the day of the ceremony, in front of every Pack leader in attendance, I would destroy them both.

Since they won't let me break off the engagement, I'll make them taste their own medicine.

Thirty days. That was all I had before the wedding.

Tomorrow's auction, hosted by Azrael's pack, is the key. I used my connections to get an invitation, telling neither Damian nor my father. In my past life, I devoted myself entirely to Damian — after marriage, I gave up my career and played the good wife for him.

But now, everything will be different.

—

The dress I chose was not the dress I would have worn in my old life. Then, I'd have picked baby pink. Soft chiffon. Something a fiancée would wear. I chose deep navy. A high neck. Sharp shoulders that said I was here for business and not for charm. I twisted my hair up. I put on the small gold earrings my mother had left me.

I did not look like Damian's doll.

The Nightwhisper banquet hall was already full when I walked in. Some of them whispered.

"Damian's fiancée? Of all places—"

"Did Damian let her come?"

I hated that title. Hated it until my fingertips went cold. But I didn’t let anyone see it.

I lifted my chin and gave them the standard Alpha-daughter smile — composed, dignified, flawless. Then I walked to my seat in my high heels and sat down steadily under their curious eyes.

The auctioneer was still doing introductions when the room shifted.

I felt it before I saw it. The air changed register. The female wolves in front of me sat up straighter. A young one to my left pulled out a compact mirror.

Azrael Nightwhisper had entered the hall.

He was tall enough to draw the eye in any room. The suit was charcoal and well cut. The hair was black. The shoulders were broad without making a show of it. The face was a face I had only ever seen on glossy paper before — sharp jaw, cool mouth, eyes the dark blue of a deep pool. He walked like a man who had never once worried about being interrupted.

A line of older wolves rose to greet him. He shook the hands, said the right things, smiled none of the smiles.

Then his eyes found me.

Across thirty rows of seats and the velvet rope and the man with the clipboard, he looked at me directly. My stomach dropped. It was not the way Damian had ever looked at me. It was the way you looked at a math problem you had not yet decided to solve. Something in me pulled toward him before I had decided whether I wanted it to.

I did not look away.

A she-wolf in red satin stepped into his path. She said something low and laughed. He gave her a short nod and walked past her. Toward me. Not toward Damian's empty seat. Not toward the line of councilors he had not yet greeted.

Toward me.

"Sylvia." He stopped at the end of my row. He did not offer his hand.

"You know my name."

"I know your name." His mouth tilted. "I sat through your freshman speech on pack reform at the Capital symposium. I remember what you said about the Alpha Council, and what you wanted to do with it. You were nineteen and you were furious."

That was three years ago, in this timeline. To me it was six. I had nearly forgotten her — the girl on that stage. Nobody had asked me a question about pack reform since the week Damian put a ring on my finger.

"That was a long time ago," I said.

"Three years isn't a long time." His eyes moved over my face, slow and unsurprised. "What's a long time is the silence after. I expected you in council halls. Instead I read about you becoming Damian's fiancée." A pause. "And now you're at my auction."

So that was the opening. Polite first, knife second.

"I am not Damian's possession. Watch the next lot. You'll see." I said.

He looked at me a beat too long.

"Sit down, Miss Moonriver," he said, and stepped past me into the aisle.

The auctioneer's voice came back up over the speakers. The first three lots passed. I let them. I had marked the catalog the night before. I was waiting.

"Lot four — sole cooperative management rights to the Ridgehaven development, ten years from signing."

Ridgehaven would be the new center of the city in eighteen months. Every alpha in this room would beg for a piece of it by then. Whoever sat across the table from Azrael held the only handle the man had on his own newest acquisition. I needed a handle on him. I needed it before he knew I needed it.

The bids opened. The big trading packs jumped on it first. They bid the way packs bid when they didn't know what they were touching. By thirty seconds in, half of them had folded.

I lifted my paddle when the room hesitated.

I called a number twice the last bid.

The hall fell quiet for half a second. The auctioneer recovered.

Azrael turned his head.

He looked at me from his seat in the front row, and the look was different now — playful, the way an alpha is playful with a wolf that has wandered into his territory. Don't play games with me, little Moonriver. Don't waste my afternoon.

I mouthed four words at him.

I'll. Have. It.

His eyes narrowed.

"Sold," the auctioneer said. "To Miss Sylvia of Moonriver Pack."

I let the breath out only after the hammer dropped. I had spent the inheritance my mother left me on a strip of city no one in this room thought mattered yet — and I had spent it in front of Azrael Nightwhisper.

He stood. He crossed the aisle. He stopped at my chair.

He bent down to my ear. His scent was clean and cold, sharp like cut pine after rain. The hair at his temple brushed my cheek and my pulse stuttered, traitor that it was.

"VIP lounge," he said. "I'll wait for you there."