Chapter 1

Selene's POV

I didn't realize my husband brought my stepsister Vera to our anniversary celebration.

Derek told me our anniversary would be just the two of us. A private yacht, champagne on ice, the ocean dark and endless in every direction. .

When I saw Vera standing at the cabin door, the champagne glass nearly slipped from my fingers.

Derek and I had been sailing for half an hour while I didn't know Vera was there with us?

"Vera? What are you doing here?" The words came out sharper than I intended.

Red lipstick. Silk dress. Vera had a look on her face that said she'd been expecting this moment longer than I had.

Vera tilted her head toward Derek. "You should tell her."

I looked at Derek. "Derek? What's going on?"

Derek set his champagne down on the rail. He didn't look nervous. He didn't look sorry. He looked like a man crossing the last item off a list.

"Vera is my fated mate," he said. "She has been since her twenty-first birthday. We've been together for years — before the wedding, before the engagement. Before all of it."

The words landed one at a time. Fated mate. Years. Before all of it.

My ears started ringing.

The deck was steady beneath my feet. I wasn't.

"That's not — you told me — "

"I told you what you needed to hear. The mate bond between fated mates can't be resisted, Selene." He shrugged. "I have loved Vera since the first day we met each other."

He didn't flinch. Didn't look away. His face was so calm it almost looked kind.

My nails dug into the railing so hard the metal bit into my skin.

"Can't be resisted? I gave up my fated mate for you, Derek. I rejected Alpha Jaxon in front of everyone!"

A year and a half ago, I just reached the age of 22 and decided to attend the Autumn Mating Ball. Not that I care about a fated mate other than Derek, I was always curious about big occasions like this.

I didn't expect I'd discovered that Jaxon — Alpha of the strongest pack in the Werewolf world — was my fated mate.

Derek was still standing right next to me as my date, so Jaxon didn't force anything immediatley. He offered to talk it through privately later, just the two of us.

I'd been ready to go. Ready to tell him the truth gently. That I'd chosen Derek, who I grew up and fell in love with. That I was sorry.

But Derek had panicked. He told me Jaxon was ruthless, violent, the kind of Alpha who would force-mark me if we were ever alone together. He convinced me the only safe choice was a public rejection. In front of every Alpha and Luna in the territories, so Jaxon could never deny it happened.

So I stood in front of every Alpha in the banquet hall and publicly rejected my fated mate. I told them I didn't want the bond the Moon Goddess gave me. I said if I was ever marked by Jaxon, he must have forced me into it.

A rejection in our world doesn't break the fated mate bond. It's just a public declaration of refusal.

But for a powerful Alpha like Jaxon, it probably also meant humiliation.

I felt sorry for a minute, but then I figured all I should care about was Derek. We grew up together and fell in love with each other since we were teenagers. He was the Alpha son of a small pack nearby, while I was the Alpha daughter of my pack. We were perfect for each other and ready to reject our fated mates for each other.

Clearly, I was wrong the whole time.

"If you love her," I asked, couldn't help but tearing up. "why did you marry me?"

"Your pack, of course," He didn't even pause. "My family's pack is too weak. Small territory, no resources, no leverage. Your pack was the answer."

"My mother's will," I said. The realization hit so hard my knees buckled.

My mother, Elizabeth. She'd been the Alpha daughter of our pack, and she'd married my father Marcus — a Beta's son who became Alpha through her. Before she died, she wrote it into her will: Marcus could remarry, but the pack and everything it held legally belonged to Selene and Mia and their future mates. No one else.

Not to Marcus, the Beta she'd loved and married but who had no blood claim to her family's legacy. Not to Claudia, the woman my father married after my mother passed away. Not to Vera, who carried none of my mother's line.

Only to my sister Mia and I. And only through our married mates.

It was protection. She'd built a wall around her daughters' birthright.

Derek had found the door in that wall.

"Why tell me this now?" My voice cracked. "Aren't you afraid I'll divorce you?"

Derek's expression shifted. The softness disappeared. What was underneath had probably been there the whole time — I'd just never looked hard enough.

"Who said anything about divorce? Dead wives don't file for divorce."

I blinked. Then I felt it — the heaviness spreading through my arms, the fog crawling across my thoughts like something with weight. The champagne. He'd put something in the champagne.

"No." My tongue was thick. "Derek — you can't — "

"What do you mean?" I frowned.

"Once you're gone, your share passes to your surviving spouse." He took a step toward me. "That's me."

Vera pulled a length of rope from behind the cabin door.

My knees buckled. I hit the deck hard and the cold wood knocked the air from my chest. Derek grabbed my wrists and pinned them behind my back. Vera tied them — quick, tight, no hesitation — then moved to my ankles.

"Mia." I could barely get the name out. "She'll figure it out. She won't let you—"

Derek crouched down. Close enough that I could smell the cologne I'd bought him for his birthday.

"Mia is fifteen. She could barely handle anything. But I'm the Alpha now," His voice was gentle, which made it worse. "If she ever becomes a problem, we'll handle her the same way."

That killed something in me. Not the betrayal. Not the drug. The image of my little sister sitting across from these two at the breakfast table, trusting them the way I had.

Then they lifted me together. Derek under my arms, Vera at my feet.

Vera leaned close to my ear. "It'll be quick."

The last thing I saw before they tipped me over the railing was the stars.

I hit the water.

The cold crushed me from every side. My body thrashed — arms wrenching against the rope, legs kicking at nothing, mouth filling with salt. The ocean poured into my lungs and the weight of it dragged me down into the dark.

My wolf. She'd been silent for years, ever since I'd rejected the mate she chose for us. I'd pushed her down, ignored her grief, told her she was wrong. She'd stopped speaking to me entirely.

But here, at the very bottom, I felt her stir.

I'd thrown away my fated mate for a man who threw me into the ocean. That was the truth of it. That was what I'd done.

If I survive this, I told her. I swear — I'll protect Mia. I'll destroy every one of them. And I will never let anyone use me again.

She pressed against my chest, faint but fierce.

I'm here, she whispered. I never left.

Then — light.

Not the ocean. Not the dark. Warm golden light pouring through curtains I hadn't seen in years.

I shot upright, gasping.

My childhood bedroom. Blue curtains, wooden desk, the stack of romance novels on my nightstand that I hadn't touched since I was eighteen. Sunlight cut across the floor in clean bright lines.

My lungs worked. My hands were free. My hair was dry.

I looked down at my fingers.

No wedding ring.

Did I just get reborn?