CHAPTER 1: THREE YEARS TOO QUIET

The first thing I learned as an omega was how to be invisible.

Invisible when the pack gathered in the training yard and the stronger wolves shoved past me like I was nothing more than air. Invisible when my father's gaze slid over me at the dinner table, sharp only when I made a mistake. Invisible when my sister Bianca laughed too loudly, too brightly, and everyone leaned closer to her warmth instead of my silence.

I learned how to keep my head down. How to work twice as hard and speak half as much. How to survive.

But for three years, there had been one place where I was not invisible.

Adrian.

I still remembered the night the mate bond snapped into place. My eighteenth birthday. The moon high and full. My heart raced with joy so sharp it hurt. I had felt it then, a sudden pull in my chest, like fate itself had wrapped a thread around my soul and tied it to his.

Mine.

That was what my wolf had whispered, stunned and breathless.

Adrian had felt it too. I saw it in his eyes when they met mine across the clearing—shock, hunger, something dangerously close to fear.

"Not yet," he told me later, his hands warm on my waist, his voice low. "My father won't understand. Bianca won't understand. We have to be careful."

So I waited.

Three years of waiting. Three years of secrecy. Three years of stolen moments and quiet promises.

And tonight, as I scrubbed Bianca's breakfast plates while she lounged at the table filing her nails, I told myself it would all finally be worth it.

"Hurry up, Elena," Bianca said without looking up. "You are splashing water everywhere."

"I am almost done," I murmured.

The ceremony was tonight. The Alpha's heir would announce his chosen mate before the entire pack. Adrian had been distant lately, but I understood. The pressure from his father, the expectations, the politics. Once tonight was over, once we were public, everything would be different.

It had to be.

Bianca examined her perfectly manicured nails, tilting them in the light streaming through the kitchen window. Everything about my sister was perfect. Her honey-blonde hair that caught the sun just right. Her porcelain skin that never bore a scar or a bruise. The way she moved through the packhouse like she owned every room she entered.

She did, in a way. Beta blood ran strong in our family, but somehow all of it had pooled in her while I got what was left over.

"You know what tonight is, don't you?" Bianca asked suddenly.

My hands stilled in the soapy water. "The mate ceremony."

"The announcement ceremony," she corrected, finally looking at me. Her blue eyes glittered with something I couldn't name. "Adrian finally gets to claim his true mate in front of everyone."

The bond hummed in my chest, warm and steady. "I know."

"Do you?" She set down her nail file with careful precision. "Because you have been walking around with this pathetic look on your face all week. Like you think something is going to change for you."

I turned back to the dishes, scrubbing harder. "I am just doing my job."

"Your job." Bianca laughed, the sound sharp and bright. "Is that what you call it? Serving me breakfast, cleaning my messes, living in my shadow?"

"Bianca—"

"You know what Father said last night?" She stood, smoothing down her dress. "He said you were lucky he even kept you after Mother died. That any other Beta would have sent a weak omega to the edges of the territory where they belong."

The words hit like a slap, but I forced myself not to react. This was normal. This was how it had always been.

"He said," Bianca continued, stepping closer, "that tonight would be a blessing for our family. That finally, after all these years, we would have something to be proud of."

I gripped the edge of the sink. "I should finish these."

"Look at me."

It wasn't a request. It was an order, backed by the weight of her stronger wolf, her higher rank, everything I didn't have.

I turned slowly.

Bianca stood inches away, her smile cold and lovely. "Do you want to know a secret, little sister?"

My wolf stirred uneasily. "No."

"Adrian is coming by before the ceremony," she said softly. "He wants to make sure I look perfect for tonight. He is very particular about appearances." She reached out and tucked a strand of my damp hair behind my ear, the gesture almost tender. "You understand, don't you? An Alpha heir cannot afford to look weak. And you..."

She didn't finish the sentence. She didn't have to.

The plate in my hand trembled.

"I should go," I managed. "I have other work—"

"You will stay right here." Her voice hardened. "And when Adrian arrives, you will be polite. You will keep your eyes down. You will not embarrass me."

"Why would I embarrass you?"

Something flickered across her face. Triumph, maybe. Or pity dressed up as satisfaction.

"Because tonight," Bianca said, leaning in close enough that I could smell her expensive perfume, "you are finally going to learn your place."

The plate slipped from my fingers.

It shattered in the sink, porcelain exploding against steel. Water splashed across my dress, cold and sudden. I stared down at the broken pieces, sharp and scattered, and something in my chest lurched.

Behind me, Bianca laughed.

"Clumsy," she murmured. "Just like always."

I heard her heels click across the tile as she walked away. The door to the dining room swung shut behind her, leaving me alone with the wreckage.

My hands shook as I pulled the broken pieces from the water. A sharp edge caught my palm, drawing blood. I watched it well up, bright red against my pale skin, and felt nothing.

The bond in my chest was still there. Still warm. Still connecting me to Adrian like it had for three years.

But somewhere underneath that warmth, something else stirred.

Something that felt dangerously like doubt.

I wrapped my bleeding hand in a towel and forced myself to breathe. Tonight. Everything would make sense tonight. Adrian would stand before the pack and tell them the truth. That I was his mate. That the bond was real. That I wasn't invisible anymore.

I had to believe that.

Because if I didn't, what had the last three years been for?

The kitchen door swung open. I turned, expecting Bianca's return, expecting more cruelty disguised as sisterly advice.

But it was Adrian.

He stood in the doorway, golden and perfect in the morning light. His Alpha heir bearing made him seem larger than life, made my omega instincts want to submit, to bow, to make myself even smaller than I already was.

But when his eyes met mine, I saw something that made my breath catch.

Nothing.

Not warmth. Not recognition. Not even the acknowledgment that we shared something sacred and permanent.

Just cold, calculated distance.

"Where is Bianca?" he asked.

Not Elena, are you alright? Not I have been thinking about tonight. Not even We need to talk.

Just three words that confirmed what some terrified part of me had known for weeks.

"Dining room," I whispered.

He moved past me without another word, his shoulder brushing mine. The bond flared at the contact, desperate and aching, but he didn't pause. He didn't look back.

The door swung shut behind him.

And I stood there in the kitchen, blood seeping through the towel wrapped around my hand, surrounded by broken porcelain and the sharp, sudden certainty that something was very, very wrong.

From the other room, I heard Bianca's delighted laugh.

Then Adrian's low voice, warm in a way he hadn't sounded with me in months.

My wolf whimpered.

And deep in my chest, the bond I had trusted for three long years began to feel less like a promise and more like a chain.

I should have run then.

I should have trusted my instincts, the ones screaming at me to leave, to escape, to save myself before it was too late.

But I didn't.

Because later that night, when the pack gathered under the full moon and Adrian stood before them all, I still believed he would choose me.

I still believed the bond meant something.

I still believed, desperately and stupidly, that three years of secrets had been building toward this moment.

The door to the dining room opened again. Bianca appeared, her arm linked through Adrian's, her smile bright and victorious.

She looked at me standing there with my bleeding hand and ruined dress.

She leaned close and whispered, just loud enough for me to hear:

"After tonight, no one will ever believe you were his."