CHAPTER 1

CIARA'S POV

"Our engagement is over."

Kaden said it casually, as though he were declining a second glass of wine.

Cold. Sharp.

The words did not make sense at first. They were just sounds, syllables that could not possibly mean what they seemed to mean.

And yet, they were real.

I never imagined that everything I had worked for over the past decade would collapse just because of a single sentence like this.

For as long as I can remember, it felt as if the meaning of my existence was simply to become his Luna.

The crystal chandeliers blazed overhead in the great hall, their light illuminating the shocked faces around us—wolves from across the territory who had gathered for this momentous occasion. The vibrant music and laughter felt like a cruel backdrop to my crumbling world.

"What?! Kaden, you can't be serious!" I gasped, my hands clenching so tightly behind my back that my knuckles ached.

He stood there in formal black, the silver embroidery on his collar marking him as the Alpha's heir. His dark hair framed a chiseled face, but his eyes—cold and distant—refused to meet mine.

"I will not be forced into a marriage I never wanted," he continued, his voice slicing through the bustling sounds around us.

Eyes began to turn our way, whispers swirling like wind through dead leaves. I felt the weight of their scrutiny pressing down on me.

"But… our mothers promised," I stammered, grasping for the tether of tradition that had bound us.

Kaden's expression hardened.

"Your mother is dead. And she made promises she had no right to make." His gaze finally met mine, cold and distant as winter stars. "I need a Luna who shares my vision for this pack. Someone who can stand beside me in battle, not someone raised to pour tea and smile."

Heat flooded my face. "I trained for this. I learned strategy, politics, healing. I'm not—"

"You learned to be ornamental." He stepped back, putting distance between us. "I am sorry, Ciara, but you are not what I need. You are not different from any other she wolf who wants the title."

Not different. Not special. Not enough.

"Kaden, please." My voice cracked. I hated how desperate I sounded, but panic clawed at my throat. Without this engagement, without him, I had nothing. I was nothing.

"It is done." He turned away. "Goodbye, Ciara."

I watched him disappear into the crowd, and that is when I felt it, the weight of every eye in that hall. The whispers grew louder, no longer bothering to hide behind raised hands.

"Raised her whole life for this."

"How humiliating."

"What will she do now."

"Always knew she was not right for him."

The walls pressed in. The air grew thick. I could not breathe, could not think, could not do anything but stand there as my entire world crumbled around me.

A hand gripped my elbow. Hard.

"Come along, miss." The guard's voice was gruff but not unkind. "Best you leave now."

I let him guide me toward the doors, my legs moving on their own while my mind spun uselessly. The other guard took my other arm, and together they walked me through the crowd like I was a criminal being removed from the premises.

Perhaps I was. Perhaps wanting to matter, wanting to belong, wanting to be loved, perhaps those were crimes here.

The doors opened. Cold air slapped my face.

And then I was outside, standing at the top of the marble steps while snow drifted down from the black sky.

The doors closed behind me with a terrible finality.

---

The walk home passed in a blur of white and gray. Snow melted in my hair, soaked through my thin party slippers, numbed my fingers. I barely felt it.

You are not different from any other she wolf.

My mother's face swam in my memory. Her thin hand gripping mine, her voice hoarse with the sickness that would take her three days later.

"Listen to me, little star. You must marry Kaden Stormclaw when you are grown. Promise me."

"Why, Mama?"

"Because he will protect you. Because without his protection, your father's house will destroy you." Her eyes had been fever bright, desperate. "Everything I have arranged, every promise I have secured, it is all to keep you safe. Promise me you will marry him."

"I promise, Mama."

That promise had shaped everything. Every lesson in deportment, every hour studying pack law, every morning rising before dawn to practice the Luna's blessing. I had made myself into a perfect future Luna. 

I thought Kaden's gaze would rest on me if I could do everything perfectly. 

I thought he would protect me, just like my mother said he would. Maybe... even love me.

But he had looked at me like I was worthless.

The lights of my father's house appeared through the snow. Our house, I had to remember to think of it that way, even though it had never felt like mine. Not since Father remarried six months after Mama died. Not since Seren was born and became the daughter he actually wanted.

I climbed the steps to the door. Raised my hand to knock.

The door opened before my knuckles touched wood.

My stepmother stood in the entrance, her beautiful face twisted with fury. "How dare you show your face here."

I blinked snow from my lashes. "I live here."

"You lived here because you were engaged to the Alpha's heir. Because you had value." Elara's voice dripped with venom. "Now you are just a failed, useless girl who humiliated this family in front of the entire pack."

"I did not……”

"Everything is your fault!" She advanced and I stumbled backward, barely catching myself on the railing. "We invested everything in you. Your training, your tutors, your wardrobe, all so you could secure our family's position. And you could not even keep one male interested."

"He never wanted the engagement…."

"Then you should have made him want it!" Elara shrieked. "You should have been prettier, smarter, more charming, something! Instead you wasted years of our resources and got nothing in return."

The door opened wider. My father appeared behind Elara, his face hard.

"Papa." The word came out small, childish. I hated myself for it.

"Kneel."

I stared at him. "What?"

"You heard me." His voice was flat, empty of anything that resembled love. "Kneel in the snow. Stay there until you understand the shame you have brought to this house."

"But I will freeze."

"Then perhaps you will learn humility." He placed his hand on Elara's shoulder, the gesture so casual, so familiar. He never touched me like that. Never looked at me the way he looked at her and Seren. "Until you can be useful to this family, you have no place under our roof."

The door slammed.

I stood there, staring at the painted wood, waiting for it to open again. For my father to appear and say he did not mean it. For someone to care that I was out here, that the snow was falling harder now, that my party dress was soaked through and my entire body shook with cold.

No one came.

Slowly, mechanically, I sank to my knees on the stone steps.

The snow kept falling.

---

I tried my best.

That was the thought that circled through my mind as the cold seeped deeper into my bones.

I had studied pack law until my eyes burned. Practiced healing until I could set a bone and stitch a wound without flinching. Learned six different languages, the history of every major pack in the territory, the proper protocols for everything from treaty negotiations to funeral rites.

I did all of this for a man who had never even spared me a glance.

Maybe he was right. Maybe all those years of training had not made me special. Maybe they had just made me good at pretending to be something I was not.

Maybe I had never been anything but a failure.

The cold stopped hurting after a while. My body just went numb, heavy, like I was sinking into the snow rather than kneeling on top of it. My thoughts grew fuzzy, distant.

This was not so bad, really. Going numb. Feeling nothing.

Laughter spilled from the house.

My stepmother and my father were talking, laughing over something that didn’t include me.

Just like the day she first came here, when my mother was dying.

And now, like my mother back then, I was left behind in the dark again, waiting for death to find me.

My mother's voice whispered through the fog in my mind.

Little star. My brave little star.

Tears ran over my frozen skin, scorching and sharp, making me tremble.

No, Mom, I was not brave. I had never been brave. I would die here.

My father never intended for me to survive the night. I was the stain he intended to erase himself.

No one would protect me like you once did.

No one was coming…

Boots appeared in my fading vision. Black leather, expensive. Military style with silver buckles.

I stared at them dully, too cold to look up, too tired to care who they belonged to.

"Well." The voice was dark, smooth, like smoke over deep water. "I did not expect to find anything interesting on my walk tonight. But here you are, the rejected bride, kneeling in the snow like a penitent."

Something in that voice cut through the numbness. Something sharp and aware and awake in a way that made my sluggish heart beat faster.

I forced my head up.

Draven Stormclaw looked down at me with eyes like black ice.

The Alpha's bastard son. Kaden's half brother. The one people whispered about in fearful voices, ruthless, cunning, dangerous. The one who had clawed his way up from nothing through blood and brilliance.

The one no decent she wolf would ever approach.

He tilted his head, studying me like I was a puzzle he might or might not bother solving. "You are the Beta's daughter. Ciara, is it not?"

I could not speak. My lips were too numb, my throat too tight.

"Tell me, does hypothermia hurt? Or does it just make you quietly fade away like your mother?"

The question should have frightened me. Instead, it sparked something, some tiny flame of anger in the frozen wasteland of my chest.

He shouldn’t have brought up my mother. And I was not ready to fade away.

I shot him the fiercest glare I could manage, though I could feel the last of my strength draining from me.

Yet he smiled.

“So you’re not as boring as they claimed,” he murmured. “A feisty little wolf.

Tell me, do you want to live?”

I didn’t expect those words. My body gave up, and I fell to the ground.

My throat wouldn’t let me speak. Not even a full syllable.

But my eyes gave me away. I wanted to live.

“Beg.”

“S…”

I forced the sound out, reaching for him.

Then everything went black.

Just before I lost my hearing, I heard him click his tongue.

“Tsk. What a hassle.”