Chapter 1

Emerson POV

“Pack weirdo,” Nicholas barked. “Get me a glass of water.”

The command echoed through the enormous lounge, bouncing off marble floors and gilded walls polished to a shine I would never belong to.

Nicholas — our Alpha — didn’t look at me like a brother. He looked at me like something unpleasant he’d scraped off his boot and forgotten to clean.

I lifted my head from my palm, where it had been buried for hours, my thoughts heavy and unmoving like stone. My legs ached from running errands for him all morning. Small tasks. Meaningless tasks. The kind given to remind someone of their place.

I moved anyway.

Hesitation only made things worse. It always had.

As I crossed the room, my heart slammed violently against my ribs, instinct screaming before my mind could catch up. I had learned long ago to listen to that instinct. It had kept me alive this long.

I poured the water carefully, hands steady despite the tight knot in my chest. When I turned back, Nicholas’s gaze was already on me. Waiting. Watching.

“What’s taking so long?” he snapped. “Stop dragging your feet.”

He seized my wrist, fingers digging into my skin.

“Who’s going to save you now that I’m Alpha?” he sneered.

Before I could answer, he yanked the glass from my hand. Water splashed everywhere as I stumbled backward and hit the floor, pain jolting up my spine.

Laughter erupted.

It rolled through the room, loud and merciless, cutting deeper than the fall. I turned my face away, hoping—foolishly—that avoiding their eyes would spare me.

It never did.

“She can barely see!” Nicholas mocked. “Stop glaring at me. Your father made all of this for you, didn’t he?”

My chest constricted.

“He was your father too,” I said quietly.

Something dark flickered in his eyes.

“Don’t say that,” he hissed. “As if you don’t know why I hate you.”

The room stilled.

“You think I forgot?” he continued coldly. “How he looked at you. How he chose you, knowing what you were.”

My breath caught.

“You were never supposed to exist,” Nicholas said. “And yet you took everything that should’ve been mine.”

The truth burned worse than the fall.

My father never said it outright, but everyone saw it. How his attention lingered on me. How his voice softened when he spoke my name. How he stood between me and questions with no kind answers.

Nicholas saw it too.

While Father lived, his presence restrained him. The day he died, that restraint vanished.

What my father once protected me from, my brother made sure I felt.

The pack followed his lead.

Tears blurred my vision as I pushed myself up, fingers trembling. Sometimes I missed my father so much it hurt to breathe. Other times, anger coiled inside me—anger that he had loved me enough to make me a target, then left me alone to endure it.

“Back off!” I snapped when one of Nicholas’s friends—a beta—reached toward me.

Pain exploded as Nicholas tangled his fist in to my dark curl and yanked hard, forcing my head back.

“At least this will knock some sense into you,” he sneered. “I was patient. Imagine how small your world is now that it’s crumbled.”

“Let go of my hair, Nicholas!”

No one intervened.

“Alpha,” someone muttered uneasily.

“Not until you call me your Alpha,” Nicholas said.

I spat on the floor.

I spat because calling him Alpha would mean agreeing with a lie.

Father had never trusted Nicholas to lead.

I wouldn’t validate what even the dead had rejected.

“Never.”

The pain tore through me like a forced shift under a full moon.

Help me… please, I mind-linked desperately.

No answer came.

Then—

“Let her go.”

The voice cut through the chaos like ice.

Silence slammed into the room.

“Didn’t you hear the lady?” the stranger continued calmly. “You’re hurting her.”

Nicholas laughed darkly. “Who dares tell me what to do with her?”

The man stepped forward. His presence alone shifted the air. His scent was unfamiliar—dark, controlled, dangerous.

“I don’t repeat myself,” he said. “Let her go.”

Nicholas released me. I stumbled away, clutching my scalp, breath uneven.

The man’s gaze met mine.

I flinched.

People never looked at my eyes without disgust. Cursed. Freak. Wrong.

But there was no mockery in his stare. No pity.

Only sharp, assessing intensity—as if he were weighing something far more valuable than appearances.

“You’re too hard on her,” he said to Nicholas. “She’s your sister.”

“She stopped being anything to me the day Father chose her.”

“If that’s how things work here,” the stranger said evenly, turning back to him, “then beat me in a duel.”

My breath caught.

“If I win, I take her.”

Shock rippled through the room.

He shrugged off his coat and draped it over my shoulders. Only then did I realize how cold I was.

"With my loss," he added quietly, "I'll beg forgiveness on my knees."

Nicholas laughed, stepping forward eagerly, cruelty bright in his eyes. "And who are you to kneel before me?"

The stranger didn't answer right away. His gaze lingered on Nicholas for a brief, measuring moment.

"You'll find out," he said calmly. "After."

I curled into myself, trembling.

Whoever this man was, his calm felt more dangerous than Nicholas’s rage.

And for the first time in my life, everything was about to change.