CHAPTER 1: HIS SCENT WAS WRONG

I smelled her on him three hours before the mating ceremony.

Vanilla and jasmine. Sweet, expensive, and deliberate. It was the kind of perfume a woman pressed into her skin so it would transfer to his collar, his jaw, and the inside of his wrist where my mark was supposed to go.

I was standing outside Kael’s door with my fist raised to knock when the scent hit me. My wolf recoiled so hard my vision blurred. Every nerve screamed wrong, wrong, wrong. A bonded wolf carried only two scent signatures: his and mine. Ours had connected five days ago under the full moon. I saw recognition crack across his face before his eyes went cold.

I should have paid attention to the cold.

Behind the door, there was movement. I heard a voice. It was low, female, and she was laughing at something he said.

My hand dropped. The bond splintered beneath my ribs, snapping like a glass rod bending past its limit.

The door opened.

Vanessa Drake walked out wearing Kael’s green silk robe. The shoulders swallowed her frame. She hadn’t even tried to hide it.

She saw me and stopped. Something flickered behind her eyes, maybe guilt, before her face smoothed into a mask so practiced it could have been painted on.

"Amara." My name in her mouth sounded like a footnote at the bottom of a page nobody was reading. She tilted her head. "You should get dressed."

Then she spoke quieter, sounding almost human. "I’m sorry about tonight."

She walked past me before I could ask what that meant. Vanilla and jasmine trailed behind her like a promise someone else had made on my behalf. My stomach folded in half. I pressed my back against the corridor wall and dug my nails into my palms until the skin split.

The pain helped. It was small, sharp, and mine. It was something I could control while everything else unraveled.

Blood welled in the crescents my nails had carved. I watched it pool for two seconds, then three. Then the skin drew shut on its own. It was the way it had always been, the way it had been since I was twelve and too afraid to ask anyone why.

The door was still open.

Kael stood in the center of his room. He was shirtless. The Silver Ridge crest was tattooed between his shoulder blades. On the desk behind him, documents were stamped with the Ember Fang seal in red wax. He was staring out the window with his hands braced on the sill like a man holding himself in place.

"Kael."

He turned. His jaw could have been carved from rock. His eyes were amber, wolf-bright, and devastating. They found mine, and I searched them for anything. I looked for the spark from the full moon. I looked for the pull. I looked for the moment when his wolf had howled so loud I felt it in my own chest.

There was nothing. It was like staring into a window somebody had bricked shut from the inside.

"You shouldn’t be here," he said.

"Why was she in your room?"

"Pack business."

"In your robe?"

Silence followed. It was the kind of silence that answers better than words ever could.

I stepped inside. My bare feet were silent on the cold stone. I was still wearing my kitchen clothes, the stained tunic and fraying trousers that told the world exactly what I was. I was an Omega, the lowest rank. I had spent nine years scrubbing pots, dressing wounds, and sleeping in a closet at the back of the pack house. In Silver Ridge, unmated omegas past twenty-one were traded to labor packs in the northern territories. I turned twenty-one in three months. This bond was not just love. It was the only door between me and disappearing.

"What happens at sundown, Kael?"

His nostrils flared. For half a second, something surfaced behind his eyes. It was raw, gutted, and drowning. Then he shoved it down so hard his whole body flinching.

"The ceremony. You know what happens."

"Do I?" I moved closer. The bond surged, an electric pull that made my skin hum and my wolf claw beneath my ribs. I was close enough now to feel his heartbeat hammering through the connection. It was faster than his face would ever admit. "There’s an Ember Fang convoy in the courtyard. Vanessa Drake just walked out of your bedroom wearing your clothes. And she told me she’s sorry about tonight. So tell me what happens at sundown. Tell me to my face."

He crossed the distance between us. There were only two feet between us now. I could see the scar above his left eyebrow and the flecks of copper in his irises. His wolf rumbled. It was low and involuntary, vibrating through the bond like a bass note I felt in my teeth. His hand shot to the windowsill behind him as if the floor had tilted.

"Leave." His voice was gravel and broken glass. "Now. Before I..."

He stopped.

"Before you what?"

His throat worked. His eyes dropped to my mouth for one fraction of a second, and the bond between us screamed so loud I couldn’t breathe.

Then he said the strangest thing.

"Forgive me."

It was so quiet I almost missed it. He was already turning away before the words finished landing. His back was to me, his shoulders were a wall, and his hands were white-knuckled on the windowsill.

I stood there with those two words burning a hole through my chest. Forgive me. It wasn't an apology for the past. It was an apology for the future.

I left. I didn't leave because he told me to. I left because I had gotten an answer far worse than the one I came looking for.

The corridor stretched ahead of me, long and cold. I passed the kitchen where I had spent nine years becoming invisible. I passed the omega quarters where Mama Sira was waiting with the borrowed blue dress. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever worn, meant for a ceremony that was starting to feel like my own funeral.

I stopped at the window at the end of the hall.

Below, in the courtyard, servants were unloading a trunk from the last Ember Fang vehicle. It was long and white. They carried it with the reverence reserved for something sacred.

It was a dress. It was made of white silk, with silver thread catching the afternoon sun.

A Luna’s dress.

They carried it through the east corridor doors, past the guest quarters, and toward the room at the end of the hall where vanilla and jasmine still hung in the air like a verdict.

They were walking toward Vanessa Drake’s room.

They were not here for diplomacy. They were here for a wedding.

And it was not mine.

END OF CHAPTER 1