chapter 1 : The catch

Aina's POV

"You're working too hard for a man who barely looks at you."

Mira said that to me last week in the kitchens, half joking, and I laughed it off the way I always do. Tonight, standing in the hallway outside Dylan's study with my hand raised to knock, her words come back to me sharper than she ever meant them.

I lower my hand.

Two years. Two years of learning exactly how he takes his tea, mending his shirts myself instead of sending them to the seamstress because I know he likes the stitching close, keeping quiet when his mother criticizes the way I fill out a dress. I told myself none of it mattered as long as I kept trying. If I was patient enough, useful enough, maybe eventually he would look at me the way a husband is supposed to look at his wife.

I haven't felt that feeling in months, the itch under my skin that something is wrong, and tonight I finally let myself follow it instead of swallowing it down with the rest.

I didn't knock, I opened the door.

Dylan is not alone.

Seraphina sits on the edge of his desk like she belongs there, one hand still resting against his jaw, her whole body arranged the way mine has never learned to arrange itself, slim and easy and sure of its own welcome. She is everything the pack has spent my whole life holding up as the standard. Everything I am not.

Neither of them jumps apart. That's the part that breaks something loose in my chest. They don't even have the decency to look caught.

"Aina." Dylan says my name flat, like I'm the one who's interrupted something reasonable.

My voice shakes when I finally get words out, but I didn't cry. I promised myself years ago I wouldn't hand people that satisfaction. "How long?"

He doesn't answer right away. Seraphina slides off the desk, smooths her skirt, and walks past me without a single glance, like I'm furniture she's stepping around.

"Long enough," Dylan says once she's gone.

I want him to look ashamed, but he doesn't. He looks tired, the way you look tired of a chore you've been putting off.

"Why?" The word comes out smaller than I mean it to.

His eyes drop before he answers. Down my throat, past my shoulders, over the soft curve of my stomach I have spent two years trying to apologize for with quiet meals and looser dresses. He looks at my body the way you'd study a debt you can't pay off.

"You want to know why?" His voice hardens into something almost relieved, like he's been waiting for permission to finally say it out loud. "I never wanted this marriage, Aina. I endured it. My father arranged it before I had a say, and I told myself I'd make peace with it, but I can't keep pretending anymore." His gaze flicks down again, cold. "No one with real status chooses a woman who looks like you. Not really. Not when they have a choice."

The words land somewhere I don't have a name for, deeper than my chest.

I didn't get a chance to answer.

The door behind me is already open, and I heard footsteps, more than one set, the particular hush of people who've caught wind of something interesting happening in the Beta's private study. By the time I turn, three wolves stand in the hallway, and by the time we're both outside in the central grounds, word has spread like fire through dry grass. Dozens of faces. Then more than dozens.

Dylan doesn't lower his voice this time.

"I reject the bond," he announces, loud enough for the whole gathering crowd to hear, loud enough that there's no taking it back. "Two years of trying to want a woman who looks like she swallowed another wolf. I'm done pretending."

Laughter. It starts small and ugly near the back and spreads outward, the way it always does when a pack decides someone is safe to mock. I feel it crawl over every soft part of me I have spent two years trying to shrink, my hips, my arms, the curve of my stomach, like my body has been put on public display for a verdict everyone already decided on before tonight.

I didn't move, and I didn't let my face crack.

I have gotten so good at this, standing still while people take me apart with their eyes, that some small, exhausted part of me almost admires my own composure even as the rest of me is coming undone from the inside out.

Two years of trying. Two years of believing that if I was patient enough, kind enough, quiet enough, something would finally click into place and he would choose me the way I chose him every single day. All of it collapses in this one moment, in front of everyone, under a sky that doesn't care that my whole life just cracked open in a matter of minutes.

I feel the bond snap.

It isn't gentle. It isn't even really painful in the way I expected, more like a rope pulled taut for years finally giving out, a sudden absence where something used to sit heavy in my chest. Whatever thin, worn thread connected me to Dylan for two years simply isn't there anymore.

The crowd's laughter falters, just slightly, wolves glancing at each other like they felt something shift in the air too.

That's when I noticed him.

A tall figure steps forward at the edge of the gathering, and the whole clearing seems to quiet around him the way water goes still before something breaks the surface. Osborne Cliff. Future Alpha of Silver Crest. I have seen him from a distance before, at gatherings, always separate from the crowd, always watched like something dangerous that hasn't decided yet whether it will stay contained.

He isn't watching the crowd now.

He is watching me.

There's nothing careless in the way his eyes hold mine, no curiosity, no idle interest in the pack's latest scandal. It doesn't look like pity, and it doesn't look like judgment either. It looks like something inside him has gone completely, suddenly silent, the way a held breath finally releases after years of being trapped.

He doesn't laugh, and he doesn't look away either.

He just stares at me like I am the only steady thing left standing in a clearing full of noise, and for reasons I cannot begin to understand, I feel that stare settle over my broken, humiliated chest like the first quiet moment I've had all night.