第2章

Adeline pursed her lips.

"Cassia, you don't have to do this. Nobody's going to laugh at you."

Contempt flashed through Kieran's eyes.

"Don't worry, Cassia. For your sister's sake, if no one ever takes you, we'll still take you in."

My father's frown pulled tighter.

They all thought I was talking out of temper, scraping together whatever dignity I had left.

But from the moment Adeline said yes, I knew that even if I had wanted Kieran, I could never have taken him.

My mother was the mate the Moon Goddess chose for my father.

She pulled at him in a way he could not resist, and he hated that the choice had been made for him, so he came to dislike her for it.

My mother was a proud wolf. She could not bring herself to bow and please anyone, so she kept everything shut inside.

She died not long after I was born.

Adeline was born to my father's second mate.

That one he had courted himself, and the two of them were happy.

From the day Adeline was born, he was hard on her.

He hired six tutors and demanded that she excel at everything, and even when she was injured or sick, her daily training was never shortened.

With me it was different. He always said I had lost my mother when I was too young.

He could not bear to see me suffer even a little, so he forbade me to learn anything. All I had to do was be happy.

Everyone said he spoiled me and treated Adeline too harshly.

But only I knew the truth. He was raising me to be useless so that the heir he had chosen would look brilliant beside me.

So whatever Adeline truly wanted, he would never give to me.

I let my eyes drift over the faces in the hall, and stopped on Kieran's brother.

"Damian, will you be my mate?"

Before he could answer, Adeline burst out laughing.

"Damian is one of the heirs to the Brightvale pack. You can't do a single thing. What makes you think he'd take you as his mate?"

Kieran sneered along with her, "Don't humiliate yourself. My brother doesn't collect garbage."

Whatever my faults, it was not for Kieran, an outsider, to list them.

My father spoke up quickly to stop it. "Adeline, don't talk about your sister that way.

"Kieran, do not think that being about to become my daughter's mate gives you the run of my hall."

The words were a warning, but the look he gave Adeline was pure tenderness.

By the time he turned back to me, his face was calm again.

"Your sister's words are harsh, but they are also true. Don't push for something that..."

But before he could finish, a voice cut him off.

"I will."

Damian, who had kept his head down and said nothing all this time, finally spoke. "I will take Cassia as my mate."

The whole hall went still.

Every wolf knew I was lazy and useless, without a single survival skill, and they all thought I would only drag Damian down.

Even his own father, the Alpha of Brightvale, forgot we were standing right there and rushed to talk him out of it.

"Damian, look at her clearly. That woman has nothing but a pretty face. How can you choose her?

"You should take someone like Adeline as your mate."

But Damian was perfectly calm.

"I want only Cassia."

"They both want it, so we elders should not stand in their way!"

While the Alpha of Brightvale had not yet refused outright, my father hurried to seal it.

Damian was the one he had wanted all along, and since Adeline did not want him, handing him to me was better than letting an outsider have him.

The Alpha of Brightvale flushed red, but he knew this was not the moment for a fight.

He had no choice but to swallow it and agree.

Both mating ceremonies were set for the middle of the following month.

My father took Adeline and me back to our pack.

On the way out, Adeline slammed her shoulder into mine.

"You think mating with Damian makes you something? You'll never match me, not in this whole life!"

I was not angry. I smiled instead.

The harder she pushed, the more it showed she was rattled.

In my last life she had chosen Damian too, and Damian had refused her flat.

Even when his father forced him to take her, he left for the battlefield on the day of the ceremony.

The sad part was that he would die out there, sold out by one of his own men.

She thought I would end up exactly where she had. Damian falls, Brightvale calls me cursed, I get shipped back to Dawnlight and spend my life with my head down.

What she did not know was that I had come back too, and I was not going to let Damian die.