Chapter 1

My phone buzzed.

Oscar Blackwood, Alpha of the Obsidian pack, texted, "You're really leaving?"

I looked up at the stage.

Liam was pinning the CEO badge on Isabelle himself.

The applause wouldn't stop, as if the Silver Moon Group owed everything it had to those two.

But ten years ago, neighboring packs had completely blockaded the Silver Moon Group's trade routes.

I was the one who kept going into human cities to find buyers for their ore, herbs, and furs. At our lowest point, I dodged rogues who wanted me dead and hid in run-down motels that reeked of every smell imaginable. I was so exhausted I slept sitting up against the wall.

I stayed because Silver Moon had once taken in my mother and me.

My mother was human, and I was a half-wolf who couldn't fully shift.

When I was little, we drifted from one pack's border to the next. We had no papers. When we got hurt, we were too scared to go to a hospital. At night, we didn't even have a room with a door that locked.

It was Silver Moon's old elder who gave us shelter for a while.

To repay that kindness, I started at the very bottom as a clerk.

When no one else would go to the human cities, I did.

I went to clients the purebred wolves were too proud to approach and begged each one for their business.

For ten years straight, my name was on every one of Silver Moon's biggest deals.

I thought ten years of that would finally earn me a place where I belonged.

I was fooling myself.

I looked down and texted back, "I'm sure."

Oscar texted back at once, "Obsidian's door has always been open to you. You'll have a place here in your own right. You won't have to prove to anyone that you're good enough."

My eyes stung.

"Elena."

Isabelle stepped into my path, with a glass in her hand. "Now that you've handed over the job, it's time to hand over the mining model, the client list, and the project license too, isn't it?"

"All the company files are in the office." I looked at her. "But the risk model and the client authorizations are registered under my own name. Under the founding agreement, Silver Moon's right to use them ends the moment I leave."

I'd started building that model before I ever joined Silver Moon.

The company supplied the mining data, and I kept refining the model. We'd signed only a limited-term license. Ownership was never transferred.

Back then, Silver Moon was flat broke, and nobody took those few pages of fine print seriously.

Now that the model was the heart of a $30 billion project, they'd simply assumed it belonged to Silver Moon too.

Isabelle's face darkened. "How dare you use the pack's project to threaten me?"

"The mine belongs to Silver Moon. The model belongs to me. Liam signed that agreement himself."

Liam walked over, his cold eyes settling on my face. "Transfer the license to Isabelle. She's family. I'm not letting her get shortchanged."

Isabelle was the daughter of Victor Hale, an outsider appointed as the pack's Beta.

She'd only come to Silver Moon after Liam's mother, Selena Ashford, married Victor. She had no Silver Moon blood and no real accomplishments.

If she wanted to stop being seen as the outsider stepdaughter, she had to get her hands on something that mattered.

And Liam needed someone running the company who would do exactly as she was told.

Over the past few years, clients had come to trust only me. When staff had problems, they came only to me.

In public, he called me his right hand. In private, he grew increasingly resentful of the respect I'd earned in the company without his help.

But that didn't mean I was going to hand her ten years of my life on a silver platter.

"If she wants a license, she can apply for one on her own merits."

Liam's eyes went dark. "Still don't know how to be grateful, do you?"

Three years ago, I'd shielded him from a rogue attack. After I healed, he'd hinted that if I was willing to be with him, he'd give me a position even higher than CEO.

I turned him down.

After that, the way he looked at me changed.

"Back then, you thought being young and pretty gave you the right to turn down an Alpha." He looked at my scar and gave a sudden, cold laugh. "What right do you have to be so proud now?"

So he hadn't forgotten.

He'd waited until he no longer wanted me, then punished me for humiliating him.

Suddenly I understood. Firing me wasn't just about keeping his stepsister happy.

He wanted to use Isabelle to take the project from me and prove that Silver Moon could take back anything it had given me whenever it wanted.

As long as I wanted to keep my mother under the pack's protection, sooner or later I'd cave and hand the clients and the model right back to him.

"Whether I have the right isn't up to you."

I turned to take my mother's hand. "Mom, let's go."

But my mother stayed right where she was.