CHAPTER TWO

I still remembered the exact moment hope left my body.

The carriage that brought me to the Crimson Moon palace had been cold, but I had not felt it. My hands stayed folded tightly in my lap the entire journey, smoothing the simple contract dress again and again as if the fabric could hold my courage in place. The family who raised me had told me this marriage would protect what little honor we had left. They had smiled when they said the Alpha King of the Crimson Moon had agreed to the alliance. They had called it a new beginning. A future. A place where I would finally belong.

I believed them.

When the great doors of the palace opened, light spilled across the stone floor like a promise. I stepped into the hall with my heart beating too fast and my head held high. Torches lined the long walls. Wolves in fine clothing turned to watch me pass. Their eyes moved over my silver-white hair and simple dress with open curiosity and quiet judgment. At the far end of the raised platform stood Alpha King Kael Draven. Tall. Still. Black hair falling across his forehead. Golden eyes fixed on me without a single trace of welcome.

Selene Ravencroft stood beside him in a gown the color of fresh blood. She already looked as if she had always belonged at his side.

I walked the length of the hall on steady feet even though my legs felt hollow. When I reached the bottom of the steps, I lowered myself into the respectful bow I had practiced for weeks in front of a cracked mirror.

Kael did not tell me to rise.

His voice carried across the silent hall, calm and final, as if he were discussing the weather. “The contract has been fulfilled. The Ashwyn name has its peace. That is all this arrangement was ever worth.”

I lifted my head, confusion tightening around my ribs like a fist. “Alpha King… I was told I would stand as your Luna.”

A soft ripple of laughter moved through the gathered wolves. The sound scraped against my skin. Kael’s golden eyes stayed cold and distant.

“You were told what was necessary to make you walk through those doors,” he said. “I have no use for a weak omega at my side. Selene already holds the place you thought would be yours.”

The words struck harder than any physical blow. My lungs forgot how to work. The hall tilted slightly. I stared at him, waiting for the moment he would take it back, waiting for the cruel joke to end and the real ceremony to begin.

It did not end.

Kael descended one step. The full weight of his Alpha presence pressed down on me until my knees threatened to buckle. The air itself grew heavier. “From this day you will serve in this palace as a common servant. You will keep your eyes down. You will speak only when spoken to. You will remember that the only reason you still breathe under my roof is that killing you would break the treaty I signed.”

Selene’s soft laugh floated down from the platform, light and sharp. “She looks as if she might cry. How charming. I almost feel sorry for her.”

Kael’s gaze never left my face. There was no anger in his expression. Only boredom and absolute certainty. “Cry if you wish. It changes nothing. You are not my mate. You are not my Luna. You are a burden I was forced to accept. A living reminder of a political necessity. Do not make me regret allowing you to stay alive.”

Something inside my chest cracked open with a pain so clean it stole the last of my breath. The future I had carried all the way to these gates crumbled into dust between one heartbeat and the next. I had been given away like an object that had outlived its usefulness. I had been smiled at and lied to and delivered to a man who looked at me as if I were already trash on his floor.

I forced my voice to work even though it came out thin and broken. “I understand, Alpha King.”

“Do you?” He tilted his head slightly, studying me the way one might study a stain. “Then kneel.”

The hall watched in perfect silence as I sank to my knees on the cold stone. My contract dress spread around me like a mockery of the mating ceremony that would never happen. The fabric that had felt like hope only minutes earlier now felt like a costume for a fool. Kael looked down at me for a long moment, golden eyes unreadable, then turned away as if the sight of me had already grown boring.

“Take her to the servants’ quarters,” he ordered the nearest Beta. “Give her the lowest duties. If she complains, remind her what happens to omegas who forget their place.”

The Beta’s hand closed around my upper arm hard enough to bruise. As I was pulled to my feet and led from the hall, I caught one last glimpse of Kael returning to Selene’s side. He placed a hand on the small of her back with easy familiarity. He did not look back. Not even once.

That night I sat on the thin pallet in a room that smelled of dust, old soap, and other people’s quiet despair. The contract dress lay in a crumpled heap on the floor where I had dropped it. I pressed both hands over my mouth so the broken sounds rising in my throat would not escape into the hallway. Tears burned behind my eyes until I could no longer hold them. They fell silently onto the rough blanket, each one carrying a piece of the girl who had arrived believing she might be wanted.

I had entered the palace with a future carefully folded inside my chest.

I had left the great hall knowing I was nothing.

Outside my small window, the moon hung full and bright, indifferent to the ruin of one omega girl. Somewhere beyond the walls of this kingdom, other lives continued without pain. Mine had been reduced to a single truth Kael had spoken without hesitation or regret.

I was a burden.

And he would make certain I never forgot it.

A soft knock sounded at the door. Nia slipped inside with a cup of water and eyes already full of quiet pity. She did not ask questions. She simply sat beside me on the edge of the pallet while the tears I could no longer stop finally fell in silence. Her presence was the only warm thing in the room, yet even that warmth could not reach the frozen place inside my chest.

Neither of us knew that the worst days had only just begun.