The Alpha's Greatest Mistake

Three years into her marriage, Seraphina Vale still set the table for two and ate alone. Damien Blackthorn, Alpha of the Blackthorn Pack, had everything the werewolf kingdom admired: money, looks, a wolf so strong that rooms went quiet when he walked in. What he didn't have was a wife he was proud of. Everyone knew Seraphina had no wolf. No gift, no famous family, nothing to show for herself. In a world that measured people by strength, she was the Luna nobody wanted to look at.

Damien never let her forget it.

"You should be grateful," he'd say, not even glancing up from his phone. "Any other Alpha would've sent you home before the wedding."

And she had been grateful. That was the embarrassing part. She'd believed that if she was patient enough, kind enough, he'd come around. When people whispered about other women, she called it gossip. When she smelled perfume on his jackets, she sent them to the cleaner.

Tonight was the royal banquet, the biggest night of the Blackthorn year. Seraphina stood at her mirror in a silver dress, fighting with an earring clasp, when Vivienne appeared in the doorway.

"You look gorgeous."

"Thanks."

Vivienne leaned on the frame and watched her. "You're doing the thing again."

"What thing?"

"The 'I'm fine' face."

"I am fine."

"Seraphina. He embarrassed you in front of half the council last week. He hasn't touched you in months. You really think he's been faithful?"

"He's my husband."

"And you deserve better than him!"

A woman's laugh came through the wall, from Damien's dressing room next door. Low, giggly, much too comfortable.

Both of them went still.

"Please tell me that's not what I think it is," Vivienne whispered.

Seraphina didn't answer. She didn't recognize the voice. Another woman, she told herself. Just another one. She'd always known there would be.

"Give me your phone."

"What? Why?"

"Just give it to me."

Vivienne handed it over. Seraphina opened the camera, hit record, and eased the connecting door open an inch.

Damien was in there. So was a woman with her back to the door, hair loose, wearing one of Seraphina's own robes.

Then the woman turned her head.

Isolde.

Her little sister. Isolde, who had hugged her that morning and told her to have fun tonight.

The phone almost slipped from Seraphina's hand. The room seemed to tilt, and for a second she forgot how to breathe. Her fingers shook so badly the video would be a mess, but she kept recording.

"What if she finds out?" Isolde said.

Damien laughed. "Finds out what? She can't do anything. She's wolfless."

"She's still your wife."

"Not after tonight." He pulled Isolde closer. "I'll ask the elders to end it after the banquet. She's useless, she can't give me an heir, and once she's gone, you'll be Luna."

"And they'll agree?"

"They will once they hear what she really is."

Seraphina's brow creased. What she really is?

"Honestly," Damien went on, sounding bored, "I only married her because her family owed mine. I never loved her. Not once."

She stopped the recording and shut the door very quietly.

Back in the bedroom, Vivienne was whispering something furious, but Seraphina caught only half of it. She was thinking about three years of dinners alone. About every time she'd defended him to people who tried to warn her. About Isolde crying on her shoulder after every failed relationship.

"Tell me what we're doing," Vivienne said. "Because I will happily wreck his bedroom."

Seraphina almost laughed. "We're going to the banquet."

"You've lost your mind."

"Maybe." She wiped her face with the back of her hand. "He wants to shame me in front of the whole kingdom tonight. I'm not giving him the show."

"And Isolde?"

"Let her enjoy it."

She turned back to the mirror and finally got the earring in.

That's when her reflection flickered.

A thin line of silver light ran under her skin, like moonlight through water. Seraphina froze. In all her twenty-six years, nothing like this had ever happened to her.

Every wolf in the kingdom had a second voice living inside them, a wolf that spoke in their head and shared their body. Hers had always been silent. That was why they called her wolfless. As far as anyone knew, there was nothing in her to wake.

Now something deep in her chest turned over, slowly, like someone stirring in their sleep. Then a voice she had never heard said, clear as a bell:

Wake up, little Luna.

Seraphina grabbed the dresser. Vivienne rushed over. "What? What is it?"

"I heard a voice. Inside my head." Her own voice shook. "I think... I think that was her. My wolf."

"Your wolf? Seraphina, you don't have a wolf."

"I know."

The silver light faded. Her arm was just her arm again, her face in the mirror tired and ordinary. But the warmth in her chest stayed, steady and alive, and she knew it hadn't been her imagination.

Maybe I was never wolfless, she thought. Maybe she was just asleep.

Then she remembered what Damien had said. They will once they hear what she really is.

What was she?

Miles away, at the palace, a howl rolled across the valley. It wasn't an ordinary wolf's howl. It was deeper, older, and every wolf in the kingdom felt it in their bones. Guards stopped mid-sentence. The elders went quiet. The king set down his glass, and his face turned grey.

"Silver," he whispered. "That was a silver wolf. The royal bloodline, the one that was supposed to have died out centuries ago."

Nobody answered him.

Back at the Blackthorn estate, Damien was straightening his cufflinks, looking forward to the evening. He had no idea that the wife he was about to throw away had just become the most powerful woman in the kingdom.

And he had no idea that the old elder watching from the shadows had been waiting twenty-six years for this exact night.