Chapter 1

Sloane's POV

"You know your tits and your ass swing like a pendulum when you walk? Disgusting."

My face went hot.

"Sorry, ma'am." I tugged the hem down. "I'll watch it."

That was the trick I'd learned in two years of this. Apologize fast. Don't argue. Don't cry. Crying got your hours docked, and arguing got you fired.

As the former Alpha’s daughter, I never imagined I’d adapt to this new reality so quickly.

"Miss Colette's fiancé arrives tonight." Ella's gaze dragged down to my scuffed shoes and back up. "Get upstairs and clean the wardrobe room. I don't need you down here embarrassing the household."

She stepped closer,looked down at me with arrogant contempt, and said with pure malice:

"You wolfless types. If you want to keep your spot in this pack, be useful. Or do I have to spell out every task for you?"

Actually，I was already ten hours into my shift. My legs didn’t feel like legs anymore. But Ella knew I wouldn't argue. She knew I couldn't quit. I was a wolfless rogue with a five-year-old who had a cough that wouldn't clear, clinic bills that arrived every month with bigger numbers than the last, and a landlord who'd already threatened to change the locks twice.

Between the rent, the groceries, and Ellis's next round of treatment, this job was the only thing keeping us off the street.

So I picked up my supply caddy and went.

A cluster of omega maids huddled on the second-floor landing, polishing a stretch of railing they'd been working on since noon. They went quiet when I passed. Then started up again, louder, so I'd hear every word.

"Ella told you to clean the wardrobe. Why are you walking so slow? Waiting to catch a look at Miss Colette’s fiancé?"

“I’ve never even met the man,” I said. “I’m not that bored.”

She snorted. “Cut the act. He’s an Alpha King candidate. Gorgeous. Rich. From the Blackwell family. Don’t tell me you’ve never heard his name.”

Blackwell？

Wait，that surname—it was the same as my fated mate’s.

My fated mate had been exactly that kind of man. Top of his pack, top of his class, the one every girl on campus turned to watch walk by. But it couldn’t be. That guy only cared about power. He’d made that perfectly clear.

“What, stunned into silence?” Another maid laughed. “Don’t get ideas. You think a man like that would look twice at a single mother with a whelp? He’s got a whole pack’s worth of beautiful she-wolves lining up.”

I glanced at her smug expression and couldn’t be bothered to argue with them any longer. I had work to do, and I wasn’t about to waste time on this. So I simply turned and walked away.

The truth was, my family had always protected me, so I’d rarely had to deal with this kind of thing before.

Until two years ago, the disease that took my father came back for my brother. The doctors said it was hereditary, coded into the bloodline. My mother couldn't survive the grief. She followed him before the year was out.

My pack was down to just me, a wolfless, and an infant. When it went bankrupt, my uncle seized power and kicked me and my brother’s baby out. Now I’m reduced to cleaning other people’s walk-in closets. Funny how cruel fate can be.

Fine. Whatever. I wasn’t here to be liked. I was here to keep Ellis alive

At Ella’s request, I headed to the walk-in closet, only to discover it was bigger than the place I rented!

Racks of silk, chiffon, and cashmere hung in color-coded rows behind glass-fronted panels.

Dusting shelves. Folding silks. My back ached. I stopped for a second to press my fist against my spine and breathe.

The fiancé wasn't expected until dinner. I had time.

That's when I heard footsteps in the hallway. Two sets. One heavy and measured. One quick and bright.

"I never thought you’d actually come to our pack to watch the show."

Colette. I'd know that practiced sweetness anywhere, the voice she saved for people who mattered.

They were both early.

I pressed myself behind the longest rack of hanging dresses, back flat against the wall. Silk and chiffon brushed my bare arms. The gardenia thickened around me.

They entered the bedroom. Colette's heels clicked across the hardwood, her bright laugh carrying through the open doorway. If they stayed in there, if I was quiet, I could slip out through the wardrobe entrance while their backs were turned.

I edged toward the gap. Almost there.

"This is your first time in my pack, isn’t it? What do you think?"

"It’s fine."

Everything in my body went still.

I knew that voice.

Dorian Blackwell.

My first love. My fated mate.

I had spent an entire year listening to it. Against my hair during study hall. Low and laughing after he stole my notes. Going quiet, always quiet, right before he kissed me.

My hands shook. I pressed my eye to the gap between two silk dresses.

Colette was on his arm, her face tipped up, already performing. He was taller than I remembered. His jaw had sharpened, his shoulders filled out the lines of a dark suit. The boy I'd known was gone.

Then he turned toward the window, and I saw the profile I had traced with my fingertip on a courtyard bench when I was eighteen.

Shock came first. Then panic. Then—stupidly, painfully— a sharp little stab of something that was not joy. Because Dorian wasn’t just my first love.

The man who stood in front of my entire pack on my coming-of-age night and rejected me .

I pressed myself back against the wall, heart slamming so hard I could feel it in my throat. Of all the mansions in all the packs in the world, he had to walk into mine

And I was the one cleaning his fiancée’s closet， hiding behind her dresses, with nowhere to go.