Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

SERA POV

"If you spill anything on the Alpha's carpet tonight, I will personally ensure you spend the next month cleaning the omega kennels."

"Noted," I said. "Truly. Life-changing advice."

Mrs. Holt's jaw tightened. The vein in her forehead pulsed, that familiar, angry little throb I'd watched for three years. It meant she was deciding whether to scream or walk away.

"The Mating Ball is the most important event on the pack calendar," she gritted her teeth. "Every unmated wolf in the territory will be in that hall tonight. The Alpha will be watching."

The Alpha doesn't even know I exist, I thought.

"The Alpha will be busy," I said instead, adjusting the tray on my hips. "I'll be in the passage."

"You'll be wherever I need you to be, Sera."

She said my name like a headache.

"Of course." I smiled and picked up my tray.

I'd known Kade Hawthorne once.

I was fifteen, hiding in my father's study, watching the young Alpha heir argue about pack law with Mathis Delacroix like he had every right to be there. 

He'd been twenty then. Tall, serious, with the kind of face that didn't know how to smile easily.

But he had smiled at me, once.

My father had been teaching him pack law that afternoon when I was caught listening from behind the bookshelf. Instead of calling me out, he tilted his head and said nothing. Just a small curve of his mouth.

I carried that smile through eight years of running.

Through nights so cold I thought I'd freeze.

I'd carried that smile like a talisman. Like proof that somewhere, in some other life, I'd been seen.

Three years ago, I'd come to Silvermoon.

Not because I wanted to. Because I had nowhere else to go. And some small, foolish part of me had thought... maybe he'd remember.

He didn't.

For three years, I'd scrubbed floors in his pack. Changed his sheets, served his meals. Walked past him in the hallways a hundred times.

He never looked at me, not once.

Good, I told myself. Invisibility keeps you alive.

***

The ballroom was three hundred wolves deep by nine o'clock. The walls carried music, laughter, glasses clinking, heels on hardwood. A low rumble of conversations layered over each other.

I wasn't supposed to be in the main hall. Maids stayed in the passages. But I'd lingered at the edge of the ballroom for just a moment, watching him across the crowd.

Kade Hawthorne looked exactly the way you'd expect a man with that much power to look. Tall, broad, dark hair. A face that didn't give anything away. He was standing near the center of the room, surrounded by wolves who wanted something from him.

He looked the same. Older, yes and harder.

Neva stirred restlessly and agitated inside me.

Don't, I told her. Not tonight.

She'd been held down for five years, ever since my father died. Surfacing would get us killed. But tonight she kept nudging at the edges of her cage, pacing, sniffing, looking for something I couldn't see.

Settle. We have a plan. We have a purpose. This isn't it.

She didn't listen. She never listened.

"Stop gawking and get back to work!" Mrs. Holt's voice cracked behind me.

I ducked into the passage, cheeks burning, embarrassed by my own hope.

***

I was in the service passage with a tray of dirty glasses and an apron stained with coffee.

Perfect. This was exactly where I needed to be.

Three years I'd hidden inside this pack. Scrubbed floors, folded linens, washed dishes, changed sheets. Kept my mouth shut and my eyes down until the wolves around me stopped seeing me. Most of them assumed I was wolfless. Some assumed I was simple. All of them assumed I wasn't worth the effort of a second glance.

Good. That was the point.

Neva.

She pressed against my ribs, harder this time, refusing to listen to whatever I was saying. 

I turned the corner and walked straight into his chest.

The tray hit him and the glasses flew. One shattered on the floor, another bounced off his shoulder. A third somehow went straight up and landed on my own head.

Champagne dripped down my temple, soaking into my hair. Fragments of the glass glittered around my feet.

I stood there, wet, looking up at him.

Kade.

Neva lunged.

One second she was pacing. The next she threw herself against the wall between us so hard I gasped.

Stop! What are you doing?

She didn't listen.

Mine, she snarled. He's mine.

He's not. He's the Alpha. He doesn't even know us.

He will, he has to.

Her claws raked the inside of my mind. Desperate in a way I'd never felt from her before.

"You're bleeding." He said.

I looked at my hand. A small cut from the glass. Blood beaded along the line, but it was already closing.

"I'm fine." I stood up, keeping my eyes fixed on the middle button of his jacket. "I'll send someone to replace the glasses. It won't happen again—"

"Look at me."

His voice hadn't changed, it was still calm. The kind of calm that meant he was used to being obeyed.

I looked up.

The bond hit like a door slamming shut. My chest first. Then my stomach. Then my fingers. One second I was in control. The next, something snapped into place between us — hot and completely unwanted. It pressed against my ribs like a second heartbeat, like a chain linking me to him, like something I couldn't break even if I tried.

Neva went absolutely still. Then she started pulling. Hard and desperate. I felt her claws raking the inside of my mind, trying to reach him, trying to cross the distance I'd spent five years building between us.

No!

But she didn't care. She'd found her mate, and nothing—nothing—was going to stop her from reaching him.

Kade's expression didn't change. But his hand moved. Just a twitch. His fingers curled toward his palm. Like he wanted to reach for me and stopped himself.

He felt it too.

He felt it.

For one heartbeat — one stupid, fragile heartbeat — I let myself believe.

Then his face went blank. Not the blank of control. The blank of someone who had already decided.

Footsteps. Multiple sets. Coming from the ballroom end of the passage.

I crouched, collected the last piece of glass, placed it on the tray, and stood up.

"I'll have someone see to the jacket," I said. "Enjoy your evening, Alpha."

I walked past him. Four steps. Five. Six.

"Your name."

I stopped.

Three different fake names ran through my head. Then I gave him the truth — the only thing that couldn't be traced.

I almost laughed. He didn't even know my name.

"Sera," I said without turning around, and kept walking.

I made it to the end of the passage before I heard his voice again.

"Wait."

My feet almost stopped.

I didn't wait. I turned the corner and nearly ran into Mrs. Holt.

"There you are." Her eyes dropped to my wet hair. The glass fragments on my tray and the stain spreading across my apron. "What have you done now?"

"I dropped a tray."

"Clearly." She grabbed my arm. "The Alpha is looking for someone named Sera. Do you know anything about that?"

My stomach dropped.

"No," I said. "No idea."

She narrowed her eyes. "He's coming this way. Get back to the ballroom and keep your mouth shut. Let me do the talking."

Mrs. Holt's fingers tightened around my arm as she steered me back into the ballroom.

And then— every conversation stopped.

My stomach tightened, so hard I could hardly breathe.

The pack members stepped aside and Alpha Kade walked straight toward me.

He stopped a few feet away with hundreds of eyes watching us.

I had no idea what was happening.

Then suddenly... His voice was so loud it cut through the ball room.

"I, Alpha Kade of Silver moon pack, reject you, Sera, as my mate." 

I forgot how to breathe.

The words hit me in waves, my vision blurred. 

And then the bond...the bond that had snapped into place between us just minutes ago. It tore. I felt it leave me.

My knees buckled. I had to catch myself on the tray I was still holding.

Someone near the front, a woman in silk, the Beta's wife, murmured loud enough for everyone to hear.

"What did she expect? A maid? Wolfless? She should've known her place."

A man laughed. "He probably didn't even recognize her," he said. "Can you imagine? The Alpha, mated to a servant?"

"She's not even a wolf," someone else whispered. "She's nothing."

The word hit me like a slap.

Nothing.

I'd been called worse. But coming from them, at this moment, with the bond still bleeding inside my chest...it landed differently.

A group of young wolves near the bar snickered openly. One of them that I recognized was Gamma's daughter. She looked me up and down like I was something she'd scraped off her shoe.

"She actually thought," she said, loud enough that everyone heard, "that the Alpha would want her?"

More laughter.

Kade's face remained utterly blank. Like he'd just swatted a fly. Like I was nothing.

"The bond is a mistake," he said, his voice carrying to every corner of the room. "Leave tonight. Don't come back.”