Chapter 1: Broken

The gears wouldn't stop spinning, even after Roxie shut off the workbench light.

She wiped the last of the grease from her fingers, the rag doing little against the black stains embedded in her knuckles, stains that never fully came out, no matter how hard she scrubbed. Around her, the shop sat quiet: half-finished engines, a wall of hand tools she'd organized herself, the little brass bird she'd spent three nights building, its wings tucked and waiting in a cloth on the bench.

Her hands were shaking because today was the Claiming Ceremony.

She pressed a palm flat against her chest, willing her heart to slow down. It didn't listen. I hadn't listened to it all week.

Wolfless. The word had followed her since she was twelve years old, since the night every other pack kid her age had shifted under the full moon and she'd stayed exactly as she was, two legs, no fur, no fangs. Her father had looked at her like she'd broken something precious just by existing. 

Alpha Thomas Blackwood didn't have room in his pack, or his heart, for a daughter who couldn't shift. She'd spent years learning to disappear into corners, into workshops, into anything that kept her out of rooms where people compared her to what she wasn't.

But none of that mattered tonight.

Tonight, Jaxon was going to stand in front of the whole pack and claim her.

She let herself smile, just for a second, alone in the dim shop where no one could see her hope and call it foolish. Jaxon had never cared that she couldn't shift. He'd found her here, oil-stained and awkward, three years ago, and instead of turning away like everyone else, he'd sat down and asked her to teach him how an engine worked. He'd looked at her like she was interesting. Letting her know she was enough.

Tonight, he'd tell the pack that too.

She reached for the cloth on the bench, unwrapping the little mechanical bird with careful fingers. Its wings folded and unfolded on a hinge she'd sanded smooth over a dozen tries. She'd give it to him tonight, right before he said her name in front of everyone.

Roxie shrugged off her stained work jacket and pulled on the dress she'd hidden behind a stack of crates so her father wouldn't ask questions. As she smoothed the fabric down, her mind unbidden and drifted to her sister.

Chloe had shifted the night she turned eighteen, right on time, right on cue, like she did everything. Golden fur, their father's eyes shining with a pride he'd never once aimed at Roxie. Since then, Chloe had gotten everything she wanted, the front-row seat at pack meetings, the tailored clothes, the whispered praise that followed her through every hallway like perfume.

Roxie had gotten the workshop. The shadows. The grease.

It's fine, she told herself, tucking the bird into her bag. Let her have the pack's praise. I have Jaxon.

It was enough. It had to be enough.

She stepped out into the cool night air, the moon already climbing, and let herself hope, for the first time in years, that tonight would be the night everything would be different.

Jaxon's quarters sat at the edge of the pack house, quiet and half-lit, one window glowing gold against the dark. Roxie's steps quickened the closer she got, her chest tight with a nervous, giddy energy she hadn't felt since she was a kid waiting for snow.

The door wasn't fully closed. It never was, Jaxon always left it open.

She smiled, pushing it open slowly, wanting to surprise him.

"Jaxon, I…." She couldn't finish.

The words caught in her throat and died there.

Chloe was pressed against him, her hands fisted in his shirt, his mouth on hers like he'd been starving for it. The lamp light caught the curve of her sister's smile even mid-kiss, smug, satisfied, like she already knew she'd won something.

For one horrible second, Roxie's mind refused to understand what her eyes were showing her.

Then it hit her all at once, a physical blow that knocked the air clean out of her lungs. The mechanical bird in her bag suddenly felt like it weighed a hundred pounds.

"What is this?" Her voice came out cracked, too loud in the quiet room.

Jaxon and Chloe broke apart. Chloe, at least, had the decency to look startled for half a second before her expression smoothed into something far colder.

Jaxon didn't look guilty. That was the part that broke something loose in Roxie's chest. He looked irritated. Like she'd interrupted something, like she was the problem in the room instead of the girl he'd sworn, in whispered promises, that he'd claim tonight.

"Roxie." He said her name like she was a disturbance to the current event happening. "You shouldn't be here right now."

"I shouldn't…" She let out a broken, disbelieving laugh. "Jaxon, tonight is the ceremony. You said….you promised…"

"I know what I said." He raked a hand through his hair, not meeting her eyes. "But I can't do it. I can't claim you."

"Why?" The word tore out of her, raw and desperate.

"Because you're wolfless, Roxie!" His voice cracked like a whip through her skin. "You're a mechanic. Do you understand what it costs me if I stand in front of this pack and call you my mate? I lose your father's backing. I lost my Beta present acquiring position. I lose everything I've spent my whole life building toward." His jaw tightened. "I need power. Real power. You can't give me that."

Every word landed like a fist to the ribs. She'd known, distantly, that this was the world's opinion of her. She'd never once believed it was his.

"So all of it….everything you told me…." Her voice shook. "Was it a lie?"

He didn't answer. He didn't have to.

Chloe stepped forward with a wicked smirk, out of the shadow of his shoulder, moving with the unhurried confidence of someone who already won a contest even without contesting. Her smile was slow, victorious, cruel in a way Roxie had never seen turned on her directly before.

"Oh, big sister." Chloe let out a soft, mocking laugh, resting one hand lazily against her stomach. "Did you really think he'd choose *you*?"

Roxie's stomach dropped through the floor.

"And besides," Chloe said, voice honeyed with satisfaction, eyes locked on Roxie's shattered face, "I'm already carrying his baby. I'm the right mate for him.”