The Day We Got Our Marriage License, His Childhood Friend Claimed I’d Been Sleeping Around for Years

I never thought I would be chosen.

Not me.

Not Lyra Ashveil, the girl nobody wanted, the daughter of a woman the pack never forgave, the omega who ate alone and walked alone and had learned, very early in life, that hoping for things only made the hurt worse when they didn't come.

But tonight was the Blood Moon Ceremony.

And even though I was broken, invisible, unwanted, I still allowed myself to hope.

The moon had turned red.

Not orange, not pink, not the soft blush colour of a normal autumn sky, angry red, like a wound split open across the night. It hung above the Ironveil Pack's ceremonial clearing like a warning nobody was reading.

I should have read it.

I was standing in a line with sixteen other unmated wolves, all of us dressed in white, all of us shivering, some from the cold, some from excitement, some from fear. The elders stood at the head of the circle with their torches and their chants, their voices rising and falling in an ancient rhythm that vibrated in your chest even when you couldn't make out the words.

Around us, the entire pack had gathered to watch.

Hundreds of wolves. Mothers clutching their children. Warriors standing with their arms folded. Elders with their sharp eyes moving slowly across our line, looking for signs.

I kept my eyes down.

I always kept my eyes down.

"Lyra." My best friend Sera appeared at my elbow from nowhere, grabbing my arm with both hands, her brown eyes wide with excitement. "Lyra, do you feel it? The pull? Does it feel like anything yet?"

"Sera, you're not supposed to be up here," I whispered.

"I know, I don't care." She squeezed my arm. "Tonight is your night. I can feel it. I have a feeling about tonight."

I almost laughed. "You have a feeling about everything."

"And I'm always right." She pressed something into my hand, a small smooth stone, warm from her pocket. She had given it to me when we were nine years old and told me it was lucky. I had carried it to every hard moment since. "You deserve this, Lyra. You deserve a mate who sees you. Don't you dare keep your eyes down tonight."

She slipped back into the crowd before the elders could see her.

I closed my fingers around the stone.

*Don't keep your eyes down.*

I lifted my chin.

And that was when everything changed.

The scent hit me first.

I didn't know how else to describe it. One moment I was standing in the cold, breathing in pine trees and torch smoke and the damp October earth. The next moment there was something else in the air cedar and dark winter rain and something warm underneath, something that reached into my chest and grabbed hold and pulled.

My wolf, who had spent twenty one years being quiet and still and small inside me, suddenly woke up.

She didn't just wake up.

She *roared.*

*Mate,* she said, and the word rang through my entire body like a bell struck hard. "Mate. Mate. Mate."

My heart was pounding so loud I could hear it.

My hands were shaking.

I turned my head slowly so slowly, as if some part of me already knew that what I was about to see would split my life into a before and after and I looked across the Ceremony Circle.

Damien Voss was staring straight at me.

Let me tell you about Damien Voss.

He was the Alpha of the Ironveil Pack. Twenty-five years old, and already the most feared wolf in the northern territories. There were five packs under the northern sky, and all five of them knew his name. Even the ones who hated him said it with respect.

He was tall, the kind of tall that made you aware of your own smallness. Dark hair, always slightly messy in a way that looked careless but probably wasn't. A jaw sharp enough to cut glass. And grey-green eyes that I had only ever seen from a distance, at pack gatherings where I stood at the back and tried not to be noticed.

Cold eyes, people said. Ruthless eyes. Alpha eyes that could make a grown warrior drop his gaze without a word being spoken.

Those eyes were on me right now.

And they were not cold.

They were shocked, maybe. Undone. Like something had reached inside Damien Voss and shaken him in a way that had never happened before, and the evidence of it was right there on his face for one raw, unguarded second.

He felt it too.

He felt it too, and the knowledge of that made my knees weak.

I started walking toward him.

I didn't decide to. My feet simply moved, pulled by something stronger than any decision I could make, and the crowd parted around me and I barely noticed, and my heart was so loud and the moon was so red and everything felt enormous and impossible and exactly right I stopped in front of him.

He was even more overwhelming up close. I had to tilt my head back to look at him. The scent of him wrapped around me like something I had been missing my entire life without knowing the name of it.

My wolf was singing.

I was shaking and smiling and trying not to cry, all at the same time.

"It's you," I whispered. Just that. Just two words, breathed out like a secret I had been keeping my whole life. "It's you."

He looked down at me.

That one raw, unguarded moment was still on his face flickering, fragile, and real. I wanted him to see me. Not the omega. Nor as the unwanted girl. *Me.* And for five seconds, standing under that red moon with hundreds of wolves watching, I felt like the most important person in the world.

Five seconds.

That was all I got

His jaw tightened.

It happened so fast. One moment he was looking at me like I was something that had cracked him open. The next, a wall came down behind his eyes thick and cold and total and the man who had looked at me like I mattered was simply gone.

Replaced by the Alpha.

He straightened to his full height. His chin lifted. His grey-green eyes moved deliberately, slowly, so everyone in that clearing could see exactly where he was looking to the far edge of the circle.

I turned to look without thinking.

Nadia Storme.

She was beautiful. Of course she was. Tall and elegant, with long dark hair and a white gown that looked like it had been made specifically for tonight. She was the daughter of the Storme Pack Alpha, one of the most powerful families in the region. She was everything I was not. Rich, ranked, wanted.

She was looking at Damien with an expression that wasn't quite a smile.

She already knew, I realized. She had known before she came here tonight.

I looked back at Damien.

He was already looking at me again.

And what I saw in his face turned my blood cold.

Not cruelty. I almost wish it had been cruel. Cruelty I could have been angry at. What I saw was worse than cruelty.

It was nothing.

He had decided. He had felt the bond between us, had looked at me and looked at Nadia, had weighed me against an alliance, against status, against everything I would never have and he had decided in the space of five seconds that I was not worth it.

He opened his mouth.

"I, Damien Voss, Alpha of the Ironveil Pack"

*No,* my wolf whimpered. "No, no, no"

"reject you, Lyra Ashveil, as my fated mate