The Enemy's Bride

At six years old, I lost my parents.

I still remember the night the wind carried screams through our home. The scent of blood and smoke. Little hands clutching my mother’s torn dress while the Silver Crescent warriors said “shh” and pulled me away. By morning, the only things left of my life were a necklace around my neck and a name I was too young to understand the weight of.

At twenty-one, I lost the only family I thought I had.

The Silver Crescent Pack raised me. They taught me how to bow, how to smile, how to carry myself like the future Luna I was supposed to become.

For fifteen years I was a good orphan. The grateful one. I memorized Alpha Lucien’s favorite tea, the way his jaw tightened when he was lying, the exact pitch of his voice when he said my name like I belonged to him.

Because everyone insisted he was my destiny. The Moon Goddess had paired us.

The elders had blessed it.

My entire life was a road paved straight to his side.

A week before our wedding, I overheard him and my best friend planning more than an affair.

The office was supposed to be just him in there. I’d gone there to see the man fated to become mine. But the rooms hid secrets better than people. Lucien’s laugh was low and familiar. Vivienne's was higher, reckless. “Once she’s banished, the pack will be ours,” she whispered. “No one will question a Luna who saves them from a broken wolf.”

They weren’t just planning betrayal. They were planning my banishment. My exile.

My death, if I was unlucky.

Instead of pleading for my place in a pack that no longer wanted me, I crossed into enemy territory and knocked on the door of Alpha Rowan Blackthorne.

The Blackthorne Pack. The monsters from bedtime stories. The man I’d been taught to hate before I even knew how to hate.

The man whose fiancee had betrayed him with my future husband.

If Lucien’s betrayal was a knife, Rowan’s was the wound it left behind.

When I opened the door, the warmth hit me first. Then his eyes. Silver, sharp, and older than any Alpha had a right to be. He looked at me like he already knew why I was there.

I made him one offer.

"Marry me."

His silver eyes searched mine, stripping me bare without touching my skin.

"You don't love me."

"No." The truth tasted like ash.

"You don't trust me."

"No."

"You came to bring trouble."

"Not yet." That was worse than the lie.

"Then why should I accept?"

Because I had nothing left. Because he had everything to lose.

Because desperation makes bargains out of broken people.

"Because I'm offering you something far more valuable than love."

His gaze sharpened, and for a second I saw the predator under the Alpha.

"And what's that?"

"A wife who never breaks her promises."

I was ready to make the wrong vow to the wrong man, with a ring that would chain me to an enemy.

I never expected my greatest mistake to lead me to the perfect match.