Chapter 1

Adrian’s phone vibrated before the silence between us had time to settle.

Adrian released my hand and answered it.

Serena’s weak, tearful voice carried through the speaker.

“Adrian, my wolf has gone quiet again. I can’t feel her. Am I dying?”

“Don’t be afraid. Stay at the healers’ lodge. I’m coming.”

He ended the call, snatched up the black cloak that bore the Alpha’s crest, and strode for the door.

“Evelyn, Serena’s condition is unstable. I have to go now. Can you notify the guests and the visiting pack delegates that tomorrow’s ceremony is canceled?”

The witch’s darkness burrowed another inch toward my heart as I watched him step across the threshold.

“What about the Elders?”

Adrian had removed three Elders from the council for publicly opposing our bond. In the assembly hall, he had snapped the silver staff that symbolized his succession and declared he would rather surrender his title than give me up.

Silvermoon had spent six months preparing for our ceremony.

Now I was expected to tell them that, on the eve of our marking ceremony, their Alpha had chosen a different woman.

Adrian’s hands stilled on the clasp of his cloak, but he did not turn around.

“Explain it for me. Please. You’re compassionate, Evelyn. You’re a healer. You understand better than anyone what it means for a wolf to be dying.”

He came back just long enough to kiss my forehead. His familiar cedar scent wrapped around me, warm and heart-wrenching.

“I know this is unfair to you,” he said. “But Serena and I grew up together. She left the pack at eighteen to study abroad, and now she’s come home alone and dying. I can’t let an old friend leave this world with one final wish unfulfilled.”

“Her wolf has less than three months. Once her treatment is over—or the Moon Goddess calls her home—she will no longer be my Luna. Then I’ll give you another ceremony—one grand enough that every pack in the kingdom will know you are the only Luna I ever truly chose.”

He sounded so certain. As though three months from now, he could place everything back exactly where it had been.

He did not know the curse had given me only seven days.

“Adrian.”

He paused at the door.

“I went into the Forbidden Forest to gather nightthorn,” I said. “I found the witch our pack exiled years ago.”

He turned, a crease forming between his brows. “Were you hurt?”

His phone vibrated again.

His gaze swept over my uninjured arms, and relief softened his face before he could notice the hand I kept hidden beneath my sleeve.

“If there’s no wound, that’s what matters. Tell me the rest when I get back.”

The door closed behind him.

I rolled up my sleeve. Black veins of magic had already snaked up my wrist and along my forearm.

I was the finest healer in Silvermoon. I could close wounds burned open by silver dust. I could pull a warrior back from the brink after wolfsbane poisoning, even when his heart was already failing.

But I could not undo a curse cast with a witch’s dying soul.

The woman had been banished from Silvermoon years ago for practicing blood magic. I found her dying in a silver trap while I was gathering nightthorn.

I had knelt to help her. She caught Adrian’s scent on me, realized I was the Alpha’s chosen mate, and seized my wrist. With her last breath, she laughed. “For Silvermoon’s Alpha, then. Over the next seven days, you will forget your lover piece by piece—his name, his scent, every time he held you. All of it.”

I spent the rest of the night alone, calling every guest and visiting pack delegate on the list.

“I’m sorry. Tomorrow’s marking ceremony has been canceled.”

The first time, my voice shook.

By the last, I felt nothing at all.

One Elder gave a humorless laugh. “The Alpha broke with his council for you, and now he no longer wants you?”

My fingers went cold around the phone. I did not defend myself.

After the final call, I dialed the healer-only line to the Northern Moonwitch Tower.

“My name is Evelyn Bennett, head healer of the Silvermoon Pack. I’ve been struck by a Love-Devouring Curse. I will offer my curse marks and everything I know of healing magic in exchange for sanctuary at the Tower.”

Silence answered me for several breaths. Then a calm male voice came through the line.

“The memories cannot be restored once they are taken. But we may be able to stop the curse from damaging your inner wolf. Reach the North within seven days. I’ll meet you at the border.”

When the call ended, I opened my healer’s journal and wrote three lines on the first page.

[I have been cursed. In seven days, I will forget Adrian Blackwood.]

[Adrian is the Alpha of Silvermoon. He is the man I love.]

[Our marking ceremony has been canceled. He intends to complete it with Serena Whitmore instead.]