Chapter 1

“Fill in the mate's name and hand the form to the registrar.” Adrian Blackwood tapped one knuckle against the desk, then checked his phone for the third time in less than a minute. Claire's name kept flashing across the screen, and with every missed call, the line between his brows deepened. “It isn't complicated, Ivy.”

No, it wasn't.

I held the pen over the blank marked REGISTERED MATE, but I didn't write my name as I had in my first life.

Back then, I'd thought the form was the last step between me and everything I'd ever wanted. Once the registration cleared and Adrian marked me at the full-moon ceremony, I would become the future Luna of Black River Pack. We would build a life together in Blackwood Manor, and the mate bond would finally mean as much to him as it had always meant to me.

We hadn't even made it ten minutes past the council hall before Claire saw the public marriage notice. Her final text landed on Adrian's phone: [Congratulations. I won't stand in your way.]

Then she switched off her phone and left Black River without telling anyone where she was going. Adrian abandoned our bonding dinner to search for her.

Two days later, during the worst blizzard Black River had seen in decades, rescue crews found Claire's car buried in snow on North Ridge. She had tried to cross the mountain alone after running away, and by the time they reached her, she was already dead.

Adrian decided my insistence on marrying him had driven away the childhood friend he'd known all his life. He still marked me to satisfy his family, but after that, he never smiled at me again. Years of silence wore down my wolf, then my body. When I finally died in a private clinic room, he didn't bother to cross the hall.

“Ivy, I need to go.” Adrian slipped his phone into his pocket, speaking with the easy certainty of a man who had never imagined I might refuse him anything. “Claire's having another episode from the silver poisoning. You're not going to make this difficult over someone who's sick, are you?”

Adrian and Claire had grown up on neighboring estates. He said she was like a younger sister, someone who had been part of his life for too long to ignore. It hadn't mattered whether Adrian and I were eating dinner, discussing our ceremony, or lying in bed. One call from Claire, and he was gone.

“Go,” I said. “I'll turn in the paperwork.”

He froze, clearly caught off guard. He must have arrived prepared for tears, accusations, and the same tired argument we'd had a hundred times. After a moment, his expression softened, and he bent to kiss my forehead like I was a child who had finally learned how to behave.

“Plan the ceremony and the suite any way you want. Once Claire's stable, I'll make it up to you.”

The door shut behind him.

I turned to the final page. Adrian had already signed the Alpha heir authorization, leaving every other field blank because he trusted me to finish it. Beside his signature, I carefully wrote another woman's name.

Claire Morris.

The pack registrar checked the form twice before pressing the Black River Council seal into the paper. “Registration becomes binding after the ten-day public review. Are you sure you don't want to look this over one more time?”

“I'm sure.”

Under pack law, an Alpha heir's registered mate gained far more than a marriage certificate. She received access to the family estate, authority over medical decisions, and the right to claim the Luna seat when he inherited. Adrian had handed me a signed blank form because the possibility of losing me had never crossed his mind.

I slid the documents back to the registrar and opened the email that had been waiting on my phone for three days.

[NORTH AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF LYCAN GENETICS]

[Final admission offer: Bloodline Stability Initiative. Please confirm that you can report to the Rocky Mountain Research Territory within ten days.]

In my first life, I had turned down the position for Adrian.

This time, I tapped [ACCEPT OFFER].

Ten days. That was all I had left in Black River.