Chapter One

I sat tapping my fingers on the table, humming softly to myself. I suddenly heard the creak of the door. I stopped humming and turned to look.

It was Nell, my hairdresser. “Miss Seraphina, the moon is at its peak. Everyone is waiting.” She said softly.

A smile bloomed across my lips. I tucked a loose strand of hair behind my ear and dusted powder on my face. I took one last look at myself in the mirror and smiled.

I got up and followed her to the amphitheatre where both the Ashwood and Ironveil packs were already waiting.

I saw my father and Aiden, my brother, who gave me a warm smile from across the aisle.

Then I saw Caelum on the dais and my eyes lit up. But he looked odd. His hands were steady, his face devoid of emotion and his head tilted down without a single glance at me.

He's just nervous, I told myself. Or maybe ceremony traditions. The Alpha doesn't meet his mate's eyes until the ritual calls for it.

I started up the eleven stone steps. My legs felt strange beneath me, like my own body wasn't entirely convinced this was really happening.

I reached the top step. My pulse was so loud I could hear it in my own ears.

I stood across from him, close enough to feel the warmth coming off his skin, close enough to see the muscle ticking once in his jaw.

Something was different about him but I just couldn't name it. His scent was almost right but it still felt off.

Maybe, it's because I'm nervous. I told myself.

The Moon Goddess stepped forward between us. The murmuring crowd fell silent.

"We gather beneath the eyes of the Moon Goddess," she began. "In witness of a bond she herself has chosen to forge. Two packs, two bloodlines, joined by the oldest law any of us answer to."

I don't remember most of what followed. I only remember my own heartbeat, loud enough I was certain the front row could hear it.

The Moon Goddess turned to him and lifted the ceremonial blade from its stand.

"Alpha Caelum Voss. Speak the words. Bind this union before your people and hers, and before the ancestors who watch from beyond the veil."

This was it. I'll finally prove everyone wrong when he says these five words. I felt my own pulse climb into my throat.

Caelum opened his mouth and paused for a moment.

He didn't say them.

What came out instead was five words I will hear for the rest of my life, no matter how old I get and how far from that dais I run.

"I reject you as mine.”

The words didn't echo. They dropped into the center of that stone amphitheater like stones into still water.

A collective gasp rippled through the Ashwood side of the grounds. I saw my father go rigid in his seat. Beside him, Aiden looked like he'd been struck across the face.

For a second I genuinely didn't process it. My brain just stalled. I actually thought I'd misheard him. I couldn't believe my ears.

I laughed inside for a second. I actually laughed.

"C...a...e...l...u...m." I said his name in a low, shaky voice.

"I, Caelum Voss, reject Seraphina Ashwood, as my mate.." He said it again, still sturdy and composed, like he was reciting pack law and not tearing something living out of my chest.

The whole amphitheater went silent.

The Ashwood and Ironveil packs were present to witness the most humiliating moment of my life.

All eyes were on me. My hands trembled and all of a sudden my posture became rigid. My lips were pressed against each other while my mind was still trying to register what had just happened.

Then I saw his face. He wasn't kidding.

“It is done." He still wasn't looking at me. His eyes were fixed on someone else entirely and it didn't take me up to two seconds to know who that was.

Lyra Dane.

Front row. Spine straight. Hands folded in her lap. She looked so composed, so confident, like she had been waiting for this exact moment her entire life.

The electric feeling I had felt the first time I met Caelum? That bond? It shattered. It felt like a limb being ripped violently from my chest. The air changed and my breath stopped.

My knees buckled right there on the dais while cold sweat ran down my back. I was in agony, but there was no visible wound to show for it.

“To secure our northern borders,” Caelum continued, still composed like he was reading a weather report. “I claim Lyra Dane of the Dane Pack as my chosen mate, effective this day.”

I could hear everyone from the Ashwood Pack gasp and whisper.

I held back the tears in front of both packs. In front of the man who had spent three months convincing me I was worth choosing.

All I wanted was to scream. To demand an explanation. But I didn't.

He turned and started walking away while his cloak swept the steps. He never looked back, not one glance of apology or pity. Nor a flicker of regret across his face.

I held my spine straight down all eleven steps. I kept my chin level. My eyes forward.

I refused to let Ironveil watch me break.

We left Ironveil’s territory and that was when I broke. In the backseat of my father's truck.

My father wrapped his arms around me before I even realized I was falling apart. My face buried in the heavy wool of his coat and then an ugly violent sob burst out my throat.

Three whole months of stolen evenings and promises I never forced him to make. And now it has dissolved into something hot and bitter that I don't even have a name for yet.

"I'll kill him." Aiden's voice from the front seat. Low.

"Drive the truck, Aiden." My father said steadily.

My father patted my head and my mind went back to the time Caelum had stroked my hair.

Three months ago, I had made peace with the fact I would never find my fated mate. I was a lowborn wolf and I just knew some things weren't meant for someone like me.

Then during the pack meeting between Ashwood and Ironveil. I saw him. Yes, I saw Alpha Caelum. He kept glancing and smiling at me.

I instantly felt the electric feeling I hear in the stories told by my mother that you feel when you see your fated mate.

He was tall, broad shouldered, carved out of something colder and harder than the rest of us. Mother's used his name to make their pups behave.

There were a lot of things said about him but nothing prepared me for the moment his eyes lifted and found mine from forty feet away. My hands started fidgeting and I kept checking my surrounding.

“Mate” I heard someone call out to me. I turned slowly then I felt a pull so sharp. My body went stiff and my pulse kept roaring.

"You're Ashwood," he said. It was most definitely not a question.

"You're rejecting me already?" The words left my mouth before I'd thought them through.

Something shifted in his expression. Not quite a smile. Close enough that my stomach dropped anyway.

"I didn't say that."

My hands relaxed and I let out a deep breath. And that was how it started. Four sentences that was all it took.

Two weeks later, he was giving excuses to come see me in the Ashwood territory. Three times in one week and it was dressed up like pack business.

He could fool anyone but most definitely not my father. He wasn't soft, he was still cold but with me, something in him unclenched.

He always listened carefully when I talked about midwifery and caring for pack mothers who never got the attention they deserved because everyone thought lowborn pregnancy didn't matter.

"They matter," he said once, voice rough but with a soft smile."You matter.”

My eyes softened.

One evening at the border while the sun dropped behind the tree line, he said something low.

"I wasn't looking for this. I didn't think I had room for it."

He reached over and tucked a loose strand of hair behind my ear.

All I could feel was the gentleness of it. It felt like a grand gesture to me.

But now I know better. That should have been my first warning. I didn't take it as one.

I should have. Because three weeks later, kneeling over a basin in my father's house, I found out that Caelum Voss hadn't just left me with a shattered bond and broken heart.

He'd left me with his heir.