Chapter 1

SOPHIA'S POV

The morning of my engagement arrived quietly, though nothing about how I felt matched the stillness outside my window.

I sat on my bed while Leah rummaged through my closet, pulling hangers aside with the brisk efficiency of someone who'd clearly appointed herself in charge of the day.

"I can't believe this is happening," I whispered, watching my own hands twist together in my lap. "I've wanted this for years, and now that it's here, I don't know what to do with myself."

Leah turned around, a dress half-pulled from its hanger. "What are you talking about, sis? You're getting engaged to the Alpha. This is what every wolf dreams of."

"I know. I just didn't expect it to feel like this," I said, the words coming out smaller than I meant them to. "What if I make a mistake today?"

"What kind of mistake could you possibly make?" Leah pulled a blue gown free, holding it out at arm's length to inspect it. "This one, or the gold?"

"I don't care, Leah. Either," I said, too distracted by my own thoughts to care much about fabric.

"Fine. Blue, then." She held it up against the light streaming through the window. "It's about love, and it's about duty. Father made the arrangements. If Alpha Blake didn't want to marry you, none of this would be happening. Be grateful, sis."

"But what if Blake isn't ready either? What if he's only doing this because Father arranged it?" I asked, unable to keep the doubt from creeping into my voice.

"Stop being so dramatic. He loves you." Leah rolled her eyes, tossing the dress across the foot of the bed. "And even if some part of him wasn't ready, it wouldn't matter. You're his mate. You have a duty to this pack, same as the rest of us."

"That's easy for you to say. You're not the one standing at the altar in an hour."

"No, but I'd trade places with you in a heartbeat." Leah laughed, the sound light and careless. "Now stop overthinking and try this on before I lose my patience."

I opened my mouth to argue, but the door swung open before I could get another word out, and the temperature in the room seemed to drop the instant Amanda stepped through it.

"You're not fit to marry Alpha Blake," Amanda spat, stepping in and looking me over from head to toe like I was something she'd found tracked in on the bottom of a shoe. "You're nothing but a worthless mongrel. You don't deserve to be his mate."

"I'm sorry I'm not good enough for you, Amanda," I said, my voice shaking, refusing to let the tears fall in front of her. "But I didn't ask for this. Father made the arrangement without asking me a single thing."

"Your opinion doesn't matter." Amanda snorted, waving a dismissive hand in my direction. "You're a wolf. You do what's best for the pack."

"Mom, that's enough." Leah stepped between us, her eyes flashing gold at the edges, a warning that even her mother seemed to register. "You're not helping."

"I'm only telling her the truth," Amanda said, unbothered.

"Then tell it somewhere else."

Amanda left without another word, the door clicking shut behind her with more force than necessary.

"Don't listen to her, sis," Leah said, softer now, crossing back to sit beside me on the bed. "You've always been good for Alpha Blake. Just believe in yourself. You two love each other. Trust that."

"Thank you, Leah. I don't know what I'd do without you," I said, and in that moment, I meant it completely.

"You'd probably still be standing here in your pajamas," she teased, pulling me up by the wrist. "Come on. Let's get you dressed. You're going to make a beautiful bride."

A few minutes later, they were gone, and the house had fallen into the particular quiet that comes before something irreversible.

"Ready?" my mother asked, waiting at the bottom of the stairs, her hand already extended toward mine.

"No," I admitted, taking it anyway. "But let's go anyway."

She squeezed my hand. "That's usually how it works."

The clearing was full by the time we arrived, every face turned toward the makeshift altar where Blake stood waiting. I walked down the aisle toward him, my eyes searching his the whole way, and what I found there stopped me cold. His eyes were cold. Distant. Nothing like the eyes I remembered.

"Alpha Blake," I said softly, once I'd reached him.

"Hello, Sophia," he replied, curt, like I was a stranger he was meeting for the first time.

"Is something wrong?" I asked quietly, searching his face for some explanation.

He didn't answer. He turned to the gathered pack instead, and I was left standing there beside him, still waiting.

"Thank you all for coming to witness the engagement of Sophia and myself," he said, his voice carrying easily over the crowd.

"However," he continued, his tone shifting into something formal and rehearsed, "I've come to a difficult decision. As Alpha of the Night Walker pack, it's my duty to secure our future. And so, I'm breaking off my engagement to Sophia."

"Blake, what are you saying?" My heart dropped straight through the floor of the world. "Is this some kind of joke?"

He didn't answer that either. He turned back to the crowd. "I've chosen Leah, Sophia's stepsister, as my mate instead," he announced, and the clearing erupted into murmurs around me.

"Leah?" My knees buckled beneath me. "You're choosing Leah? Blake, look at me. Tell me this isn't real."

He wouldn't look at me.

I found her a few feet away, her shock already melting into a small, satisfied smile. I remembered her hissing at her mother months earlier, a memory I hadn't understood then and understood perfectly now. "Mother, I want Alpha Blake. He has everything I want. Do something."

"I'm sorry, Sophia," Blake said, his voice softening at last, as though that might undo any of it. "This is for the good of the pack. You understand."

"Do I?" My voice cracked, the anger finally breaking through the shock. "Because all I understand right now is that you're standing here, in front of everyone who has ever known me, choosing the girl who has spent her whole life trying to take everything I have."

He flinched, but he didn't take it back.

My mother reached me then, her hand landing gently on my shoulder. "I'm so sorry, sweetheart," she whispered.

"Why?" I asked her, my face buried in her shoulder, my whole body shaking. "Why would he do this to me, in front of everyone, like I meant nothing at all?"

"I don't know, sweetheart," she said, holding me tighter. "But we'll get through it. I promise you."

"Promise?"

"I promise."

I nodded. She was the one thing I still had.

Meanwhile, for days I barely left my room. When Leah knocked once, just to ask if I wanted tea, I told her to leave.

"Sophia, please, just let me in. You haven't eaten for days, I have tea for you," she'd said through the door, her voice muffled by the wood between us.

"Go away, Leah. I don't want tea. I don't want anything from you," I called back, curled beneath the blankets and in no state to see anyone.

She left, and some small, ugly part of me hated her for it.

"You have to eat something," my mother said one morning, setting a plate in front of me and sitting on the edge of the bed. "You have to keep living, sweetheart, even when it doesn't feel like it."

"How?" I asked her, staring at the untouched food. "How do I keep living in a place where every single person watched him choose her over me?"

"One day at a time," she said. "That's all any of us can do."

"You don't have to stay here," my mother said that night, watching me from the doorway of my room, the hallway light casting her in silhouette. "Not if it's killing you a little more every day."

"Where would I even go? This is the only pack I've ever known."

"I don't know," she admitted, coming to sit beside me. "But I know my daughter, and I know you were never going to survive long standing still in the middle of this wreckage, waiting for it to stop hurting on its own."

"So what, I just leave? Leave everything, leave you?" I asked, my voice unsteady at the thought.

"You leave the parts that are killing you," she said. "Not me. Never me."

"And if it doesn't work? If I get out there and it's worse?"

"Then you come home. But you don't find out sitting in this room."

I lay awake long after she'd gone, turning the question over and over in the dark, and by morning it wasn't a question anymore.

"I'm leaving," I told her at breakfast, before I could talk myself out of it.

"Then go," she said, reaching across the table for my hand, her grip firm despite the tears in her eyes. "Call me the second you land, wherever that ends up being."

"I will. I promise."

I didn't know yet where, or how, or what would be left of me by the time I got there. I only knew I couldn't build it here.