Chapter 1

Faela

"You will marry our king and become his eleventh wife." My Alpha father told me.

I'd heard of the tyrant Conri — every one of his wives had been slaughtered by his own hands, torn to shreds.

Marrying him meant death.

And this… was the "birthday gift" I'd spent my entire eighteenth birthday foolishly waiting for.

I searched my father's face for some sign that this was a joke. His expression was flat. Bored, even.

Eighteen years of watching him pour every last drop of love onto my younger sister should have taught me better.

Vela got the soft voice, the hand on her head, the praise.

I got silence and an arranged death.

The bar was loud and smelled like sweat and cheap beer. I'd never set foot inside one before.

I was wearing the blue dress I'd put on that morning, hoping my father would notice. He hadn't. Now the hem was damp with something I'd spilled, and I didn't care.

I was on my fourth glass of something that burned all the way down. If I'd known alcohol tasted like this, I wouldn't have spent years pretending to be the perfect alpha's daughter. All that good posture and clean language, all those years of being invisible. For what? To be wrapped up and shipped off to die.

My best friend burst through the door twenty minutes later. She spotted me at the counter and her whole face lit up.

"Oh my Goddess." She grabbed both my arms. "Is it true? You're going to be the Luna Queen?"

I took another sip. "Queen doesn't mean much when the king goes through ten."

"Come on, Fae." She slid onto the stool beside me. "Those rumors are just gossip. Nobody's ever actually confirmed he killed anyone." She jabbed a finger at the TV above the bar. "And look at him. Just look."

I didn't want to look.

But the TV was already running the evening broadcast, and there he was. Dark hair. Green eyes that caught the studio light like something not entirely human. His face was sharp and clean, the kind of handsome that made your breath stop. But there was a weight behind it. Even through a screen, he pressed down on you.

My stomach dipped. I hated that it dipped.

The anchor's voice cut through the bar noise. "Three days ago, the King's tenth wife passed in what authorities have ruled an accidental death. Under the King's leadership, however, the realm's economy has seen unprecedented growth—"

My friend nudged my ribs. "See? Every girl in the realm has dreamed about one night with that man." She dropped her voice to a stage whisper. "Maybe those ten wives all died happy. In bed."

I reached back and smacked her shoulder. She was insane. She'd always been insane. Loud, sunny, completely unable to read a room. But her stubborn optimism had dragged me through some of the worst years of my life, and I loved her for it.

She leaned closer. Her eyes went soft. "Seriously, Fae. Think about it. Your father doesn't love you. He never has. Maybe leaving that house — even if it means walking into a monster's palace — is better than rotting in your father's shadow."

I stared into my glass.

She was right.

My father had never looked at me the way he looked at Vela. I was the daughter who couldn't shift, whose wolf had never once stirred. An omega at best, wolfless at worst.

Just like my mother, a woman my father had married for her family's wealth, then resented when she wouldn't hand it over. After she died, I became the leftover. The thing that reminded him of a bad deal.

Vela had a different mother, a woman who'd brought my father connections and power and everything he actually wanted. Vela was the golden child. I was the piece he could finally cash in.

I walked home alone.

I shouldn't have. My friend had offered to stay, but I told her I wanted the cold air. The streets were dark and the alcohol had softened everything at the edges.

I caught my reflection in a shop window as I passed. Maple-colored hair stuck to my flushed cheeks, amber eyes glassy from the drinks, the blue dress wrinkled from hours on a bar stool. I looked like a mess. I didn't care.

I didn't hear them until it was too late.

Three men stepped out of the shadows and spread across the sidewalk. Rogues. I could smell it on them. That sour, feral stench of wolves who lived without a pack.

I sobered up fast.

"Pretty girl," one of them said. His eyes dragged down my body. "Out alone?"

I stepped backward. My heel caught on the curb.

The biggest one moved first. He slammed me into the alley wall so hard my teeth cracked together. Stars burst across my vision. His hand closed around the chain at my throat and ripped.

The necklace snapped free.

My mother's necklace.

She'd placed it around my neck when I was five years old, the last year before she died. She'd held my hands in her thin fingers and said, "Never take this off, Faela. Promise me."

I lunged for it. "Give it back!"

The rogue dangled it above my head. The other two laughed.

I fought. I clawed and kicked and threw myself at them until my arms went numb and my lungs couldn't pull in enough air. But they were bigger than me. Stronger. Wolves who'd survived outside the packs, feral and mean.

I was pressed against the wall, my cheek against the cold, filthy surface. Rough hands shoved under my skirt, and a wave of nausea hit me—

Then a roar split the night open.

Not a sound. A force. It slammed through the alley, shaking in my ribs and teeth.

Every rogue dropped flat, faces pressed to stone, bodies crushed against the ground by something invisible and enormous.

They scrambled up and ran. Didn't look back.

I turned toward the mouth of the alley.

A wolf stood there. Massive. Black as the sky behind it, its shape blotting out the streetlight.

Nothing that large should have been able to move in silence, but I hadn't heard a single footstep.

My legs gave out. I slid down the wall and hit the cold ground, shaking. The skin at my throat stung, raw and open.

But the fear was gone.

Whatever this wolf was, it wasn't here to hurt me.

Then I saw them. Two green eyes in the darkness, watching me from behind the massive shape.

Almost glowing.