Chapter 3

I learned too late what the marriage was really for.

There had been only one surviving heir in each of the last three generations of Blackwood Alphas. Adrian’s family wanted a Luna healthy enough to carry the next.

My parents couldn’t bear to put Celeste through a dangerous pregnancy.

Then they found me.

Blackthorn would get its heir. Silvercrest would keep its alliance. Celeste would keep the people who loved her.

There had been a place for me after all. Just not the one I had imagined.

Even Caleb had chosen her.

His father was the Ashfords’ groundskeeper. We had grown up together, slipping through the same back doors, flinching at the same sharp little voice.

Once, Celeste had made him kneel in the gravel to find an earring she hadn’t lost.

That evening, he held my hand behind the potting shed and told me he would make something of himself. He would earn his place in the guard, rise through the ranks, become someone no one could order to his knees.

“Then she’ll never touch you again,” he said.

He was Blackthorn’s Beta now.

He had stood close enough to catch me tonight.

In the hotel corridor, I stumbled and caught myself against the wall. The hem of my dress left a smear of cream on the polished floor.

I crouched to wipe it up.

An old reflex. My adoptive mother used to check behind me whenever I cleaned.

The more I rubbed, the worse it looked.

I stared at the stain until a tear dropped into it.

Outside, the air was cold. I walked to the apartment where I had lived with her because I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go.

The lock rejected my code.

I tried again, more slowly.

The door opened on a bald man with a heavy stomach. He looked at the dress, the blood, my bare shoulder.

“What the hell is wrong with you?”

“I used to—”

He shut the door.

I stood there for a while, then moved away.

It wasn’t my home anymore. The Ashford estate had never become one.

A stray dog barked as I passed. I gathered my skirt out of its reach and found an unlit recess behind a closed bakery.

There was a step. I sat on it carefully.

My head hurt less when I held it still.

I thought about a cup Celeste had thrown away when we were little. It had a chipped handle, but there were tiny gold stars painted around the rim. I liked them.

When she saw me using it, she snatched it back.

“Even my trash is too good for you.”

Adrian told her to stop being cruel. Then he turned to me, polite and serious.

“I’m sorry about her.”

Caleb saved his pocket money for two months and bought me a new one, with a princess painted on the side.

“You deserve nice things, Evie.”

I wondered where it had gone. Probably into a box when the landlord cleared the apartment.

A week before the wedding, I had seen Adrian holding Celeste.

“Whatever happens,” he told her, “I’m not going anywhere.”

Later, I asked him why he loved her when he knew how she treated people.

He didn’t pretend to misunderstand.

“She’s selfish. She’s spoiled. I know that better than anyone.” His voice softened. “Who’s going to look after her if I don’t?”

I had wanted to ask what all those little kindnesses to me had meant.

Now I thought I knew.

He hadn’t been choosing me. He had been cleaning up after her.

I had mistaken the apology for affection.

Caleb was harder to understand. He had talked about marrying me for years. Sometimes lightly, sometimes with a seriousness that made me look away.

But once, when I was returning a notebook to his room, I saw a page he had left open.

Celeste’s name was written at the top.

One day, I’ll be the one she has to look up to. She’ll beg me to stay. She’ll love me so much she won’t remember how to live without me.

The handwriting was his. I knew every stroke.

I closed the notebook and put it back exactly where I had found it.

And my parents—

Once, I heard my mother crying behind her bedroom door.

“Why couldn’t Celeste have been ours?”

She hated the sun-darkened skin I had inherited from no one she wanted to recognize. She hated the way I bent over my plate, the way I asked permission before sitting down.

My father would look at me and sigh.

“We’ll have to make the best of it.”

I kept trying to become something easier for them to love.

I practiced smiling until my cheeks hurt. I accepted Adrian’s coldness. When Caleb wanted an introduction to a visiting commander, I asked my father three times before he agreed.

Then Celeste framed me, and all the little things I had done vanished beneath one terrible thing I hadn’t.

I pressed my fingertips to my temple. They came away sticky.

A dull sickness rolled through my stomach.

Normally, my wolf would have started healing the wound by now. I reached inward again, toward the place she had always been.

For a moment, I felt her. Faint and frightened, pressed against the other side of my father’s seal.

I rested my hand over my chest.

“I know,” I whispered. “I’m sorry.”

My phone rang.

Dad.

In the six months since I moved into his house, he had almost never called me himself.

I answered.

“Who told you to leave?”

I watched a car pass at the end of the street. Its headlights left a pale streak across my vision.

“Celeste walks in and you walk out. What are people supposed to think? That she chased you away?”

I tried to swallow. My mouth had gone dry.

“Come back. She’s blaming herself for the wedding. If you hadn’t kept calling Adrian, none of this would have happened. She keeps asking for you. You’ll apologize and tell her she did nothing wrong.”

The phone felt heavy.

“Five minutes, Evelyn. Don’t disappoint me again.”

For once, I knew what to say.

“I’m not coming back.”

There was a silence.

I looked down at the torn skirt spread over the pavement. I had spent so long being careful with it.

“How long are you going to keep this up?” he demanded. “You’ve turned this family upside down. Do you have to destroy Celeste too?”

“Dad.” I shut my eyes. “Could you let my wolf out?”

“Not until you take responsibility.”

I nodded, though he couldn’t see me.

Of course.

A scrape sounded at his end, then Adrian’s voice came through.

“Evelyn Ashford, listen carefully. If anything happens to Celeste tonight, you’ll answer to me.”

I meant to say that I was cold.

Instead, I breathed into the phone.

“Where are you?” he asked sharply.

The concern in those three words nearly undid me.

Then he added, “Don’t make us come looking. She’s upset enough.”

The light at the end of the street blurred. I leaned sideways, meaning to rest against the wall, but my shoulder missed it.

“Evelyn?”

I couldn’t feel my fingers.

Adrian was still talking. He would protect Celeste. He wouldn’t forgive me. Being the Alpha’s real daughter wouldn’t save me.

I had stopped expecting it to.

My cheek touched the pavement.

Somewhere inside, my wolf made a small sound. I tried to reach her. I wanted her to know she hadn’t done anything wrong either.

For the first time that night, I heard Caleb.

“Evie? What was that noise?”

I would have liked to tell him I hadn’t meant to make a mess.

But my mouth wouldn’t move.

The cold faded. So did the pain.

Then, at last, no one was asking me for anything.