Chapter 1

It had been exactly one month since Marcus broke up with me.

I knew we still loved each other, but under pressure from my father, he was the one who broke things off.

I lay there staring at our old photos, tears dripping onto them one by one, until I cried myself to sleep.

I didn't know how long I was out before a girl's voice pulled me awake.

"Luna, it's time to get up. The Alpha will be home soon. He's taking you to your prenatal checkup today."

Luna? Alpha? Prenatal checkup?

I blinked, groggy and disoriented, and found myself in a room I had never seen before. That snapped me wide awake. An unfamiliar maid stood in front of me, and I had no idea who she was.

"Who's this Luna you're talking about? Me?"

The maid laughed. "You must still be muddled from sleep, Luna. You and the Alpha have been mated for five years. Of course it's you."

"Who is the Alpha now?"

She thought it was a strange question, but answered earnestly. "Marcus Cole."

My brain short-circuited.

When did I have a mating ceremony with Marcus? And judging by the gentle swell beneath my shirt, was I pregnant?

My first instinct was to reach out through the mind-link and demand an explanation.

The connection opened, and his voice came through, cold and distant.

"What is it?"

Just last night I'd cried myself unconscious missing him, and today he was being this cold to me. I swallowed the hurt rising in my throat.

"Where are you?"

"Pack Administration."

My blood went cold. "Did your brother catch you?"

Marcus went quiet. He took a long breath, and even through the link I could feel something wounded in his voice. "So you still can't get past it. The fact that I'm a bastard."

I was speechless.

Marcus was being hunted everywhere by his brother, the Alpha, and his life was in danger. I was worried about him. But he heard it as me rubbing salt in his wounds.

Before I could explain, he severed the link.

What the hell?

I paced the room until my eyes landed on the calendar, and I froze.

It was five years in the future.

The maid's bizarre words suddenly clicked into place. It dawned on me that I might have traveled five years into the future.

In those five years, Marcus had defeated his brother and become Alpha. We'd had our mating ceremony. I was carrying his child.

But why was he treating me so coldly? What happened in those five years?

I needed answers. I steadied my breathing and opened the mind-link again.

"Marcus, I need to talk to you."

He cut me off before I got another word out. His laugh was hollow, bitter. "Mia. Are you calling to negotiate the dissolution again?"

"This is the third time you've brought it up this month."

A pause. When he spoke again, his voice was raw. "It doesn't matter what you say. I'm not dissolving the bond."

I didn't know what I had done in the past five years to make him so certain I was about to abandon him.

"I don't want to dissolve the bond, Marcus."

I had loved him for seven years. If I counted the five years of our mating, that made twelve. When his brother's hunters were closing in and my father locked me in the house, I'd even thought about running away from home to go on the run with him.

I loved him that much. Now we were finally together, and he was the Alpha.

What version of me would be insane enough to throw that away?