Chapter 1: The Life She Never Dreamed Of

CLARA POV:

I never thought I'd wake up married to a man who once made me carry his laundry just to stand near him.

The sun hit the curtains the way it always did on good mornings, soft and gold, slipping through the gap Alex never let me close all the way. I felt his hand before I opened my eyes. Warm. Spread flat against my stomach like he was checking I was still real.

"You're awake," he murmured against my hair. Not a question. He always knew.

"Mm. Barely." My voice came out scratchy, and I pressed my face deeper into the pillow, breathing in the smell of him, pine and something darker underneath, the smell that still made my wolf preen even after two years of waking up next to it every single day.

Two years.

I turned the thought over slowly, the way you'd turn over a stone you couldn't believe was yours to keep. Two years since an Omega orphan nobody wanted got dragged into a packhouse kitchen to scrub pots, and somehow ended up Luna of the Blackwood Pack. Some mornings the disbelief hit me so hard I had to remind myself to breathe.

Alex's fingers traced the curve of my hip, slow, lazy circles that meant he wasn't in any hurry to start the day. "Happy anniversary, Luna."

"Don't call me that in bed." I smiled into the pillow anyway.

"Why not? It's true." He propped himself up on one elbow, and when I finally looked at him, really looked, my chest did the thing it always did. Tightened. Ached, almost. Like my heart hadn't figured out yet that it was allowed to be this happy.

His dark hair was a mess from sleep, falling over eyes the color of wet slate, and there was that small crease between his brows that only ever showed up when he was about to say something he thought was clever.

"Two years," he said, like he'd read my mind. He did that more often than I liked to admit. "Feels like longer."

"Bad longer or good longer?"

"Good." He kissed my forehead, then the mating mark on my neck, his lips lingering there just long enough to make my breath catch. "The kind of longer where I can't remember what my life looked like before you were in it."

I swallowed hard, blinking fast, because if I let myself cry before breakfast on our anniversary, he'd never let me hear the end of it.

"I have a surprise," he said, sitting up properly now, the blanket sliding down to pool at his waist. "For tonight."

"Alex."

"What? I'm allowed to plan things."

"You planned a 'surprise' last year that turned into the entire pack singing at me in the dining hall."

"They have good voices."

"They do not."

He laughed, that low rumble I felt more than heard, and reached for my hand, lacing our fingers together over the blanket. "Tonight, under the full moon. I want to renew our vows. Properly. In front of everyone."

Something in my throat closed up tight. "We just got married."

"I know. I don't care." His thumb brushed over my knuckles, over the ring he'd put there with hands that trembled the first time, two years ago, in front of half the kingdom. "I want to do it again. And again. Every year, if you'll let me. I want the whole pack to watch me promise you the same thing over and over until it stops sounding like a vow and starts sounding like a fact."

"You're ridiculous," I whispered, because if I said anything else, I'd fall apart.

"I'm thorough." He grinned, and for one perfect, suspended second, the world narrowed down to just that, his grin, his hand in mine, the gold light crawling across the sheets.

Then the room tilted.

Just slightly. Just enough that I had to blink twice and grip the edge of the mattress before it settled back into place.

"Clara?" Alex's voice sharpened instantly, the playfulness gone. He knew the difference between my sleepy and my wrong.

"I'm fine." I forced a smile, even as my stomach did a slow, unpleasant roll. "Just dizzy. I think I stood up too fast yesterday and it's still catching up with me."

"You didn't stand up too fast just now. You're lying down."

"Alex."

"You've been off for days." His brows pulled together, the crease deepening, and his hand moved from mine to my forehead, checking for fever like I was something fragile he needed to monitor. "Pale in the mornings. Tired by midafternoon. I'm not imagining it."

"I'm not sick." That part, at least, I believed. Whatever this was, it didn't feel like sickness. It felt like something underneath my skin shifting into a shape I didn't recognize yet, quiet and strange and not entirely unwelcome. "Probably just the change in weather. You know how I get."

He studied me for a long moment, the kind of look that used to make me want to confess things I hadn't even done yet, and I held his gaze and didn't blink, because some instinct, low and certain, told me not to say anything else. Not yet. Not until I understood it myself.

"Fine," he said slowly, clearly not fine with it at all, but choosing to let it go because it was our anniversary and he wanted, for one more morning, to just be happy. "But if it doesn't pass in a few days, you're seeing Dr. Reed. I mean it."

"Yes, Alpha." I said it light, teasing, and he rolled his eyes and pulled me into his chest, his heartbeat a steady drum under my ear, and for a moment I let myself believe the dizziness was nothing. A flicker. A passing thing.

I didn't know yet that it was the first thread pulling loose on the only life I'd ever truly wanted.

I didn't know that somewhere out past our borders, men were already moving into position, waiting for nightfall, waiting for him.

I just lay there in his arms, breathing him in, memorizing the warmth of his skin against mine like some small, unconscious part of me already understood I should.

Because by tomorrow, he wouldn't remember any of this at all.