Deborah Benjamin
“Don’t speak,” said the man in the dark.
“Not one word. If you speak, I’ll lose you.”
I couldn’t have spoken if I’d tried.
Serena Lim is twenty-two, wolfless, and invisible in the house where her golden sister is the star. When Natalie begs her to stand in her place for one hour of the sacred Veil Night, Serena says yes, because nobody has ever asked her for anything before.
In the dark, the Alpha of Mandai Ridge walks the line, stops in front of number seven, and says, There you are. He thinks he has found the Luna the elders promised him. He has actually found the girl who has loved him for eleven years, and who is not allowed to speak.
By dawn the veil is off, the pack is howling, her family has thrown her out, and Natalie has told a story that makes Serena the villain. But Serena draws what she sees. A scarred man at the east gate. A lie behind a smile. And a knot in her own wrist that someone tied when she was a child.
Now the Alpha has to choose between protocol and the only woman who ever made his wolf go quiet. And Serena has to decide whether to trust the man who called her nameless.
Because someone wants more than a ring, and the wrong sister may be the only one who matters.
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