The Alpha's Rejected Luna and Her Secret Heir
"And the Silverpine Alpha came to his sickbed with a blade behind his smile. The alliance, or war, would have begun with the weakest of my pack first, the way these things always do. The low-ranked. The unranked. A Hollis girl with no rank and no protector and a father who'd sell her for less than the wolfsbane cost."
His jaw works as if the words were stones. "He told me, to my face, that if I claimed you as my Luna, you would not live to see the full moon. That you would simply vanish one night, and he would spread his hands and grieve with me, and what could an Alpha's grieving son ever prove against a sworn ally?"
The cabin has gone very quiet. Outside, the wind is rising off the range,