Chapter 1

My mating bite was still bleeding—ceremonial ink still wet on the altar stone—when my Alpha pulled another woman onto the sacred platform, announced she carried his pup, and commanded me to kneel before the entire pack.

Three hundred wolves. A Blood Moon overhead. My name still carved into the mating pillar beside his.

Draven Blackwell, Alpha of the Silver Ridge Pack, stood above me with his arm wrapped around Isla Crane's waist. She wore white—ceremonial white—and a jeweled collar I'd never seen before glittered against her throat.

"I know this is unexpected," Draven said, his voice carrying across the gathering with rehearsed calm. "But the Moon Goddess has spoken. Isla is my true fated mate. She carries my heir."

The crowd rippled. Wolves shifted restlessly. Draven's mother, Helena, stood by the offering table, smiling like she'd been waiting for this all night.

She had. They all had.

I stood frozen at the center of the sacred circle, wearing the gown I'd picked three weeks ago—back when I believed my mate loved me. Back when I was still a fool.

Isla looked straight at me. She placed one hand on her belly and smiled—soft, sweet, like a woman who'd already won.

"Sera, don't make a scene." Draven stepped down, his voice dropping to a murmur only I could hear. "Accept the rejection. I'll give you the border cabin and a small allowance. That's generous."

The border cabin. A shack at the edge of pack territory where they sent wolves no one wanted.

Three years mated. Three years running his household, entertaining visiting Alphas, enduring his mother's cruelty, swallowing the taste of Isla's scent on his skin every night he climbed into our bed.

And my price was a cabin in the dirt.

"You planned this," I whispered. The rejection burned through my chest like acid—the mate bond already fraying. "You brought me here to humiliate me."

"I brought you here so you'd understand it's done." His jaw tightened. "Don't fight it, Sera. You have no pack, no bloodline, no wolf worth shifting. No one in this circle would know your name without me."

That was the lie he'd built our bond on—that I was nothing.

Behind him, Isla swayed, pressing her wrist to her forehead. "Draven… I feel faint…"

He spun. "Someone get water! A healer—now!"

Four wolves rushed to her side. Helena hurried over, stroking Isla's hair. "Easy, darling. Think of the pup."

Nobody looked at me.

I stood alone in a ring of three hundred wolves, the sacred fire dying at my feet, and realized I had never been more invisible.

Then my phone buzzed.

A number I hadn't seen in six years.

"Sera, your grandfather is dying. He's asking for you. Come home. It's time you knew what you really are."

My hands didn't tremble from grief.

They trembled from the earthquake about to crack my life wide open.

I looked at Draven, still fussing over Isla, and something ancient and cold locked into place behind my ribs.

"Keep your cabin," I said.

He barely glanced back. "Don't be dramatic."

"I said keep it." I ripped the silver mating cuff from my wrist and hurled it into the ceremonial fire. "You're going to wish you'd offered more."

He turned, frowning. "What the hell does that mean?"

I smiled—the first real smile I'd worn in three years.

"You'll find out."

I walked out of the circle. Past the whispers. Past the stares. Past the woman in white who thought she'd won.

The night air slammed into me like a wall of ice. My phone buzzed again.

"A car is waiting beyond the northern border. Black SUV. Plate: VOSS-1."

Voss.

The name I hadn't spoken since I was seven. The name my mother made me swear to bury. The name behind the Supreme Alpha bloodline, twelve allied packs, and a dominion so vast it made the Silver Ridge Pack look like a litter of strays.

My name.