Chapter 1

The chapel doors explode open.

Two hundred wolves turn their heads at once.

A rogue in a blood-soaked white tuxedo walks down my aisle.

He smiles at me like he already owns me.

And my groom drops my hand.

"Who the hell are you?" Tristan's voice cracks in the middle of the word hell.

The rogue doesn't stop walking. Silver moonlight pours through the stained glass and lands on his face — hollow cheeks, black hair hanging in his eyes, a mouth that curls like he's been waiting three hundred years for this exact second.

"I'm a man who knows the bride very well," he says.

The whisper starts in the back pews and travels forward like fire in dry grass.

"I know she sleeps on her left side," he says. "I know she has three small moles at the base of her spine."

Tristan steps back from me. One step. Then another.

"I know she cries when she's happy," the rogue says softly. "And I know she cries when she's not."

The gasp that goes through the Blackthorn pack is loud enough to shake dust from the rafters.

I can't move. My hands are still holding my bouquet, white roses, thirty thousand dollars of them, and I can feel every single eye in this room crawling over my skin.

"Isla." Tristan's face has gone the color of the altar candles. "Isla, tell them he's lying."

"I've never seen him before in my life."

"Then how does he know—"

"Tristan." My voice shakes. "Tristan."

He looks at me the way you look at something rotting in the back of the fridge. And then Alpha Marcus, my adoptive father, the man who took me in when I was five, stands up in the front row and says the words that end my life.

"Blackthorn warriors. Throw this filth out. And take the girl with him."

The girl. Not my daughter. Not even Isla.

Four warriors move. The rogue moves faster.

He crosses the last three feet of red carpet in one blink, his arm slides around my waist like it's been fitted to me, and something cold and sharp presses under my jaw.

Silver. I can smell it burning through the air. Silver dagger.

"The bride's waist is so soft," he murmurs against my ear, and every wolf in the room freezes.

A thin line of heat opens on my throat. Blood runs down my collarbone, into the sweetheart neckline of a dress I spent eight months choosing. I stare at Tristan — my mate, my Alpha, the man who put his mark on my shoulder six weeks ago — and I watch him take a third step back.

Behind him, his mother grabs his sleeve and pulls him further away.

Nobody comes for me.

Two hundred wolves in this chapel and not one of them moves.

Except one.

"Let her go." Ryder pushes through the crowd, tie crooked, gold-rimmed glasses catching the light. My father's Beta. The man who raised me more than my parents ever did. The man I have loved since I was fifteen and too stupid to hide it. "Whatever you want, take it from me. Let her go."

"Ah." The rogue tilts his head, and for one second I feel his whole body go still against my back, like a wire pulled tight. "You."

"Me," Ryder says. "Just her, and I'll—"

"Too late." The rogue laughs, and it's the loneliest sound I've ever heard. "You had twenty years, Beta. I counted every single one."

He drags me backward down the aisle. My heels catch on the carpet. My veil rips off and floats down between the pews like something dying.

The last thing I see through the chapel doors is Tristan bending down to pick up his own boutonniere.

The bell tower stairs are stone and endless. He carries me up them one-handed. Two hundred and twelve steps — I count them because counting is the only thing keeping me from screaming — and then cold night air hits my wet face and there's nothing above us but the moon.

He sets me down on the ledge. Thirty stories of black air behind my heels.

He tucks a piece of hair behind my ear, so gently that my whole body flinches.

"Don't cry, Miss Neighbor," he says. "Let's see if this time you fly."