Chapter 1

~ Maya ~

I wake up in a bed that isn't mine, in a hotel suite I've never seen, with no memory of how I got here.

Floor-to-ceiling glass. The elite city center glittering beyond it. Morning light pours across the room the way I'd kill to have it fall across a canvas—and that's how I know how scared I am, because my mind is cataloguing light instead of facing the silk sheets puddled around my waist, the clothes scattered on the floor, and the deep, unmistakable ache in my body that tells me exactly what happened last night.

I can't remember a single second of it.

One glass of champagne. That's all I had. Lola pressed it into my hand at my bachelorette party before we even found a table, and after that, nothing. I rarely drink, but one glass has never erased a night of my life.

I was drugged.

The thought lands cold, and I shove it away just as fast. Lola is my cousin. My best friend since before either of us could walk. And it doesn't matter, because it must have been Derek who brought me here. The ceremony is in two days. Five years of "after the ceremony, I promise"—apparently I couldn't hold out for the last two.

Then I catch my reflection in the mirror, and my whole body goes still.

On my collarbone, raw and swollen and burning, is a fresh mating mark, shaped like a small dark wolf, humming with an energy I have no memory of receiving.

I am marked.

The marking is the most sacred moment in a werewolf's life, and I've lost it the same way I lost my first shift, because my wolf never woke at all. That's what I am to this pack: the wolfless daughter of a proud Gamma line. Well-bred and useless. The girl who will never shift, never run with them, never belong. Derek was the only one who looked past it. Half the pack still thinks he should hold out for a better match.

He chose me anyway. And now he's marked me two days early, drunk, in a hotel. That's not like him. None of this is like him.

Water is running in the bathroom. Relief floods through me anyway. Derek. I just need his arms around me and his voice telling me everything's fine. I gather the sheet and swing my legs off the bed—

The door slams open.

Derek stands in the doorway, chest heaving, his face white as a primed canvas. And here's the strange thing, the thing I'm too wrecked to hold on to: his eyes rake the room first — the bed, the bathroom door, the scattered clothes — like he's searching for someone who isn't there. Only then do they land on me.

Lola hangs off his arm, dragging at him, begging him to stop.

But if Derek is in front of me... then who is in the shower?

The room tilts.

"How could you do this to me, Maya?" he growls, his eyes glowing as his wolf surges up. "Who is he? Who did you spread your legs for?"

My throat turns to desert. "Derek, I—"

The bathroom door opens.

The man who fills the frame is nearly seven feet of Alpha wearing nothing but steam and a towel. His scent hits me before his face does, sandalwood and a thread of grapefruit and his aura presses the air from my lungs.

And then something impossible happens. Warmth unspools through me, and for one heartbeat the whole roaring room goes soft at the edges, like he's the only thing in focus and everything else, even Derek, has blurred. Something low in my chest pulls hard toward a man I've barely exchanged ten words with.

For half a heartbeat, he goes still too. His nostrils flare. His eyes narrow — not just wary. Searching. Like a man reaching for a night that isn't there.

Then his face hardens into stone.

His eyes are deep ocean blue. The same blue as Derek's.

"Maya." Derek's voice drops, quiet and lethal. "You slept with my brother? Harvey, how could you touch my fiancée?"

Harvey's gaze falls to the mark on my collarbone with open disgust. Then he smirks, cold.

"Your sweet little she-wolf drugged me." Each word lands like a slap. "Desperate to trap an Alpha. Desperate to be Luna. I imagine she thought she'd hit the jackpot."

Drugged him. The accusation is so absurd I almost laugh, but underneath it, a colder thought surfaces. If I drugged him... then why am I the one marked? An Alpha doesn't mark a woman by accident. Drugged or sober, willing or not — nobody marks a stranger. It's the one question that matters, and nobody in this room asks it.

Neither do I. I'm too busy drowning.

"I never—" My voice comes out thin. "There's been a mistake. Please."

Lola stands rooted, a hand over her mouth. Her eyes drop to my throat. "Maya," she gasps. "You're marked."

I don't care what Harvey thinks of me. I turn to the person I love most in this world, searching his face for the man who chose me when no one else would. "Derek. Please. I was set up. Someone did this to me, I swear—"

Something flickers through his eyes, too fast to read, gone before I can name it. For that one moment I truly believe he'll end this nightmare.

Then his features twist into pure disgust, and he shoves me. My back hits the wall.

A growl rips through the room, low, savage, not Derek's.

Everyone freezes. Derek's head snaps toward his brother. Harvey's jaw is locked tight, his face carved from stone, looking as blindsided by the sound as the rest of us. He folds it into a sneer so fast I almost believe I imagined it.

"Touching, brother," Derek says flatly. Then, to me, cold in a way I've never heard: "You're not crying because you're hurt. You're crying because trapping the Alpha didn't work. We're done. The mating is off."

He walks out.

Five years together. It took him three minutes to brand me a liar and a whore.

"Babe, don't worry," Lola murmurs at my side, brushing my cheek. "It's obvious you'd never cheat. I know you were framed. I'll talk to Derek. I'll make him see sense." Her phone is already in her hand as she turns, thumb flying across the screen, and then she's gone too, chasing him down the hall.

I stand wrapped in a bedsheet, alone with the Alpha who looks at me like something he scraped off his shoe.

Harvey dresses fast, as if the room is burning — sharp suit, every line perfect. His phone buzzes against the nightstand, again and again, one caller who will not give up. He doesn't look at it.

"Even bearing my mark, you mean nothing to me," he says. "I'll reject you the second the Pack Council allows it. I have no intention of taking a scheming, wolfless disgrace as a mate. I'm betrothed already."

He opens his wallet, pulls out a few bills, and lets them fall between us.

"For last night's service."

The bills drift to the carpet.

And underneath the pain, underneath five years of love bleeding out on a hotel floor, something else flares to life — pure, clean fury. My palms burn, as if a coal has been banked under my skin my whole life and someone just breathed across it. Something deep inside me stirs, lifts its head, and settles. Gone before I can name it.

I lift my chin and meet his eyes.

"Pick it up."

He pauses at the door.

"You're very sure you know who I am," I say, and my voice comes out steadier than I have any right to expect. "You know nothing about me. PICK. UP. YOUR. MONEY. I'm not for sale, and if I were, you couldn't afford what you'd owe me."

For a breath, he says nothing. Something shifts behind those cold blue eyes, and the invisible thread between us draws tight enough to hum.

Then he turns away.

"Be at the packhouse at three," he says from the hallway. "Formal rejection. And your punishment."

The door closes. I slide down the wall to the floor, and my traitor mind notes the light again — how it falls golden across the fallen bills, how one of them has curled faintly at the edges, browned like paper held too near a flame. The maid must have left them by a candle. Some stupid thought like that. I don't look twice.

I know already — there will be no hearing — I've already been judged. And for drugging an Alpha, the punishment is exile.

Fine. Then I won't be there to receive it. I'll go home, pack a bag, and be off pack territory long before three. The human city is four hours away. No pack. No shame. No one left to disappoint.

I'm wiping my face and rising to my feet when I hear footsteps in the hall — heavy, fast. My father's scent cuts through the gap in the door, his aura thick enough to choke on.

He isn't supposed to know yet.

The handle turns.