CHAPTER 1: Night Before

My hands won't stop shaking.

I press them flat against my thighs, but the tremors just move up my arms. The white dress my mom wore thirty years ago feels too tight around my ribs, or maybe that's just my lungs forgetting how to work.

"You'll ruin it." My dad's voice comes from behind me. Soft. Careful.

I look in the small mirror above my dresser. Samuel Hayes is leaning against my doorframe, arms crossed, trying to look stern. His eyes give him away though—all wet and shiny like they get when he talks about Mom.

"I'm not ruining anything." I tuck another wildflower into my hair. The petals keep slipping through my fingers. "I'm just... decorating."

"You're nervous."

"I'm not."

He crosses the room in three steps and turns me around by my shoulders. "Selena. Baby. Look at me."

I do. His face is all lines and gray now, but his eyes are still that warm brown I've known my whole life. The same eyes that watched me skin my knees, graduate training, cry when Mom died.

"You don't have to do this." He says it quiet, like it's a secret. "Arranged mating ceremonies aren't—"

"It's not arranged, Dad." I actually laugh, and it comes out weird—half sob, half breath. "He's my fated mate. The Moon Goddess picked Caden Ahearn for me. The Alpha. The most powerful Alpha in the region." I shake my head. "Me. Beta's daughter. Makes no sense, right?"

"Don't." His hands tighten on my shoulders. "Don't do that. You're not just anything. You're the best of us. Always have been."

Something cracks in my chest. Not in a bad way. Just... opens up a little.

"I'm scared." I whisper it. Barely sound. "What if I mess up? What if he realizes he got the wrong person? What if the pack—"

"What if you stop borrowing trouble?" He pulls me into a hug, and I'm twelve years old again, crying over a dead mom, and he's the only solid thing in the world. "Caden's lucky. He just doesn't know it yet."

I hold on for one more second. Then I pull back, straighten my dress, and try to remember how to breathe.

"Okay." I say it to myself more than him. "Okay. I can do this."

---

The clearing is packed.

Every member of Bloodmoon Pack stands in rows around the ceremonial platform. Torches light up the whole space—it's dusk, that purple-gray time when everything looks soft and possible. The Elders are already in place, old faces I've known my whole life, watching me walk toward them.

Toward him.

Caden stands at the center of the platform, and I swear my heart stops. He's in formal robes, dark hair swept back, ice-blue eyes fixed on me like I'm the only person in the world. Like I matter.

*Mine,* something whispers in my chest. The mate bond. Just barely there, like a thread waiting to be tied.

I climb the steps. My legs feel like someone else's. Caden reaches for my hands, and his are warm, steady—everything mine aren't.

"You're trembling." He says it low, just for me.

"Happy trembling." My voice cracks. Great. Fantastic first impression.

He squeezes my fingers. "After tonight, you're mine. Forever."

I believe him. I believe it so hard it hurts.

The Elder starts the chant—old words in an old language, calling on the Goddess to bless the union. I feel the bond start to shimmer, that golden thread getting stronger, brighter, ready to seal—

A scream rips through the clearing.

I jerk toward the sound. Everyone does. Lucas, Caden's younger brother, staggers out of the trees at the edge of the pack grounds. He's clutching his side, and blood—so much blood—is pouring through his fingers, soaking his shirt, dripping onto the grass.

"Lucas!" Caden drops my hands and runs. I follow. Everyone follows.

Lucas collapses before anyone reaches him. Caden catches him, lowers him to the ground. The healers swarm in, but Lucas's eyes are locked on me. On me.

"She..." He coughs. Blood on his lips. "She came to my cabin. Said she wanted... wanted me instead of you." He gasps, pain twisting his face. "When I refused, she—she stabbed me. I'm sorry, Caden. I'm sorry."

The words don't make sense. They're just noise. I stare at Lucas, at his accusing eyes, and my brain won't connect to my mouth.

"What?" I hear myself say it. "No. No, I didn't. I was in my room all night. Dad, tell them—"

My father steps forward. "She was with me. Until midnight, at least. After that, she was—"

"Alone." Elena Ahearn, Caden's mother, glides through the crowd. She's beautiful in that cold way—perfect hair, perfect dress, perfect smile that doesn't reach her eyes. "She was alone after midnight. Plenty of time to visit Lucas's cabin."

I shake my head. "I didn't. I swear. I don't even know where his cabin is exactly, I've never—"

"You expect us to believe that?" Elena tilts her head. "You, a Beta's daughter, suddenly chosen as mate for the Alpha? And now his brother is stabbed." She looks at the pack, at the crowd. "Seems convenient, doesn't it? A way to secure power. Eliminate the competition."

"No." The word rips out of me. "That's insane. I would never—"

"Selena." Caden's voice cuts through everything.

I turn to him. He's still holding Lucas, but his eyes are on me. And they're not warm anymore. They're not anything.

"Caden." I step toward him. "Please. You can't believe this. You know me. You know I wouldn't—"

"I don't know you." His voice is flat. Dead. "I thought I did. But I don't."

The bond in my chest—that golden thread that was just starting to feel real—starts to fray. Just a little. Like it knows what's coming before I do.

"Lucas is my brother." Caden stands, leaves Lucas to the healers. Faces me. "He's bleeding because of you."

"He's lying!" I'm screaming now. I don't care. "I don't know why, but he's lying. Your mother is lying. Ask anyone who actually knows me—"

"Enough."

The word hits like a slap.

Caden stands in front of me, taller than I remember, colder than I've ever seen him. The torches flicker behind him like even fire is scared to get too close.

"The ceremony is void." He says it loud enough for everyone to hear. "I, Alpha Caden Ahearn, reject Selena Hayes as my mate and future Luna. From this moment, the bond is broken. She is nothing to me."

The words hit my chest like physical things.

I feel the golden thread snap. No—not snap. Tear. Rip. Like someone reached inside me and grabbed hold of my soul and just... pulled. I gasp. Fall to my knees. The pain is so bad I can't breathe, can't think, can't do anything but feel it—this endless, burning, ripping agony where something that was supposed to be forever just got destroyed.

I vomit. My whole body heaves. Someone in the crowd gasps. Someone else whispers.

”Rejection sickness. She's really feeling it.”

“Of course she is. The bond was almost sealed.”

“Poor thing. But if she attacked Lucas...”

The voices blur. The world blurs, I saw Elena smiling at me, the evil smile. I'm on my hands and knees on the wooden platform, and my dress—Mom's dress—is getting ruined, and I can't make myself care.

Caden's boots appear in my vision. He's standing over me. For one second—one single second—I look up at his face. And I see it. Pain. Doubt. Something that looks almost like love, buried under all that ice.

Then his mother touches his arm, and it's gone.

"Selena Hayes." His voice is steady now. No cracks. No feeling. "You have until dawn to leave Bloodmoon territory. If you're found here after sunrise, you'll be treated as rogue." He turns away. "The mating is over."

He walks.

I watch him go. Watch his broad back disappear into the crowd. Watch the pack disperse, people shooting me looks—pity, disgust, curiosity. Watch my whole future walk away with him.

I can't move. Can't breathe. Can't do anything but kneel there on the platform, in my mother's ruined dress, and feel the place where my soul used to be connected to someone else's.

It's just a hole now.

Just empty.

My father's arms wrap around me. He lifts me like I'm still his little girl, like I weigh nothing, like he can protect me from this.

"I'm getting you out of here, baby." His voice cracks on every word. "I'm getting you safe."

I press my face into his neck. He smells like pine and leather and home.

"Dad." My voice is barely there. Broken. "Dad, I can't feel him anymore. The bond. It's gone. He killed it."

He holds me tighter. His shoulders shake.

"he doesn't deserve you." He's crying. I haven't heard my dad cry since Mom died. "He never did. He never did."

Behind us, hidden in the shadows at the edge of the clearing, someone watches.

And smiles.