He rejected me in front of eight hundred wolves. On my twenty-first birthday. With his new Luna's hand already in his. "I, Dorian Vale, heir of the Blood Moon, reject Seraphine Vale as my fated mate." The bond tore out of my chest like a hook through raw meat. I smiled. Because none of them noticed the wine in their goblets had started to boil. The Great Hall of the Blood Moon smelled like pine smoke and expensive lies. Two hundred candles. Silver banners. And me, standing in a kitchen apron because nobody had told the wolfless servant girl that the Moon Goddess had just named her the future Alpha's mate. The Goddess had a sense of humor. Cruel, but real. "Say it back," Dorian said. His voice was bored. "The rejection only completes if you accept it." Pain screamed up my spine. A mate bond doesn't break clean. It breaks the way bone breaks — splinters left behind, cutting from the inside. I looked at him. At his perfect gold hair, his father's jaw, his father's cruelty. "I accept," I said. The hall exhaled. Someone laughed. Cassia — the girl on his arm, Alpha's daughter, silk and pearls and a smile like a paper cut — leaned into his shoulder. "Poor thing," she said sweetly. "Can you even feel the bond, without a wolf?" I could feel it. That was the joke. "Sera." My mother's voice, low and wrecked, from the servants' row. Lyra Vale. Once the Luna of this pack. Now the trophy my uncle wore to dinner. Her fingers were white on the back of a chair. "Don't." Don't fight. Don't speak. Don't remind them you exist. Thirteen years of don't. At the head of the hall, my uncle rose from my father's stolen throne. Ulric Vale, Alpha of the Blood Moon, wearing my father's crest over my father's grave. "Tonight the Goddess made a mistake," he announced, "and my son corrected it. The Blood Moon does not bind itself to a wolfless girl. A soulless girl." Eight hundred wolves howled their approval. I stood very still and let it wash over me, because that was the whole trick, wasn't it? Stand still. Look small. Let them believe the story they need. Don't let them see the water. Every goblet in that hall was trembling. A hairline of frost was crawling up the marble under my bare feet, and if a single wolf had bothered to look down instead of laughing, thirteen years of hiding would have ended right there. I breathed out. The frost died. The wine went still. Dorian turned his back on me — the final insult, the one that says you are not even a threat — and that was when a voice came from the back of the hall. Quiet. Male. Rough as gravel dragged over silk. "Then I'll take her." The laughter stopped like a throat cut. He stood in the shadows by the pillars, a big man in a travel-stained black cloak, hood up. No pack scent. No crest. Nothing but the way the air changed around him — heavy, pressing, the way it feels one breath before lightning. Ulric's lip curled. "This is a closed ceremony, rogue." The stranger stepped forward. The candlelight caught his jaw, the hard line of his mouth — and something else. Black veins. Creeping up his throat like dead branches, right to the edge of his jaw. Poison. Rogue poison. The kind that kills Alphas slowly and makes them beg first. He was dying, and he'd walked into a hall of eight hundred hostile wolves to say six words. His eyes found me. Silver-grey. Steady. "Rejected goods, Alpha Ulric," he said. "You threw her out yourself. So I'll take her." And then he coughed once into his fist, and when he lowered his hand, his glove was wet and black.