Chapter 2

But the year Dorian took over as Alpha King, she appeared.

Serena Voss became one of the domestic staff assigned to the Wyndham Manor gardens.

The moment she stood in front of Dorian, something shifted in him. He steadied himself with visible effort. After a long silence, he asked only, "How did you end up here?"

Serena didn't answer right away. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a worn leather bracelet — one he'd left behind, back when he was still the Alpha Heir.

She held it out, tears in her eyes.

"I missed the person I love. I just wanted to see him, even from a distance."

The afternoon light fell across her at a soft angle.

Dorian's hand closed tight. He swallowed once, twice. Then a quiet, rough breath escaped him.

His eyes were full of something recovered after a long loss.

That same day, he formally declared Serena his Chosen Mate.

The Alpha King, who had always kept strictly to Pack tradition, broke it for the first time, elevating a domestic worker to the position of his mate.

From the moment Serena arrived, Dorian barely left her side. The other women in Wyndham Manor grew resentful. Even Eleanor, the Dominant Luna, had something to say about it. She ordered me to speak with Dorian about balance.

I raised it with him a few times. He eventually listened. He began visiting the others occasionally.

But Serena blamed me for it.

She didn't go to Dorian. She came straight to my room that night.

She didn't acknowledge my rank. She just stood there, jaw tight, voice cold.

"All this talk about balance — you just can't stand that I have all of his attention, can you?"

"But I'm the one he actually loves. Your title might be higher, but you can't make him want you. What good is it?"

Dorian had once asked me to look after Serena, told me she had a good heart.

So when she overstepped with Eleanor and I smoothed things over. When she took things that belonged to me, I pretended not to notice. When she called Dorian away from my room during the full moon with manufactured urgency, I said nothing.

But this time, she had done it in front of the staff. If I let it go again, word would spread by morning that the Luna had no authority.

I stood back from her, voice steady.

"You've been disrespectful. You'll kneel in the corridor outside my room until dawn."

I hadn't ordered any physical punishment. Kneeling was already a mercy, considering Dorian's feelings for her.

What I didn't expect was what happened two hours later.

Serena collapsed. There was blood.

The Pack healer came and examined her.

She was pregnant. Not yet two months along.

The kneeling had caused her to lose the pup.

I had never seen Dorian that angry before.

The look he gave me had nothing in it but contempt.

"Clever of you. You sent me away, and the moment I was gone, you went after Serena."

"I actually thought you were a decent person, Ivy."

In his arms, Serena stirred and opened her eyes.

Her face showed no grief for the pup she'd lost. The corners of her mouth curved up. Her eyes held the satisfaction of someone who had just won.

Everything clicked into place.

She had provoked me deliberately. She wanted me to punish her.

Then she used the pup to drive a wedge between Dorian and me.

That was what a truly calculated mind looked like.

I tried to explain. Dorian refused to hear it.

His heart had always leaned one way, and now it leaned with nothing left on my side at all.

I had done nothing wrong, but he cut my Pack resource allocation in half and had me confined to my wing.

That day he carried Serena past me, then stopped.

"You've never understood what it means to truly want someone," he said. "That's why you can't grasp what she and I have."

"If you do this again, Ivy, I will sever the Bond."

He kept walking, stopping only to push a strand of hair back from Serena's face with his hand.

His eyes were filled with something I had never seen him show anyone.

I stood there, feeling distant from myself.

I knew what it felt like to love someone.

Years ago, in early spring, the cherry trees along the Calloway Pack grounds were in full bloom.

I'd been caught in a sudden storm on my way home, my car stuck in the mud.

He walked over with an umbrella and drove me back himself.

A petal from one of the trees had caught in his hair. He looked up through the rain, and something in his face made my heart stumble.

That stumble lasted for years.

Until it didn't anymore.

I stayed confined to my wing for several days. I was allowed out for a Pack Gathering.

By coincidence, a group of Rogues caused trouble at the Gathering, and someone fired a silver-tipped arrow at Dorian.

I saw it.

In that half-second, I thought of the Pack. Of what would happen if the Alpha King died. Of the border wars, the chaos, the cost to everyone who couldn't afford it.

I moved before I decided to move.

I threw myself in front of him. The arrow hit me in the back. I lost a lot of blood. I went down in his arms.

In eight years of being Bonded, it was the first time I had ever seen that look on his face.