The ceremonial bells of Ironfang Keep rang like a funeral dirge, each bronze note hammering against my ribs until I could barely draw breath. I stood at the threshold of the great hall, silver gown pooling around my feet like liquid moonlight—or quicksilver, ready to poison everything it touched.
The assembled wolves of the Heartlands filled every shadow and corner, their whispers a living thing that crawled over my skin. They thought I couldn't hear them over the bells, but my senses had always been sharp. Sharper than a wolf-less creature had any right to be.
"Look at her—still no wolf scent."
"Twenty-four years old and nothing. How did she even catch the Alpha's eye?"
"She didn't. This is duty, nothing more."
My fingers tightened on the bouquet of nightshade and silver roses—another of my stepmother's choices. Beautiful, but the thorns drew blood if you held them too long. Marisol's taste always carried hidden cruelty wrapped in elegance.
I lifted my chin and stepped forward, each footfall deliberate on the ash-marked stones. Moon-petals scattered beneath my slippers, their sickly sweet perfume cloying in my throat. This was supposed to be the most important day of my life—the day I became Luna of the most powerful pack in the Heartlands. The day I finally mattered.
Instead, it felt like walking to my own execution.
The great hall stretched before me, all soaring arches and stained glass windows that caught Selene's light and threw it in jeweled fragments across the floor. Hundreds of wolves pressed along the walls, their eyes tracking my every step. Some held pity. Others barely concealed disdain. A few—mostly the younger she-wolves—watched with hungry anticipation, as if they expected me to collapse before I reached the altar.
Maybe they weren't wrong.
At the far end, on a dais carved from black stone, stood my intended mate.
Jasper Drevyn was everything an Alpha should be—tall, broad-shouldered, with storm-gray eyes that could freeze blood and a face carved by Selene herself. His ceremonial armor gleamed like polished midnight, every piece perfectly fitted to his powerful frame. Dark hair fell in waves to his collar, and when he shifted slightly, the movement sent ripples of dominance through the gathered crowd.
Every wolf in the hall felt it. The bone-deep compulsion to submit, to lower their eyes and bare their throats. Every wolf but me.
I felt nothing. No pull, no recognition, no flutter of awareness that should have sung through my blood at the sight of my mate. Just... emptiness where my wolf should have been.
Wolf-less. The word they whispered behind fans and goblets, the flaw that made me unworthy of everything I'd ever wanted. The reason Jasper's jaw was tight with barely controlled revulsion as I climbed the dais steps toward him.
Our eyes met, and I saw it clearly—the cold calculation behind his storm-dark gaze. This wasn't a mating. It was a transaction. A political necessity wrapped in ritual and pretty words.
But maybe, if I proved myself worthy as his Luna, the emptiness would fill. Maybe dignity could be enough where love had failed to bloom.
The officiant, Elder Thorne, raised his gnarled hands for silence. His voice rang out across the hall, ancient and commanding. "Pack of Drevyn, children of the Heartlands, we gather beneath Selene's watchful eye to witness the binding of Alpha and Luna."
The crowd fell silent, the kind of breathless hush that came before either triumph or disaster.
"Araya Varrow," Elder Thorne continued, his pale eyes finding mine. "Daughter of Eldric Varrow, step forward to claim your place at the Alpha's side."
Daughter of Eldric Varrow. Not daughter of my mother, whose name they'd buried along with her body. Not even acknowledged as belonging to the pack that had raised me. Just... Eldric's daughter, claimed by blood alone.
I moved to stand beside Jasper, close enough that his scent filled my lungs—pine and steel and something wild that spoke of hunts beneath the full moon. Close enough to feel the heat radiating from his skin, though his expression remained carved from ice.
"Jasper Drevyn," Elder Thorne intoned, "Alpha of Alphas, leader of the Drevyn Pack, step forward to claim your Luna."
Jasper's boots rang against the stone as he moved, precise and controlled. When he stopped beside me, I had to tilt my head back to meet his eyes. Even standing on the raised dais, he towered over me.
The Elder lifted the ceremonial chalice, its silver surface etched with ancient runes that seemed to shift and writhe in the moonlight streaming through the stained glass above. Blood-wine filled it to the brim, dark as fresh-spilled life.
"Speak now the vows that bind mate to mate, soul to soul, until the moon herself falls from the sky."
My throat closed. These words would chain me to him forever, make me his in every way that mattered. But they would also give me purpose, position, power. A place where I belonged.
I drew a shaking breath and spoke the ancient words. "I, Araya Varrow, do swear by Selene's light and shadow both—I take you, Jasper Drevyn, as my mate and Alpha. I vow to stand at your side through storm and stillness, to bear your heirs and honor your bloodline, to serve this pack with every breath in my body until death claims me."
The words felt like shards of glass leaving my throat, but I forced them out steady and strong. I would not give them the satisfaction of seeing me break.
Every eye in the hall fixed on Jasper, waiting for his response. Seconds stretched into eternity as he stared down at me, his expression unreadable as winter stone.
Finally, he spoke. "I, Jasper Drevyn, Alpha of the Drevyn Pack, take you, Araya Varrow, as Luna." His voice carried to every corner of the hall, commanding and final. "I vow to protect what is mine, to lead with strength, to honor the bonds Selene has decreed."
What is mine. Not who I love or my cherished mate. What is mine, like I was a possession to be claimed and catalogued.
Elder Thorne lifted the chalice higher, moonlight catching on its rim. "Let the bond be sealed, threads woven by starlight eternal, blessed by She who watches over all wolves—"
Jasper leaned close, his breath warming the shell of my ear. To the watching crowd, it might have looked like a tender gesture—a new husband whispering sweet promises to his bride.
His words cut through me like a blade dipped in winter.
"This bond means nothing."
The chalice trembled in my suddenly nerveless fingers. The blood-wine inside sloshed against the silver rim, dark and viscous as the pain flooding my chest. Around us, the crowd erupted in celebration, howls of approval echoing off the vaulted ceiling.
But all I could hear was the whisper of his voice, colder than death itself, promising me that this beautiful lie of a ceremony was exactly that—a lie.
I forced my face into a mask of serenity, even as something vital shattered inside my chest. The crowd saw their new Luna, radiant in silver silk, raising the ceremonial chalice to her lips to seal her fate.
They didn't see the girl who had just discovered that some cages were built from moonlight and pretty words, but they held you prisoner all the same.