WREN POV
Three weeks ago, Callum Grey held my face in his hands and made me a promise.
"When the Solstice comes," he said, his thumb brushing my cheek, "I'm going to stand in front of the whole pack and tell them you're mine. Shifted or not. Wolf or not. You're mine, Wren."
I believed him. I believed him the way you believe in air without thinking about it, without questioning it, because what would be the point? Callum had been my person since we were seven years old. He was the boy who sat with me through every birthday where my wolf didn't come. Every pack run I watched from a window. Every time someone whispered "wolfless" like it was my name, Callum was the one who found me afterward and said it didn't matter.
So yes. I believed him.
I'm an idiot.
The Solstice Ceremony is beautiful tonight. That almost makes it worse.
The whole pack has gathered in the great clearing, torches burning amber against the dark, the full moon so bright it turns everything silver. I'm standing at the edge of the crowd in my green dress, the one I bought specifically for tonight because Callum once said green made my eyes look alive. My heart is hammering so hard I can feel it in my throat.
Around me, wolves I've known my whole life laugh and talk and drink. Nobody looks at me. Nobody really ever looks at me. I'm the wolfless girl, the quiet one, the one who doesn't quite fit. But tonight, I keep thinking, tonight that changes. Tonight Callum tells them all.
I find him across the clearing and he sees me looking. For just a second, his face does something complicated. Something I don't have a word for yet.
Then he smiles and looks away.
My Alpha, Callum's father, raises his hand for quiet. The crowd settles. This is it. This is the moment. I press my hands flat against my thighs to stop them shaking.
"Tonight," the Alpha announces, "my son, your future Alpha, will name his chosen mate."
Callum steps forward. Tall, golden, perfect. The pack watches him with pride. I watch him with my whole heart sitting right outside my chest where anyone could step on it.
He turns.
He reaches out his hand.
Sable Dalton steps forward and takes it.
The sound the crowd makes is warm. Happy. Celebratory. They clap. Someone cheers. A few of the older women press their hands to their hearts like it's the most beautiful thing they've ever seen.
I don't hear any of it.
I hear one thing, very clearly, inside my own head. It sounds like every version of myself I ever believed in, cracking.
Callum's voice carries across the clearing, strong and certain. "I announce Sable Dalton as my chosen mate and future Luna of the Ashwood pack."
More cheering. Sable is crying, happy tears, one hand over her mouth. She's beautiful. Of course she's beautiful. She's fully shifted, powerful, everything a future Luna is supposed to be.
I am standing twenty feet away in a green dress, unable to breathe.
Slowly, like they can't help it, people start to turn and look at me. One by one. Two by two. The way you look at a car crash. I see pity on some faces. Uncomfortable looks on others. My uncle, near the back of the crowd, is studying the ground like it owes him money.
Not one person looks surprised.
They all knew. Every single person in this clearing knew before I did, and not one of them thought to warn me.
My legs are doing something strange. Shaking, maybe. I press my feet harder into the ground and tell myself I will not fall over. I will not cry. I will not give this pack the satisfaction of watching Wren Ashwood fall apart in public one more time.
Callum still hasn't looked at me.
I want to scream at him. I want to cross this clearing and grab him by his perfect shirt and ask him what the last ten years were. Ask him what his hands on my face meant. Ask him how he slept last night knowing what tonight was going to look like for me.
But my throat is locked. My wolf, the one who has never come in eighteen years of trying, is completely silent. No comfort. No rage. Nothing.
I am completely alone inside my own skin, in the middle of a crowd that is pretending I don't exist, and the boy I loved just chose someone else in front of every person I've ever known.
This is the worst moment of my life.
I actually think that. Specifically that. The worst moment of my life.
I have no idea how wrong I am.
The pack doors open.
That's all it is. A sound. Wood and iron. The groan of old hinges.
But every wolf in the clearing stops talking at exactly the same moment.
The cheering dies. The laughter dies. Someone drops a cup and the sound of it hitting the ground is the loudest thing I've ever heard because everything else has gone so completely, utterly silent.
I turn around.
He is standing in the doorway.
Tall. Dark-haired. Wearing no pack colors, no ceremony clothes, nothing that should mark him as anything except ordinary. But not one wolf in this clearing is breathing normally. I can feel it, the way the air changes, the way every instinct in every body around me has gone very quiet and very careful, the way predators go still when something bigger walks into the room.
My uncle's face has gone white.
Callum, for the first time tonight, looks genuinely afraid.
The man in the doorway scans the clearing slowly. His eyes are the color of winter ice, pale and still and completely, terrifyingly calm. They move across the crowd like he is looking for something specific.
Then they find me.
And the world stops.
Something hits my chest like a hand reaching through my ribs and grabbing hold. My wolf, silent my entire life, surges forward so violently my knees buckle. I grab the arm of the nearest person to stay upright.
The man's expression doesn't change.
But he starts walking. Straight through the crowd, which parts around him without a word, straight across the clearing, straight toward me, like every other person here is furniture.
He stops one step away.
He is close enough that I have to tilt my head back to look at him. His pale eyes hold mine and I feel the bond between us like a living thing, enormous and ancient and absolutely certain of itself even when I am certain of nothing.
Behind him, I hear someone whisper his name.
Killian Voss.
The Lycan King.
The man who killed my parents.
He looks down at me for one long, quiet moment. Then he speaks, loud enough for every wolf in the clearing to hear.
"I will take her as my bride."