Chapter 2

I died at my own mating ceremony — killed by my Alpha mate, Damien Thorne.

He didn't waste a single word before he did it.

A silver spike pressed against the back of my neck — the place where a wolf marks its mate.

He drove it in.

The moment the silver burned through my nerves, my entire body seized like I'd been struck by lightning. Feeling drained from my limbs one joint at a time.

First my fingers. Then my forearms. Then my knees.

I collapsed onto the altar. I didn't even have the strength to struggle.

Damien grabbed a fistful of my hair and wrenched my face up toward his.

Pure hatred.

"Your family owes her a debt. I'm collecting it with your life."

Owed who?

I stared at his twisted expression, my mind a haze.

The Thorne family and our Silver Moon Pack had been bound by alliance for ten years. My father had poured every resource the pack had into helping the Thornes secure the Alpha seat.

In all the years Damien served as Alpha, the Silver Moon Pack never once asked for anything in return.

And yet here he was — dragging me onto the Blood Moon Altar, executing his own betrothed like a traitor.

"Who the hell are you talking about?" I ground the words out through clenched teeth, forcing them past my throat.

Damien didn't answer.

He didn't need to.

The memory surfaced from somewhere deep — Faye Vale. The rogue who had died eight years ago.

The girl who once took a beast's claw for him during a surge.

For eight full years, he had turned that woman's death into a blood debt worthy of annihilating an entire pack.

And the ones who owed it? Me, and every last member of the Silver Moon Pack.

I wanted to laugh.

Before my lips could even twitch, Damien ripped out the silver spike and plunged it straight into my heart.

A mist of blood swallowed my vision whole.

"Miss, don't listen to those rumors going around." My Omega attendant, Lina, said.

The altar was gone. The silver spike was gone. The hole in my chest was gone.

The ancestral shrine blazed with candlelight.

I had been reborn — back to my first shift ceremony at eighteen.

I hadn't married into the Shadow Pack yet.

The Silver Moon Pack had just won three mines in the Northern Territories. Our influence was at its peak.

It was time to settle every debt from my past life.

"Miss?" Lina pursed her lips, about to say something more.

I already knew the rumors.

Damien had issued three consecutive declarations to the Alliance Council, demanding our betrothal be dissolved.

The reason was simple enough. He'd been surrounded by a beast surge during a solo hunt and fallen off a cliff. A rogue girl had dragged him out from the bottom, half-dead. To wake his wolf, she'd forced every last drop of her own wolf's power into him. Her wolf died from the strain, and she could never shift again.

Damien brought her back to the Shadow Pack.

He had only one thing to say: he would marry no one but her.

"Miss, don't lose heart! Your betrothal was sealed by both packs — he can't just throw it away like that—"

I raised a hand and cut Lina off.

I didn't want to hear a single word of comfort. Not again.

Lina fell silent abruptly, leaned close to my ear, and her tone shifted completely. "Miss — he's here."