My skull cracked against the logs. A fist drove into my stomach. Someone laughed—wet, hungry—as claws hooked into my wedding dress and tore. “Think the Alpha would care if we sample her first?” I didn’t fight. I was listening. Three years ago, Kael Vorn stood in the rain outside my father’s house, a wolf-rose clutched in his hand, and promised he’d never make me wait. I believed him. I starved my wolf for him at his mother’s table. I bled on their thresholds and never flinched. Tonight, under the Blood Moon, I heard his voice cut through the drums: *Forget Fianna. Take Sybella only. The blood-pact was ink on deerhide. Nothing more.* He carried my stepsister down the mountain on his back while she clutched my silver candlestick and pretended to struggle. My stepmother pressed drugged honey-mead into my hands. *You’re strong,* she said. *You can take a few hits. Sybella’s fragile.* When my shift finally tore through me, the men stopped laughing. I rose in a body I’d hidden for twenty-three years—white as deep winter, eyes the color of bleeding moons. Whole. And utterly furious. A strange Alpha watched from the tree line, silver-eyed and scarred. “You’re not Sybella,” he said. “No.” I stood over the bleeding males at my feet. “I’m the one he left behind.” He turned his back and bent low. “Then get on.” I climbed on. And I didn’t look back once.