The mate I hate

Chapter One – The Mating Ceremony

Elara's POV

The hall was smelling as it always does during the Mating Ceremony – crushed moonflowers, burning cedar and, under it all, the metallic scent of nervous wolves that couldn't control their shifts. I stood with the other unmated students in my year, hands clasped in front of me as I'd been taught, trying not to think about the last time when I stood in this same place.

A year ago, it was Seren who stood there.

I could almost see her, if I let myself. Her dark hair braided with silver thread, the way she'd turned to find me in the crowd, right before stepping forward to greet her mate. She smiled at me. She wasn't afraid at all.

"Elara Veyne."

I jumped when I heard my name, before realizing that the girl standing next to me, Wren, was whispering my name as a question.

"What?"

"You're strangling yourself by your sleeve," Wren said.

"I'm fine."

Wren didn't seem convinced, but she left it alone, for which I was grateful. Most people wouldn't leave anything alone. Most people would look at me the way they were looking all year – like I was a ghost story in my sister's guise. I've heard it in the corridors a few times now, not even making an effort to tone down their whispers.

*That's the youngest Veyne girl. The sister of the one who died.*

*She looks like her, doesn't she? Same eyes.*

*I heard that Prince won't speak of it.*

I fixed my eyes in front of me, refusing to look through the crowd for him and, because I can't listen to myself, looked through the crowd for him nevertheless.

Kael Draven stood next to the dais with the other members of the royal family, dressed in formal black clothes, his face showing the same cold calm he displayed whenever he was in public. He didn't smile. He never smiled on such occasions. I used to wonder if this was grief. Now I knew that it was guilt.

It wasn't done with his hands, I knew that much. Seren had died less than a year into her bond to him, under circumstances that the council had closed the book on too hastily, and he had never once given a straightforward answer about that night. That was all I needed.

I watched him for a moment too long and he shifted, ever so slightly, and his eyes found mine.

I broke eye contact first.

"Elara."

That wasn't Wren.

My father was coming toward me down the center of the hall, slipping between the rows of students who moved out of his way almost immediately. Alpha Darius Veyne does not interrupt ceremonies. Alpha Darius Veyne does not wander through crowded halls like he has places to be, no matter how serious the event. And my stomach tightened even before he had said another word.

"Father," I said slowly. "The ceremony isn't over."

"I need to talk to you." His voice was low and private. "Now."

"Here?"

"In private."

"I'm not going to abandon the ceremony in the middle of it—"

"Elara." The way he said my name was the way he said everything; patience disguised as a command. "This will only take a moment."

I scanned the crowd quickly, and saw several faces already turning our way, intrigued by the spectacle of an Alpha dragging his daughter off during a ceremony. I didn't trust him; I hadn't since I'd been old enough to notice the way my mother flinched when he raised his voice, to count her bruised arms and legs that she explained as training accidents. Creating a spectacle now would do little but encourage gossip.

"Fine." I said finally. "Say what you need to say."

He regarded me for a moment, and something about the expression on his face sent my hackles up.

"There is something you need to know," he said.

"What?"

"I have arranged your mating." His eyes were still on mine as he spoke. "With Kael Draven."

I honestly thought I'd misheard him at first.

"What did you say?"

"I said exactly what I said."

"He was Seren's mate." It came out sharper than I intended to say it, loud enough that Wren, standing just a few feet away from me, jerked her head around. I lowered it but couldn't get rid of the tremor in my voice. "He was *Seren's*. Have you lost your mind?"

"The arrangement has already been made," my father said as if I hadn't interrupted him. "The bonding ceremony will take place tonight."

"No."

"Elara—"

"No." I took a step back. "I would rather not mate at all than be bonded to the man who killed my sister."

His face changed. Not shock, not even anger at first. Just a sickeningly cold expression that I knew from experience preceded a lecture on the consequences of insubordination.

"You will do as you are told," my father said in an ominous whisper.

"No, I won't."

"Elara, I am warning you—"

"I don't care." I clenched my fists at my sides. "There's no way you can make me come up there and bond myself to him. I won't."

My father froze in place.

And then, speaking in a tone that scared me more than any raised voice, he said, "If you refuse the bonding ceremony, then I have a different way to make sure that you don't."

It took me a moment to realize what he was planning to do, as he opened the inside pocket of his coat and pulled out a tiny glass vial.

I immediately recognized it, seeing the same vial hidden in the back of his study when I was younger, asking my mother what it was, watching her pale face turn ghostly white and begging me never to touch it, never to ask about it again.

"Father," I whispered. "What is that."

"You leave me no choice."

"Don't." I rushed forward but I was too late, too far away. "Father, please don't—"

He uncorked it with his thumb and drained the content in one swallow.

For a second, nothing happened, and I dared to hope, idiotically, that it was a mistake that he was actually threatening me. That it wasn't even a vial, but something else, some form of blackmail, some... anything other than what I feared it was.

And then he made some noise deep in his throat and dropped to one knee.

"Father!"

The ceremony around us continued unaware, the voice of the officiant somewhere behind me sounding like it was coming from a different realm entirely. I grabbed at my father's arm and he grabbed at mine in return, hard enough to leave bruises, his entire body trembling.

And then something snapped inside of me.

My wolf—the silent beast who had waited and waited patiently while we went through the ceremony—burst forward with no warning whatsoever, trying to claw her way out of my body with her paws digging into my sides. I gasped and staggered to one side, clutching at my chest.

*What's happening. What is wrong with me.*

Through the blood bond connection I shared with my mother, I could feel her wolf roar.

Not figuratively. The sensation was so visceral it felt like it ripped its way through my chest as I fell to my knees beside my father, unable to breathe past it.

"Father," I gasped. "What did you do? What happened?"

He raised his head, sweat beading along his forehead, and his normally calm and composed eyes were wide with something that I have never seen in my life before.

Fear.

"Elara," he rasped. "You only have minutes."

"Minutes for *what*—"

Even as I said it, the realization crawled along my spine.

If my father died, the curse inside of him would survive.

And it would hunt my mother.

And it would hunt me.