REJECTED BY THE PRINCE, CLAIMED BY HIS RUTHLESS UNCLE.

The morning of the Moon Blessing Ceremony arrived with a sky so clear it looked freshly washed, and Liana Ashwood stood at her bedroom window watching the first pale light spill over the rooftops of Silver Moon Kingdom. Somewhere below, the palace grounds were already alive with movement — servants stringing white ribbons between the pillars, warriors polishing their ceremonial armor until it gleamed, and cooks shouting over the clatter of pots as they prepared a feast fit for royalty. None of it was for her. She knew that the way she knew her own name. The Moon Blessing Ceremony belonged to the pack's strongest wolves, its brightest stars, its favored children. Liana was none of those things. She was an omega, the lowest rank a wolf could be born into, and in eighteen years of living in this palace, she had learned exactly what that meant. It meant standing at the back of every gathering. It meant eating what was left after everyone else had taken their share. It meant being seen and immediately forgotten, like a shadow that flickered across a wall and vanished before anyone could name it. She pressed her palm against the cool glass and let out a slow breath. "You're still standing there like a ghost." Liana didn't need to turn to know who had spoken. Her mother's voice had a particular chill to it, one that had settled into permanence the day Liana's father died. She turned anyway, smoothing the front of her plain gray dress, the only one nice enough for a ceremony she hadn't been formally invited to but couldn't avoid attending. Her mother stood in the doorway, arms crossed, her sharp eyes already moving past Liana to search the room for her sister. "Where is Selena? She should have been dressed an hour ago." "I haven't seen her since breakfast," Liana said quietly. Her mother made a small sound of irritation and swept past her without another word, without so much as a glance at the dress Liana wore or the way her hands trembled slightly at her sides. It had been like this for as long as Liana could remember. Ever since her father died protecting the kingdom's border from a rogue wolf attack, something in her mother had closed like a door slamming shut, and Liana — who looked so much like him, who had his same quiet steadiness — had been left standing on the wrong side of it. She followed her mother out into the hallway, past portraits of ancestors she had never known, past the long mirror that always made her feel smaller than she was. She caught her own reflection for half a second: silver-blonde hair pulled back simply, blue eyes too wide for her thin face, skin pale from spending too many hours indoors doing chores no one thanked her for. She looked away before she could linger on it. Selena's room was at the end of the corridor, the door propped open, laughter spilling out before Liana even reached it. Inside, three handmaidens fussed over her younger sister, adjusting the folds of a deep blue gown that hugged her figure perfectly, weaving small white flowers through her dark hair. Selena caught sight of Liana in the doorway and smiled — the kind of smile that looked sweet to anyone who didn't know her, but which Liana had learned over the years to read for what it really was. "Oh good, you're already dressed," Selena said, turning back to the mirror. "I was worried you'd embarrass Mother by showing up looking like you slept in a barn." One of the handmaidens giggled. Liana said nothing. She had long since stopped trying to defend herself against her sister's comments; it never changed anything, and it only ever seemed to feed whatever hunger made Selena say them in the first place. "Are you nervous?" Liana asked instead, because it was easier to ask questions than to answer barbs. Selena's reflection smiled wider. "Why would I be nervous? Everyone already knows how tonight will go." She smoothed a hand over her skirt. "The whole kingdom's been whispering about it for weeks. Prince Cassian will finally be matched, and it's going to be someone worthy of him. Someone strong. Someone beautiful." She didn't say the words but she didn't need to. The implication hung in the air anyway: someone unlike you. Liana had heard the whispers too, drifting through the palace corridors like smoke — how the future Alpha King was the most sought-after wolf in three kingdoms, how noble daughters from every pack had spent the last year praying to the Moon Goddess that they might be chosen as his fated mate. Liana had never let herself hope for anything so impossible. Omegas were rarely gifted with powerful mates; the Moon Goddess, according to every story she'd ever been told, paired strength with strength, favor with favor. It was one of the few truths of pack life that no one had ever needed to explain to her twice. And yet. There was a small, stubborn part of her — the same part that had kept her believing in kindness even after years of cruelty, the same part that still whispered maybe tonight when she should have known better — that couldn't quite let go of the ceremony's promise. The Moon Goddess chooses. Not rank. Not beauty. Not birthright. Just fate, reaching down and marking two souls as belonging to each other. She didn't say any of this aloud. She only offered Selena a small nod and slipped back out into the hallway, making her way alone toward the Great Courtyard where the ceremony would be held. • • •