Reborn to Ruin My Billionaire Alpha

The silver needle was the last thing I saw clearly. It caught the light from the single bulb above my cell, thin and bright and patient, like it had been waiting for me my whole life. "Hold still, sister." Celeste's voice was soft, the way it always was when people were watching. But no one was watching now. There was only the cold concrete under my knees, the smell of rust and old water, and the guard at the end of the corridor who had been paid very well to look the other way. I tried to pull back. My body didn't listen. A year in this cell. Sixteen years of my stepmother's "vitamins" before that. Wolfsbane had turned my muscles into wet paper, and my wolf—if I had ever had one—into a rumor. "You know what the funny part is?" Celeste crouched in front of me, careful not to let the hem of her cream-colored coat touch the floor. One gloved hand rested on the curve of her stomach. She was five months along. Everyone in Crescent City knew, because Ethan had announced it at a charity dinner the same week the court sentenced me. "Ethan never loved you. Not for one second. He needed what was in your blood, and he needed your father's company. Now he has both." "My father," I rasped. My throat was raw. I hadn't spoken to anyone in weeks. "Tell me the truth. Just once." She smiled. It was the same smile she wore at every family dinner, every gala, every time she called me sister in front of the pack. Sweet. Sympathetic. Completely empty. "Mother put it in his heart pills. A little every day. It took six months." She tilted her head, studying me the way you'd study a stain. "And everyone believed you did it, Aria. Even him, at the very end. He looked at you like you were a stranger. Do you remember?" I remembered. I remembered my father in the hospital bed, his hand slipping out of mine, his eyes going hard and cold when Vivian whispered something in his ear. I remembered the police at my door the morning after the funeral. I remembered Ethan standing on the courthouse steps, telling reporters he was "devastated" and "cooperating fully." I remembered that he had never once come to see me. Something cracked open inside my chest. Not my ribs. Something deeper. Something that had been holding me together for a year purely out of the stubborn belief that one day, somehow, someone would find out the truth. No one was coming. No one had ever been coming. "Why?" I whispered. "I gave you everything. I gave him everything." "That's why." Celeste pulled the cap off the syringe. "You were so easy, Aria. It was almost boring." The needle slid into the side of my neck. The burn came first—a bright, narrow line of fire under my skin. Then the cold. It crept outward through my veins like frost spreading across a windowpane, slow and almost beautiful. My fingers went numb. Then my hands. The bulb above us blurred into a soft white halo. Somewhere very far away, I thought I heard a wolf howling. Is that you? I wondered. Were you there all along? I had never met my wolf. At eighteen, when every other girl in the pack shifted for the first time under the full moon, I had stood in the clearing alone, waiting, while the elders whispered and my stepmother rubbed my back and told me it wasn't my fault. Some girls were just born weak. Some girls were born wolfless. I'm sorry, I wanted to tell the howling thing in the dark. I'm sorry I never found you. Celeste stood and brushed off her coat. "Goodbye, Aria. Don't worry. I'll take good care of everything you left behind." Her heels clicked down the corridor. A door opened. Closed. The guard laughed at something she said. The bulb flickered. My heartbeat slowed. I could count the spaces between each beat now, and they were getting longer. One. Two. Three. Four. Then the door at the end of the corridor exploded. Not opened. Exploded. Steel screamed as it tore from its hinges and slammed into the far wall. The guard's shout cut off mid-word. The whole building shook with a sound I had only ever heard in nightmares, a growl so deep and so enormous that I felt it in the concrete beneath my cheek more than I heard it. Footsteps. Heavy. Running. The bars of my cell groaned and peeled apart like paper. A shadow filled the gap. Massive. Black-furred. Eyes burning a molten, impossible gold. And then the shadow became a man. I knew his face. Everyone in Crescent City knew his face. Kael Blackwood. The Lycan King. The richest man on the East Coast, the owner of half the skyline, the monster parents in every pack used to frighten their children into behaving. Be good, or the Lycan King will come for you. I had met him exactly three times in my life. At my engagement party. At my wedding, where he stood at the very back of the church and left before the vows were finished. And once at a gala, where he looked at me across the room for a long, strange moment, then turned and walked out. He had never said more than a dozen words to me. So why was he on his knees beside me? Why were his hands shaking as he gathered me off the floor and pulled me against his chest? "Aria." My name came out of him like it hurt. Like it had been stuck in his throat for years. "Aria, look at me. Stay with me. Look at me." I tried. I really did. But the cold had reached my lungs, and each breath was smaller than the last. He pressed his forehead to mine. He smelled like rain and cedar and something wild underneath, something that made the last flicker of warmth inside me turn toward him the way a flower turns toward light. Something warm and wet fell onto my cheek. It took me a long moment to understand that the Lycan King was crying. "I was too late," he whispered against my skin. "I was always too late with you." Why? I wanted to ask. Why do you care? Who am I to you? But the darkness came up from the floor like water, and it took me with it. "Aria? Aria, are you okay?" Light. Too much light. Gold and white and glittering. Music, too. A string quartet playing something slow and elegant. The low roar of a few hundred conversations. The clink of crystal. The heavy, sweet perfume of roses—thousands of them—and underneath, the warm animal scent of a room full of wolves. I blinked. A chandelier hung above me, three tiers of crystal shaped like falling stars. Beyond it, the domed ceiling had been painted midnight blue and scattered with silver crescent moons. I knew this ceiling. I knew this room. The Moon Hall at the Grand Crescent Hotel. The most expensive ballroom in the city. My father had rented the entire top floor for the night. For me. I looked down at my hands. No bruises. No cracked nails. No scar across my left palm from the night a guard slammed the cell door on it. My skin was smooth and pale, and on my right wrist, a thin silver bracelet—my mother's—caught the light. Vivian had sold that bracelet the week after I was arrested. My dress was silver too. Floor-length silk, simple and soft. I remembered choosing it. I remembered Celeste saying it washed me out, and wearing it anyway, because it was the same color as the dress my mother wore in the only photo I had of her laughing. I was breathing. Easily. Deeply. My lungs didn't burn. My heart was pounding, hard and fast and alive. "Aria?" A clutch purse hung from my wrist. I fumbled it open with fingers that didn't quite feel like mine and pulled out my phone. The lock screen glowed up at me. Saturday, October 14. Three years ago. The night of my engagement. The night Ethan Hale stood on that stage and told five hundred wolves that I was his fated mate, his future Luna, his everything—and I believed him, because for the first time in my life, I felt it. A pull in my chest, warm and dizzying, like a hook behind my ribs. I had cried with happiness. I had thought the Moon Goddess had finally, finally given me something. I had thought it was love. "Aria, honestly, you're scaring me." A hand touched my elbow. "You look so pale." I turned. Celeste stood beside me in a pale pink gown, her honey-blonde hair pinned up in soft curls. No pregnancy. No gloves. No needle. Just big blue eyes full of sisterly concern and a champagne flute held out toward me, golden and fizzing. "Here," she said gently. "Drink this. It'll help your nerves before Ethan's announcement." I looked at the glass. I remembered this glass. I remembered the faint sweetness under the champagne, like honey and crushed violets. I remembered drinking it in two grateful swallows because my mouth was dry and my hands were shaking. I remembered how, ten minutes later, when Ethan took the stage and looked at me, the hook in my chest pulled tight for the very first time. Now, standing close enough to breathe it in, I caught that scent again. Honey. Violets. And something underneath that made the fine hairs on my arms stand up. Something I had never been able to smell in my first life, because I had been too drugged to smell anything at all. "Aria?" Celeste's smile didn't move, but something behind her eyes sharpened. "Take it. You need it." I didn't answer. I couldn't. I was looking past her, across the ballroom. My father stood near the stage in his black tuxedo, laughing at something one of the Blood Fang elders had said. Alive. Healthy. His cheeks pink from wine. Beside him, Vivian rested one manicured hand on his arm, her diamonds catching the light, her smile serene. On the stage, Ethan Hale was adjusting his cufflinks. Golden hair, golden skin, the easy confidence of a man who had never once been told no. He looked up, found me in the crowd, and winked. My stomach turned over. And then, without knowing why, I looked toward the far corner of the room. He was there. Standing alone beside one of the tall windows, apart from the crowd the way a mountain is apart from the hills around it. Black suit. Black hair. A glass of something amber in his hand that he hadn't touched. The other guests had left a careful circle of empty floor around him, as if by instinct. Kael Blackwood. He wasn't looking at the stage. He wasn't looking at Ethan. He was looking at me. The last time I saw those eyes, they had been wet with tears. On the stage, Ethan tapped the microphone. The quartet fell silent. Five hundred heads turned toward him. "Friends. Family. Members of the Blood Fang and Silver Crescent packs." His voice rolled through the hall, warm and rich and perfectly practiced. He lifted his glass toward me, and every eye in the room followed it. "Tonight, I want to share the happiest news of my life." Celeste pressed the champagne flute into my hand. "Tonight," Ethan said, "I claim Aria Sinclair as my fated mate—and my future Luna."