THE WOLFLESS OMEGA WHO HAD TWO MATES

The pack hall smelled like candle smoke and roasted lamb, and I was carrying twelve glasses on a tray. That was my job at the Founders' Ceremony. Twenty-two years old, wolfless, and still the girl who refilled everyone's wine. "Careful, Mara," my stepsister said, loud enough for the whole table. "You'll drop something. You always do." Celeste sat at the Alpha's right hand in a silver dress that cost more than my year of wages. She had one palm on Rhys Sterling's arm like she'd already paid for him. Rhys didn't look at me. He never did in public. In private he'd spent ten years doing the opposite. Shoving me into lockers when we were kids. Taking the last seat beside me on the bus so nobody else could. Telling the whole school I smelled like bleach, then leaving a coat on my porch the night it snowed. I'd stopped trying to understand him around fifteen. "Speaking of lines," Celeste said, and tapped her wrist, where her pretty gold cuff sat. "Everyone here has theirs. Except you, Mara. Poor thing. Wolfless girls don't get a mate-line. Isn't that what the elders say?" Laughter went down the table like a dropped plate. I kept my face still. My left wrist burned under the black band I'd worn since I was thirteen. Nobody had ever seen what was under it, because I'd made sure of that. "Show us," Celeste said. "Prove me wrong. Take it off." "Leave her alone," someone muttered. Nobody meant it. I set the tray down. My hands were steady, which surprised me. I peeled the band back. The room went quiet in pieces. First the nearest chairs, then the far tables. Then even the musicians stopped. Ink-black letters ran across my skin, sharp and clear, like they'd been there my whole life. Which they had. *There you are. I was starting to think you were a rumor.* Celeste's smile slid off her face. "That's," she said. "That's not possible." "It's a line," said the old Beta, staring. "A real one." "She's an omega," Celeste snapped. "She can't have a mate." "She can have whatever the Moon gives her," Rhys said. He'd stood up. I hadn't heard his chair move. He was looking at me for the first time all night, and his eyes were the wrong color. Gold at the edges, the way they go when his wolf pushes forward. He crossed the hall in six steps. People got out of his way. He stopped in front of me and the whole hall was silent enough to hear the candles. His voice came out rough, like he hadn't used it in years. "There you are," Rhys said. "I was starting to think you were a rumor." My knees went weak. Ten years of cold shoulders, and every one of them hit me at once. *Him? It's him?* The line on my wrist heated like a brand. Celeste made a sound like she'd been struck. Somewhere behind me a glass broke. I should have been happy. I'd wanted a mate since I was old enough to read the words on my own arm. But Rhys's face had gone strange. Not triumphant. Not relieved. He looked like a man who'd just been told the worst news of his life. "Mara," he said, very low. "I need you to not say anything yet." "Why?" I whispered. "Because I'm not the only one who's going to say that." The double doors at the end of the hall opened. Cold air came in first. Then a man in a black suit, with silver in his eyes and a security team that stopped at the threshold like they'd been told to. I knew his face from magazine covers. Kaelen Thorne. Lycan billionaire. The man who owned half the city and had never once visited our pack. He was looking straight at me. Every wolf in the room bowed their head without being told. Rhys went rigid beside me. Kaelen walked down the center of the hall, slow, like he had all the time in the world. He stopped an arm's length away and looked at my bare wrist, then at my face. "There you are," he said quietly. "I was starting to think you were a rumor." The same words. The exact same ones. My wrist screamed. And both of them reached for my hand at the same time. ---