They sent me to kill him,I fell in love with him

The blade pressed flat against Isolde Fenmore’s thigh, hidden under three layers of white silk, and her heart slammed so hard she was certain the wolves closest to her could hear it. “Thirty days,” Kestrel Marrow said again, low, at her shoulder. “You strike within thirty days or I send someone who won’t hesitate the way you’re already hesitating.” “I haven’t even walked out there yet.” “You’re hesitating in your head. I can see it on your face.” She smoothed her expression flat before he could say anything else. Kestrel had trained her since she was twelve years old, taught her to kill with her hands, her teeth, a blade, poison if it came to that. He’d never once told her killing would feel like this, standing in a longhouse doorway about to marry the man she was ordered to end. Outside, drums started. Two packs that had spent three years ripping each other apart now stood shoulder to shoulder in a courtyard, pretending peace was real. “Go,” Kestrel said. “Smile. Marry him. Then finish the job.” She stepped into the courtyard alone. Every eye in the crowd found her at once. Blackmoor wolves on one side, her own Fenmore pack scattered thin on the other, outnumbered and everyone in that courtyard knew it. This marriage wasn’t peace. It was her people buying time they didn’t have, and she was the price. Corvin Blackmoor stood at the altar stone waiting for her. She’d heard stories about him for three years. The alpha who tore through her cousin’s unit at the river crossing without breaking stride. The alpha who burned two Fenmore outposts to the ground in one night and left no survivors to carry the warning back. She’d built a monster in her head, scarred and merciless, something easy to kill without feeling anything about it. The man standing at the altar didn’t match the monster. He was broad through the shoulders, dark hair pushed back from a face that gave away nothing, and when his eyes locked on hers across the courtyard, something in her chest lurched hard enough to steal her breath. Not fear. Something worse. It’s not real, she told herself, walking toward him anyway because refusing meant her little brother’s throat opened on principle by a council that punished weakness fast and permanent. Mate bonds are old wives’ tales. Your body is playing tricks on you because you’re terrified. She reached the altar. Corvin studied her the way a predator studies something it hasn’t decided is prey yet, eyes tracking her hands, her stance, the place at her hip where the silk didn’t sit quite right. She adjusted before he could finish the thought. “You’re not what the stories described,” he said, voice pitched low, meant only for her. “Neither are you.” The officiant began the binding words, old language, half growled, older than either of their packs. Isolde’s pulse spiked as the ceremony moved toward the blood exchange, the part where a blade would open both their palms and press them together, sealing something neither of them had agreed to want. Corvin’s hand found hers first. Warm. Steady. His thumb moved once over her knuckles, brief, like the gesture had escaped him before he could stop it. The officiant’s blade came down fast, cut them both, pressed their palms together. Heat exploded up Isolde’s arm and into her chest and down her spine, and every story she’d ever dismissed about mate bonds slammed into her at once, undeniable now, real in a way that terrified her more than the blade against her thigh ever had. Corvin’s grip tightened like the same thing had blindsided him. Then his face shut down, cold and formal again, and he let go first. “Welcome to Blackmoor pack,” he said, loud enough for the crowd, empty of anything he’d shown her a second ago. The ceremony ended in a blur of ritual words and clasped hands she barely tracked. When it finally broke, wolves surged forward to offer congratulations that felt more like inspections, checking the new alliance for cracks. Isolde smiled until her jaw ached and searched the crowd for Kestrel. He was gone. That alone should have unsettled her less than it did. Kestrel didn’t leave without reason, and he definitely didn’t leave in the middle of a ceremony meant to launch a thirty day countdown to murder. She found her chance to slip away near sundown, claiming exhaustion, and Corvin let her go with a look that lasted a beat too long, like he was cataloguing the excuse for later use against her. She made it three corridors deep into the Blackmoor stronghold before someone grabbed her wrist from a side passage and hauled her into the dark. Isolde’s training took over before fear could. She twisted, drove her elbow back into her attacker’s ribs, and only stopped when a familiar voice hissed her name through gritted teeth. “Kestrel. What are you” “Shut up and listen.” His hand was locked around her wrist, and for the first time in three years of training under him, she saw something in his face that looked almost like fear. “There’s a complication. The council held something back from you.” “What kind of complication.” Kestrel’s jaw worked like the words physically hurt to say. “Your father,” he said. “He’s alive.” The floor seemed to tilt under her feet. “That’s not possible. He died at the river crossing three years ago. I watched the pyre. I carried his ashes myself.” “You carried a pyre the council told you was your father. I have reason to believe he’s being held at the eastern outpost, and the council has known for months.” “Why would they lie to me about” “Because a daughter who thinks her father is dead has nothing left to lose. A daughter who knows he’s alive and being held has everything to lose if she doesn’t complete this mission exactly the way she’s told.” Kestrel’s grip tightened. “They needed you obedient, Isolde. They made sure of it.” Somewhere down the corridor, footsteps approached, unhurried, deliberate. Kestrel’s head snapped toward the sound and his face went bloodless. “You need to go,” he said, already backing into the shadows. “Now. Before” He didn’t finish the sentence. He was gone, folded back into the dark like he’d never been there at all, and Isolde was left alone in the corridor with her heart hammering and a truth she couldn’t unknow. The footsteps stopped directly behind her. “Interesting company you keep on your wedding night,” Corvin said.