He Swore He'd Reject Me, Then Fate Made Me His.

The chandeliers in the grand pack hall of the Ridge Domain burned against my eyes and threw sharp shadows across the marble floor. I stood at the edge of the velvet-roped VIP section, my hands clasped in front of my gray silk gown. Beside me, Julian, my husband adjusted the cuffs of his suit, his eyes darting toward the raised dais at the front of the room. "Stand up straight, Nora," he muttered, not bothering to look at me. "My father managed to secure us a spot near the aisle. Half the regional investors are in this room. Don't look like you're attending a funeral." "I'm standing fine, Julian," I said quietly. "You're slouching. And you've barely spoken all night." He shot me an irritated glance. "Damon is coming home to take his place as the Alpha heir. Every elite family in the territory is celebrating. Try to look like you belong here." I swallowed the bitter taste at the back of my throat at the mention of Damon and looked away. Six years ago, before the car crash that killed my parents, before the bank seized my family's grain empire, before my wolf went silent in my chest, I would not have been standing on the sidelines like a charity case. I would have been seated at the head table. A hush fell over the three hundred guests. At the top of the grand staircase, the doors swung open. A rush of freezing night air swept through the hall, carrying the heavy scent of an apex predator. Damon stepped into the light. He was twenty-six now, broader across the shoulders than the boy I remembered, wearing the black tunic of the High Guard. The arrogance in his face had hardened into the cold composure of a man who had probably spent the last six years on a battlefield. I took a step back, hiding myself behind a marble pillar. Grief rose in my chest, and an old anger with it. Why did you come back? His voice from six years ago came back to me: Imagine if we were fated mates, Nora? God, I'd reject you on the spot. It had been a joke to him. But when the crash happened days later, when I woke up in a hospital bed with my family dead, my wolf gone, and my legacy erased, Damon had vanished. He had left the pack without a word. Julian had been the one to pull me out. Julian had stayed. Before the Alpha Senior could raise his golden goblet to welcome his son, a metallic shriek tore through the hall. The defensive runes carved into the stone walls flared crimson. "Rogue breach at the southern perimeter!" a guard on the balcony roared. "They've breached the wards!" Three hundred powerful bodies surged toward the emergency exits. "Julian!" I screamed, reaching for my husband's arm. But Julian had already surged forward, his eyes wide with panic as he pushed through a group of elderly betas. The crowd separated us in seconds. I had no wolf, no strength to hold my ground, and no accelerated healing to protect my bones. A heavily muscled enforcer shoved past me, his shoulder slamming into my chest. I was thrown backward. My heel caught on the edge of a velvet runner, and my left ankle snapped. I hit the marble hard, the breath exploding from my lungs. Black spots danced across my vision as white-hot pain tore up my leg. Boots stomped inches from my face. Pain cracked through my ribs as someone stepped on my side. "Help!" I gasped, my voice swallowed by the roar of the crowd and the blaring alarms. Dragging myself toward the base of the pillar, my hands slick with spilled wine and my own blood, I pulled my phone from my clutch. My fingers shook so badly I could barely unlock the screen. I hit Julian's speed dial. Ring. Ring. Ring. Call disconnected. "Julian, please," I sobbed, redialing. Call disconnected. I dropped the phone. And then, through the thunder of boots and screaming, I heard his voice. Not through a speaker, but barely ten feet ahead of me. "I've got you! Shanna, look at me! I've got you!" I lifted my head. Through the moving forest of legs, I saw my husband. Julian was kneeling beside an overturned banquet table. He wasn't looking for me. He was hovering over Shanna, my best friend. She sat on the floor, clutching her forearm where a scratch was welling with a single drop of blood, an injury her wolf would heal in less than ten minutes. "Julian," I choked out, reaching a blood-stained hand toward him. "Julian, I'm here..." He didn't hear me. "It hurts, Julian," Shanna whimpered, burying her face in his chest. "Don't look at the crowd, baby. Just hold onto my neck," Julian said. There was a fierce devotion in his voice that I had never heard directed at me. My heart went void of feeling for a second. He didn't look for the wife he had brought with him. He swept Shanna into his arms as if she were made of glass, turned on his heel, and headed straight for the VIP security corridor. His path took him directly past the pillar. Julian's shoe came down within three inches of my outstretched fingertips but he didn't look down. His eyes were locked on the woman weeping in his arms. I watched my husband's back disappear into the guarded corridor, carrying my best friend away. The pain in my ankle was nothing beside the pain in my heart. It felt like my heart was being clawed over and over again by a rabid wolf. He left me. Six years of gratitude toward the man who saved me. The endless apologies I had offered for my broken body and my barren womb. The love I had poured into our five-year marriage. I had spent every day trying to be worthy of him, bending myself into whatever shape he needed, and when I was bleeding on the floor, he had stepped over my body to comfort another woman. He hadn't even hesitated. Hot tears spilled over, mixing with the dust and blood on the marble. A ragged sob tore from my lips, but there was no one left to hear it. I curled inward, clutching my ribs. The alarms wailed above me, and the boots of the pack guards shook the floor, but all I could hear was Julian's voice calling Shanna ‘baby’. I pressed my forehead against the freezing stone. I had survived the death of my family. I had survived the loss of my wolf. But lying there, abandoned by the only person I had left in the world, I felt something inside me shatter. The devoted, grateful wife Julian Vance had married died on that marble floor. Whatever was left in my chest didn't know how to do anything but bleed.