The Rogue King's Second Chance Mate

ARIANA I looked at the mirror and didn’t know what to think anymore. Ariana sat before the vanity, fastening her earrings while Madison lounged nearby with effortless confidence, scrolling through messages on her phone before occasionally glancing over. The two of them had spent countless moments in rooms like this over the years, preparing for galas, ceremonies, and family gatherings. To anyone looking in, they would have appeared inseparable. Madison finally lifted her eyes from the screen and studied my reflection for a moment, her lips curving into a knowing smile as she leaned back in her chair. "You look nervous." Madison Hayes said it from across the vanity, watching me through the mirror with that smile she had perfected over twenty years of wearing it around me, I looked at my own reflection and adjusted the clasp on my earring, "I'm not," I wasn't, I said. The last time I stood in this room getting ready for this party, my hands were shaking so badly my mother's old maid had to do my hair twice, but not tonight. Tonight my hands were steady, my mind was clear, and I knew exactly what was going to happen before it happened, because I had already lived through it. I had already died because of it. "Roman has been asking about you all morning," Madison Hayes said, picking up my lip gloss from the vanity like it belonged to her. "He's excited, Ari, you should be too, it's your engagement party. I watched her in the mirror. She was beautiful, Madison Hayes always was, sharp cheekbones, careful eyes and a smile that could make anyone feel chosen. I had spent most of my first life believing that smile was real. But I knew better now. In four months she would be the one to plant the evidence that got me condemned, she would cry at my trial with tears I used to think were real, she would hug my father at my funeral and mean none of it. "You're right," I said. Then I stood up and smoothed the front of my dress. "Let's not keep them waiting. I said smiling ... The party was exactly as I remembered it. Every important wolf in the five territories packed into my father's great hall, dressed in their finest and performing loyalty to a future Alpha King who had never once earned it. The lights were warm and low, the music was the kind that made people feel sophisticated, and at the center of everything, exactly where I knew he would be, was Roman Lockwood. He was beautiful, I would give him that. His polished jaw, easy smile, the kind of man who walked into a room and immediately had it without trying, he was wearing a dark suit and already holding a glass, talking to two Alphas from the northern territories like he was already King. My heart felt nothing. That used to terrify me, in my first life I would have walked in here and felt everything. The pull of him, the pride, the soft stupid warmth of thinking I was loved. Now I just saw the knife he was hiding behind the smile. My wolf Vera stirred low in my chest, He is looking at you, she said. I know. I said. What are we doing? My wolf asked. Exactly what we planned. I said smiling. I moved through the room with a glass of champagne in my hand and a smile on my face that I had been practicing for five years, nodding at the right people, saying the right things, watching Roman track me from across the hall the way he always did, like I was something he owned and was proud of. He raised his glass slightly when our eyes met. So I smiled back. And then I turned to find his brother, Sebastian Lockwood was standing near the far wall. He didn't hide, but positioned in a way that made it clear he had chosen this spot deliberately, away from the center of the room, close enough to the exit that he could leave whenever he decided to. He was taller than I remembered. Broader, and darker. The kind of man who took up space without apologizing for it, he had a jaw that was always set and eyes that were always calculating and a stillness about him that made the wolves around him nervous without him doing a single thing. The Rogue King. The man Roman had exiled, poisoned, tried to have killed twice, and still couldn't stop thinking about, because Sebastian Lockwood had taken nothing and turned it into an empire, and that was the kind of thing a man like Roman could never forgive. Vera went very still inside me. Ariana, she said. I see him, I said. He's ... I know what he is, Vera, stay with me. Then I crossed the room. I didn't rush, rushing was not the plan, the plan was to move the way a woman moved when she had made a decision and wasn't afraid of it. Seb saw me coming when I was ten feet away. I watched his eyes track me the same way Roman's had, except Seb's gaze was different, it wasn't possession, it was assessment, the look of a man filing something away and not yet sure what category it belonged in. Then I stopped in front of him. "Sebastian Lockwood," I said .. "Ariana Vance," his voice was low and unhurried. "You're in the wrong part of the room. "I'm exactly where I decided to be. Something shifted in his expression, not much, just enough. "Your fiancé is standing over there wondering why you walked past him. "I know," I said. And then I reached up, put my hand against the side of his face, and kissed him. The room went silent. Not quiet, but completely silent, the kind of silence that happens when something so unexpected occurs that the air itself stops moving. So l went completely still for one breath. Then his arm came around me. And the room stopped existing. I had died for loving the wrong man. Now I was kissing his brother, and this time, I was the one holding all the cards.