"You didn't have to knock," Damien always said. "This is basically your second home."

I used to love that. The way he said it like I belonged somewhere real. Like out of every girl in school, every wolf girl with her perfect shift and her pack rank and her place in the hierarchy, he had looked at me and decided I was worth choosing.

Two years I held onto that.

Today was our anniversary. I'd been awake since six, mixing vanilla batter, waiting for the cake to rise, tying the ribbon on the bracelet box until the bow sat exactly right. I even wrote him a card, a full page, front and back, because that was the kind of girl I was. The kind that meant every word.

The drive over, I was smiling so hard my cheeks hurt. His front door was unlocked, same as always. I stepped in holding the cake box in both hands, the bracelet tucked into my jacket pocket, already rehearsing the look on his face when he saw it.

The house was quiet, too quiet. I told myself that was fine. He was probably napping after morning practice. I'd wake him up with cake and a kiss and it would be one of those moments we'd talk about later.

I started up the stairs. Halfway up, I heard it. I froze, hand on the railing. The sound was muffled but it was there, and something low and instinctive in my chest went cold before my brain caught up. Like some part of me already knew. Like something beneath the surface of my skin had always known and had been waiting patiently for the rest of me to find out.

I kept moving anyway. I told myself I was being paranoid. I told myself don't be that girl, Selene. Don't ruin a perfectly good anniversary with your insecurities.

I pushed open his bedroom door.

The cake box hit the floor. I didn't feel it leave my hands. Damien sat up fast. Bianca pulled the sheets up. Both of them stared at me and the room went completely silent except for the sound of my own pulse in my ears.

My best friend. In my boyfriend's bed. On our anniversary. Bianca was the first one to speak. She let out a short breath that turned into a laugh, almost like she was relieved. Like she'd been waiting for this exact moment and was glad it had finally come.

"Selene," she said. Just my name. Like that covered everything.

"What is this." It didn't come out as a question. My voice was flat, which surprised me, because inside I was anything but flat.

Damien dragged a hand through his hair. He looked tired, Not guilty nor panicked, Just tired, the way you look when you've been caught doing something you knew was wrong but couldn't bring yourself to care about enough to stop.

"Don't make this a whole thing," he said.

Something cracked open in my chest. I laughed, and it came out broken. "Don't make it a whole thing. Damien, I brought you a cake. It's our anniversary. And you're in bed with Bianca."

"Oh, stop." Bianca sat up straighter, completely unbothered, settling against the headboard like she was getting comfortable for something she'd been looking forward to. "You've been his charity case for two years. Did you actually think he was building a future with you?"

"Bianca.."

"No." She cut me off cleanly, her voice dropping to something almost sweet. "I'm doing you a favor. You don't have a wolf, Selene. You never shifted. Eighteen years old and nothing. You think an Alpha takes a wolfless girl as his Luna? In front of his pack?"

I looked at Damien. Waiting for him to deny it. To say something.. Just Anything.

He held my gaze for exactly two seconds, then looked away.

"She's not wrong," he said quietly.

Those three words hit harder than anything Bianca had said, because Bianca was cruel on purpose. Damien said it like it was just a fact. Like he was stating something so obvious it barely needed saying.

"You knew I didn't have a wolf when we started dating," I said.

"I know." He picked at a thread on the sheet. "I thought maybe it would come. Most late bloomers shift by sixteen. You're eighteen, Selene."

"So this is my fault."

"I didn't say that." He finally looked at me again. "I'm saying I can't keep holding on to something that was never going to work. You're kind and you care too much. But I need a mate who matches me. Someone with a wolf. Someone my pack won't question."

"He used to cringe when people saw you together," Bianca added, and her voice had gone back to pleasant. Like we were having a normal conversation. "He told me himself. Said it made him look weak, showing up to pack events with a wolfless girl on his arm."

I waited. Gave him the chance to deny it.

He didn't say a word. I reached into my pocket. Took out the velvet bracelet box. Set it on the dresser by the door, very carefully, because my hands were shaking and I refused to let either of them see that. Then I walked out.

I don't know how long I drove. At some point I stopped in a parking lot and sat with both hands on the wheel while the tears came. Slow ones first, then the kind that made it hard to breathe.

He was embarrassed by me. Two years of thinking I was chosen, and the whole time I was something he was too polite to get rid of sooner.

Somewhere around nine I found myself inside a club on the edge of town. I didn't plan it. I just drove until the road ran out and the music was loud enough to drown out the replay in my head. I sat at the bar and drank until the edges went soft and the ache in my chest became something I could almost breathe around.

That was when I saw him.

He was sitting at the far end of the bar alone. Jacket open, jaw sharp, arms crossed loosely on the counter. He wasn't talking to anyone and didn't look like he wanted to. There was something almost deliberately still about him, like the noise around him was happening at a distance he had chosen and could revoke at any moment.

Every wolf in the room was angled slightly away from him. Not obviously. Just enough. The way wolves did around Alphas without realizing they were doing it.

I didn't make a decision. I just stood up and walked toward him, because I was tired of being the girl who was careful and quiet and chose the right thing and still ended up with a cake on the floor.

I stopped in front of him. He looked up.

And I kissed him.

He went rigid immediately.

Two seconds. Maybe three. Then his hand closed around my wrist, firm and sudden, and he pulled back hard. His eyes found mine and they were glowing.

Bright green. Like something wild had come to the surface and hadn't decided yet whether to go back down.

His grip tightened, not enough to hurt, but enough to make clear I wasn't going anywhere until he was ready to let me.

"Who the hell are you?"

The bar went silent the way a room goes silent when something dangerous happens. Not all at once. In a wave, starting closest to us and rolling outward until even the music felt distant.

Every wolf in that room felt it. I didn't have a wolf, or so everyone always said, but even I felt the pressure of it. That invisible weight that dropped into the air around him like a warning. Like standing too close to a storm.

Alpha aura.

His hand was still locked around my wrist. His eyes were still glowing that furious green, and they hadn't moved off my face. He was reading me the way predators read things they didn't understand yet.

"Answer me." His voice was low. Controlled in the way that things are controlled when they have to work at it. "Who are you?"

"I'm nobody." My voice came out steadier than I had any right to feel. "I go to Mooncrest. I'm new. I just.." I stopped. "I'm sorry. That was stupid. I don't do things like that."

A guy two stools down stood up slowly, both hands slightly visible, the way wolves moved around Alphas when they didn't want to be misread. "Jaxon, man. She came out of nowhere. I didn't see her.."

Jaxon.

Even drunk, the name registered like cold water. Jaxon Blackwood. Hockey captain. Future Alpha of the Blackwood Pack. The name that got whispered like a warning before new students even stepped on campus.

I had kissed him.

"Oh no," I breathed.

Something shifted in his expression. The fury was still there but something else had moved in underneath it. He tilted his head slightly and his nostrils flared, just barely, the way wolves did when a scent caught them off guard.

His grip on my wrist didn't loosen. But his eyes changed. The heat in them shifted from anger into something I didn't have a name for. Something searching.

"You're not scared," he said. It wasn't a question.

"I am scared," I told him honestly. "I'm also very drunk. So it's hard to tell which one is winning right now."

He stared at me for a long moment. Whatever he was doing behind those eyes, he didn't share it.

Then I felt it. That heavy pull behind my eyes, the floor tilting under me, gravity making a very aggressive argument.

"Okay," I said quietly. "I think I'm about to.."

I went sideways.

Fast, No warning. Just the floor coming up to meet me. He caught me before I hit anything. Both hands, one on my arm and one at my back, pulling me upright against his chest before I even understood I was falling. I ended up with my face near his collarbone and I registered, somewhere below coherent thought, that he smelled like pine and cold air and something deeper underneath that my body responded to before my brain could weigh in.

His arms tensed, Just slightly. Like he was going to step back and didn't. Then everything went dark.

I woke up to a ceiling I didn't recognize. Clean and white.A glass of water on the nightstand with two aspirin beside it, placed there deliberately by someone who had thought about it.

I sat up too fast and immediately regretted it. The night assembled itself in pieces, Damien, Bianca. The drive. The bar. The stranger whose hand had closed around my wrist like he had every right to.

Jaxon Blackwood.

I pressed my face into the pillow and stayed there.

My phone was on the nightstand. Fourteen missed calls from my mother. I called her back.

She picked up on the first ring. "Selene. I've been calling you since last night. Where are you?"

"I'm okay. I stayed at a friend's. I'm sorry I didn't text." I kept my voice even. "What's wrong?"

She exhaled. Long and slow, the kind that carries a whole night of sitting up worrying inside it. "The divorce finalized yesterday. The papers went through." A pause that had weight to it. "And there's something else. I've been seeing someone. For about eight months now. I didn't want to tell you until I was sure."

I sat up straighter. "Eight months."

"I know. I know it's a lot." Her voice was careful. Rehearsed. "But he's a good man. And sweetheart, we're getting married."

"Married." I couldn't keep up with the pace of the morning. My head was pounding, my cheek was still sore from crying, and now my mother was telling me she was getting married to a man I'd never heard of. "When?"

"Soon. He has a home here. There's room for all of us. I need us to move tomorrow."

"Tomorrow." I said it back slowly like repeating it would make it make more sense.

"His name is Victor." She said it gently. Softly. The way you say something you've been holding onto for a while. "Victor Blackwood."

The room went absolutely still.

I sat there on the edge of a bed I didn't recognize, in a room that smelled faintly of pine and cold air, holding a phone that had just said the word Blackwood.

My eyes moved slowly around the room.

Blackwood.

The same last name. The same green eyes. The same boy whose bed I had apparently been asleep in all night.

The same Blackwood..

The mansion did not look like something people actually lived in.

I stood on the front path with my suitcase and looked up at it. Three stories of stone and glass, the kind of house that wasn't built to impress. It was built to remind. To make sure that anyone who stood where I was standing understood exactly what kind of family lived behind those doors and exactly how far outside of that world they were.

I already felt it. That pressure in the air that pack land always carried, that low hum of Alpha territory that made the back of my neck prickle even though I had no wolf to respond to it. I always felt it. I had never understood why, since wolfless girls weren't supposed to be sensitive to those things. I'd stopped mentioning it years ago because nobody had an explanation that made sense.

My mother was already at the door. Victor Blackwood opened it before she could knock, and the warmth on his face was immediate and genuine. He was tall and broad with grey at his temples, the kind of man who had been carrying authority for so long it had become part of his posture.

"Evelyn." He said her name like he'd been looking forward to it all day. She smiled at him in a way I hadn't seen from her in years. Something settled and certain.

He turned to me and extended his hand. "Selene. I've heard so much about you. This is your home now."

I shook his hand, The moment I did, something strange happened. His eyes moved to mine and held there for just a half second longer than normal. A small line appeared between his brows, barely visible, gone almost before it formed. Like something had registered that he hadn't expected.

He covered it immediately with a smile. "Come in. Both of you."

Inside was worse. High ceilings, long hallways, the kind of quiet that money bought. Pack crests on the walls. The Blackwood wolf carved into the stone above the main fireplace. Everything in this house was a reminder of what this family was and what it meant to carry their name.

I stood in the entryway with my suitcase still in my hand while Victor led my mother further in, their voices drifting away. The pressure on my skin hadn't eased. If anything it was stronger in here, like the whole house was saturated with Alpha territory in a way that should have meant nothing to me.

I told myself it was just anxiety. Then I heard footsteps on the staircase. Slow and Unhurried, Each step even and certain, the footsteps of someone who had never in their life felt the need to hurry because everything had always waited for them.

I looked up. My stomach dropped straight through the floor.

Jaxon Blackwood stood at the top of the stairs in grey sweats and a plain t-shirt, hair still slightly disheveled, a water bottle in one hand. His eyes found me immediately, the way they had at the bar, like he had some internal compass that located things of interest and pointed without being asked.

For three full seconds, neither of us moved. His jaw tightened. The water bottle stopped halfway to his mouth.

I watched him recognize me. Watched it move through his expression in layers. Surprise first, almost invisible. Then something harder underneath it. Then the cold, flat certainty of someone who has identified a problem and is now calculating what to do about it.

He came down the stairs anyway. Slow and even, like he refused to let the situation have any more of his reaction than he'd already shown. He stopped at the bottom and looked at me the way you look at something that has arrived in your space without permission and shows no sign of leaving.

Victor came back into the entryway with my mother beside him. "Jaxon. Good, you're up. Come meet Selene."

"We've met," Jaxon said. Perfectly flat.

Victor raised an eyebrow. "Oh?"

"School," I said quickly. "Same school. We've crossed paths."

Which was one way to describe it.

My mother beamed. "How wonderful. So you already know each other a little."

Jaxon looked at her and said nothing. When his eyes came back to mine, the word wonderful nearly made me laugh.

Victor put a hand on Jaxon's shoulder. "I know this is a big change. But Evelyn is family now, and that makes Selene family. I'm going to need you to make her feel welcome here."

I watched Jaxon look at his father's hand on his shoulder. He breathed in slowly through his nose. His nostrils flared slightly, and something moved across his face that he controlled before it became readable. His wolf, reacting to something. I didn't know what. I only knew that whatever it was, he didn't like it.

"Of course," he said. Perfectly even.

Victor nodded, satisfied, and guided my mother down the hallway to show her the rest of the house. The second they turned the corner, everything in the entryway changed.

Jaxon looked at me.

Up close, without a crowd around him, without the bar and the dim lighting and four drinks making everything softer, he was more than just good looking. He was the kind of person who took up space without trying to. The Alpha aura was quieter now, more controlled, but it was there underneath everything, steady and heavy, pressing against my skin in a way I felt but couldn't explain.

"Say whatever you're going to say," I told him.

"You planned this," he said quietly. Not an accusation. A statement.

"I found out the same time you did. My mother told me yesterday morning. I swear." I held his gaze. "I didn't know your last name until she said it."

Something shifted in his expression. Not softening, not quite. More like he was recalculating.

"You live here now," he said slowly. "You go to my school. You sit at my table. You exist in my territory." He said each one like a separate problem he was tallying up. "You understand why that's an issue."

"I understand you don't want me here," I said. "You've been very clear."

"Good." He stepped back. "Then we understand each other."

He turned toward the hallway. Then he stopped, just for a moment, shoulders tightening slightly like something had crossed his mind that he didn't want to give attention to. He didn't turn around.

"You're the last person I ever wanted living in my house."