My knees ached from scrubbing the marble floors of the grand hall, but I didn't dare slow down. Luna Loretta had made it clear this morning—every inch had to gleam before tonight's Mate Ceremony began.

"Still on your hands and knees, Camille?" Shiloh Moore's sickeningly sweet voice drifted down from above me. I looked up to find her standing there in a stunning crimson gown that probably cost more than I'd ever seen in my life. "How fitting for a wolfless Omega."

I bit the inside of my cheek and returned to scrubbing. Ten years in this pack house had taught me that responding only made things worse.

"You know," Shiloh continued, examining her perfectly manicured nails, "I almost feel sorry for you. Eighteen years old and still no wolf. The Moon Goddess must have forgotten you exist." Her laugh echoed through the empty hall. "At least you'll get to watch from the servants' corner when Brendan announces his chosen mate tonight."

My chest tightened at his name. Brendan. My childhood sweetheart. The boy who used to sneak me extra desserts when Luna Loretta wasn't looking. The Future Alpha who hadn't spoken to me in months.

Shiloh's heels clicked away across the floor I'd just cleaned, leaving faint marks I'd have to redo. I sat back on my heels and reached for the small pendant hanging beneath my worn shirt—my mother's pendant, the only thing I had left of her. My fingers traced the familiar grooves as I hummed the lullaby she used to sing, the one that always calmed my racing heart.

Maybe tonight would be different. Maybe my wolf would finally awaken, and I could stand beside Brendan as his equal instead of cowering in the shadows.

Hours later, the grand hall had transformed into something magical. Moonlight streamed through the tall windows, candles flickered on every surface, and the air buzzed with excitement as pack members gathered in their finest clothes. I stood pressed against the back wall in my simple gray dress, trying to make myself invisible.

The crowd parted as Brendan entered, and my breath caught. He looked magnificent in his tailored black suit, his dark hair perfectly styled, his Alpha aura radiating confidence and power. Every unmated she-wolf in the room watched him with hungry eyes, but his gaze swept past them all.

My heart hammered as he moved through the hall with purposeful strides. This was it. The moment he would announce his chosen mate and—

Brendan stopped mid-step. His entire body went rigid, his nostrils flaring as if catching a scent. His head turned slowly, scanning the crowd with an expression I'd never seen before—a mixture of shock and something that looked almost like horror.

His eyes locked onto mine across the crowded room.

The world tilted. A warmth spread through my chest, foreign and overwhelming, like invisible threads pulling me toward him. The mate bond. The divine connection blessed by the Moon Goddess herself. It was real. It was happening. Brendan was my fated mate.

But instead of joy in his eyes, I saw disgust.

He strode toward me, and the crowd instinctively moved aside. Pack members whispered and pointed as the Future Alpha approached the wolfless Omega servant. My hands trembled as he stopped directly in front of me, so close I could smell his pine and leather scent.

"No," he whispered, his voice laced with revulsion. "Not you. Anyone but you."

The words hit like a physical blow. I opened my mouth, but no sound came out.

Brendan turned abruptly and walked back to where Shiloh stood watching with barely concealed smugness. He took her hand, and she smiled triumphantly. When he faced the crowd again, his expression had hardened into something cruel and cold.

"I, Brendan Romero, Future Alpha of the Blood Moon Pack—" His voice boomed with Alpha authority, echoing off the walls. "—reject you, Camille Palmer, as my fated mate."

Pain exploded through my chest. It felt like my ribs were cracking, my heart being ripped from my body, my soul splitting down the middle. I gasped, doubling over as the mate bond severed with agonizing finality. Every nerve ending screamed. My vision blurred with unshed tears.

Through the haze of pain, I heard Brendan's mocking voice: "You should leave the pack house, Camille. Go find that filthy, unranked Omega border-worker, Colton Hunter. Maybe he'll take pity on you. You two would make a perfect match—worthless breeding with worthless."

Laughter rippled through the crowd. Shiloh's giggle cut through the noise like broken glass.

The pain was unbearable, but I refused to collapse in front of them. I refused to give them that satisfaction. Slowly, I straightened my spine. I met Brendan's eyes one last time and saw nothing there but contempt for the girl he'd once called his best friend.

I turned my back on him, on the pack house, on ten years of foolish hope. My legs shook with every step, but I walked through that crowd with my head high. The whispers followed me out into the cold night air.

Only when the pack house doors closed behind me did I finally let the tears fall.

Luna Loretta's knock came before I'd finished folding my second shirt.

I didn't need to answer. She let herself in the way she always did—like every room in this pack house belonged to her, which, I supposed, it did.

"Camille." Her voice was soft. Almost warm. That alone made my stomach clench. "You don't have to leave, you know."

I kept folding. The shirt was threadbare at the elbows. I'd owned it since I was fifteen.

"There's a place for you here." She settled into the doorway, her silk robe perfectly pressed even at this hour. "You know this house better than anyone. The schedules, the staff, the pantry. Brendan and Shiloh will need someone reliable to manage things. Someone... discreet."

I finally looked up at her.

There it was—that particular smile. The one that looked like kindness from a distance and felt like a leash up close.

"You want me to stay and clean their rooms," I said. "Make their bed."

"I want you to have a home, dear."

"No." The word came out steadier than I expected. "You want a servant who's too broken to say no. Someone who'll smile at Shiloh across the breakfast table and pretend she didn't just watch the man she loved spit on her in front of the whole pack."

Loretta's smile didn't waver, but something behind her eyes went cold.

"You're being dramatic."

"Brendan told me to go find the border-worker." I pressed my mother's pendant between my fingers and held her gaze. "I'm going."

For a long moment, she just looked at me. Then she turned and walked away without another word, her slippers silent on the marble floor.

I zipped my bag shut.

---

The rain started before I reached the tree line.

By the time the border cabins came into view, I was soaked through to the skin, my bag hanging heavy on one shoulder, my hair plastered flat against my face. I'd cut my palm on a broken fence post somewhere in the dark. It wasn't deep, but it stung, and the rain kept washing it open.

The cabins were rougher than I'd imagined. Low-slung, wooden, the kind of structures that looked like they'd been repaired so many times the original walls were barely there anymore. Yellow light bled from one window.

I stood at the door for a second. Brendan's voice came back to me—*worthless breeding with worthless*—and I thought about turning around. Going where, I had no idea. Anywhere but back.

I knocked.

The door opened, and I braced myself.

The man who answered was tall. Broad-shouldered. He wore a plain gray shirt and work boots, and his dark eyes moved from my face to my dripping hair to the cut on my hand in one quiet sweep. He didn't leer. He didn't smirk. He just stepped back and held the door open wider.

"Come in," he said. "I'll get a towel."

His name was Colton Hunter. I knew that much. Brendan had thrown his name at me like an insult. But the man who pressed a clean, dry towel into my hands and turned to put a kettle on without asking whether I wanted tea—that man didn't match the insult at all.

I stood there dripping on his floor and didn't know what to say.

"Sit," he said, pulling out a chair. Not an order. Just an offering.

I sat.

---

The next morning, the rain had softened to a grey drizzle. Colton showed me the cabin that would be mine—small, with a crooked window latch and a draft that came through the south wall—and didn't apologize for how bare it was. I liked that. I'd had enough of people wrapping ugly things in pretty words.

He was fixing a loose board on the cabin step when he noticed my hand. The cut had scabbed overnight but was still raw at the edges.

"Let me look at that."

I almost said *it's fine*. Instead, I held it out.

His fingers closed gently around my wrist, tilting my palm toward the pale morning light. He was careful. Methodical. And then—

The spark hit like something electric and bone-deep at once, shooting up through my arm and straight into the hollow place in my chest where the mate bond had been ripped out. I gasped.

Colton went very still.

We looked at each other. His eyes were darker than I'd realized, and something in them had shifted—attentive, intent, the way a person looks when they suddenly recognize something they weren't expecting to find.

The ache in my chest—the one that had been screaming since last night—quieted.

Just slightly. Just enough.

"You should keep this clean," he said finally, his voice low and even. But his hand didn't move away.

Neither did mine.

The knock came three days after I'd settled into the border cabin.

I was mending a tear in my only spare shirt when I heard boots on the gravel outside. Heavy. Deliberate. The kind of footsteps that announced themselves before the person even reached the door.

I set down my needle and opened it to find Shiloh Moore standing on my crooked step, flanked by two pack enforcers.

She looked immaculate as always—hair perfectly curled, makeup flawless despite the morning humidity. But there was something sharp in her smile that made my stomach drop.

"Camille." She said my name like it tasted bitter. "I'm here on official pack business. There's been a theft."

I blinked. "A theft?"

"My ceremonial dress. The one I was supposed to wear for the Luna announcement next week." Her voice rose just enough to carry. "Someone shredded it. And several artifacts from the pack vault are missing."

The enforcers moved past me into the cabin without asking permission. I watched them tear through my few belongings—the bag I'd brought, the shirts folded on the shelf, the space under the narrow bed.

"I didn't take anything," I said quietly.

Shiloh stepped closer, lowering her voice so only I could hear. "Brendan's been distracted lately. Keeps looking toward the border like he's waiting for something. I won't have a wolfless Omega haunting my mate's thoughts."

One of the enforcers emerged holding something—a scrap of crimson fabric I'd never seen before. "Found this under the bed frame, ma'am."

Shiloh's smile widened. "How convenient."

"That's not mine—"

"Save it for the Alpha." She turned on her heel, gesturing for the enforcers to follow. "Brendan will want to handle this personally."

---

He arrived before sunset.

I was sitting on the cabin step when I felt it—that crushing wave of Alpha authority rolling across the clearing like a physical force. My chest tightened. My hands started to shake.

Brendan emerged from the tree line with Shiloh at his side, his jaw clenched so hard I could see the muscle jumping beneath his skin. His eyes locked onto me, and the disgust from the Mate Ceremony was back, mixed with something darker.

"Stand up," he commanded.

I did. My legs felt unsteady, but I forced myself upright.

"You stole from my chosen mate." His voice was cold. Flat. "You vandalized pack property. And you thought you could hide out here like some rogue?"

"I didn't—"

"Kneel."

The Alpha tone hit me like a sledgehammer. My knees started to buckle involuntarily, the weight of his aura pressing down on my shoulders, forcing my spine to bend. The severed mate bond made it worse somehow—like my body remembered submitting to him and wanted to fall back into that pattern.

I was halfway to the ground when a hand caught my elbow.

Colton.

He'd appeared so quietly I hadn't heard him approach. His grip was steady, grounding, and the moment his fingers closed around my arm, the crushing pressure eased. Not gone—but manageable. Like someone had turned down the volume on Brendan's command.

I straightened slowly, my heart hammering.

Brendan's eyes narrowed. "Step aside, Hunter. This doesn't concern border trash."

Colton didn't move. He stood slightly in front of me, his posture relaxed but immovable. "She's under my supervision now. If there's a complaint, it goes through proper channels."

"I don't need channels." Brendan took a step forward, his Alpha aura flaring hotter. "I'm the Future Alpha of this pack, and I'm telling you to move."

For a moment, nothing happened.

Then something shifted in the air—subtle, almost imperceptible, but heavy. Like the atmosphere before a thunderstorm. Colton's presence, which had always felt quiet and unassuming, suddenly pressed back against Brendan's authority with a weight that made my breath catch.

Brendan faltered. Just for a second. His wolf whimpered somewhere behind his eyes, and confusion flickered across his face.

Shiloh grabbed his arm. "Brendan, let's go. She's not worth this."

He stared at Colton for another long moment, jaw working, before finally stepping back. "This isn't over," he said, his voice tight with frustration. "You'll answer for what you did, Camille."

They left the way they came, Shiloh's heels crunching on gravel, Brendan's shoulders rigid with barely contained anger.

I didn't realize I was shaking until Colton's hand moved from my elbow to my shoulder.

"You okay?" he asked quietly.

I nodded, even though I wasn't sure. "How did you—"

"Let's get you inside."

He guided me back into the cabin, and I didn't ask the question burning in my throat: *What are you?*