Chapter 1
Eliana Hart’s POV
I knelt beside the boy and pressed a clean cloth to the cut on his leg. He had hurt it during training. Blood kept coming through my fingers.
“Hold him steady,” I said to the guard next to me. I was tired. I had been treating people since dawn, and the pack members standing around us just watched in silence. It felt heavy, like a weight pressing on my skin.
Two years. Two years of caring for their cuts and their fevers. They still looked at me like I didn’t belong. Like an outsider who hadn’t earned her place in the pack.
A low growl came from one of the men at the edge of the group circling around me.
“She’s only known as the alpha’s mate,” he said, loud enough for me to hear. “He hasn’t marked her or claimed her. Why do we still take orders from her?”
“We can’t go against her,” another man said, like I wasn’t even there. “She’s the alpha’s mate. Disrespecting her is disrespecting him.”
I let the words go. I’d had two years of practice at that.
I finished wrapping the boy’s leg and was about to leave when a woman ran up to me. She was out of breath, twisting the edge of her apron in her hands.
“Luna, please. My husband came back from the woods three days ago with a few scratches. Now it’s getting worse.” Her voice broke on the last word.
I hadn’t eaten all day. My stomach was empty and my legs ached, but I nodded. “Take me to him.”
She led me through the pack grounds. I felt eyes on us the whole way, and quiet whispers followed behind like static.
Her husband was lying in the yard when we got there. Cuts and scratches covered his arms and chest. The moment he saw me, his face twisted in anger.
“What is she doing here?”
“She’s here to help you,” his wife said. “It’s getting worse every day. Let her treat it.”
He laughed, a short and ugly sound. “I’d rather die than let some wolfless, unclaimed girl touch me. Get out of my house.”
A few people near the fence laughed with him. I kept my face calm and my voice soft.
“If I don’t treat this, it will only get worse, sir. Let me finish, and I’ll leave.”
“Get. Out.” He stood up and stormed past me, out of the yard, before I could say anything else. His wife caught up to me at the gate. I could see the apology on her face before she even spoke.
“Here.” I handed her a small jar of ointment. “This will help with the swelling. Change the bandage twice a day.”
“Thank you,” she said, squeezing my hand. “Thank you so much.”
I watched her hurry back inside, then finally turned toward home.
- - -
By the time I fell onto my bed, the sky outside had turned soft and gray. Today had been a little easier than most. That was sad enough on its own — being grateful for a day that was only a little bad.
Being the wolfless, unmarked Luna of the Silver Crescent Pack was hard. I lived in a house that was supposed to be mine, but I still felt like an outsider. My stepmother and father never wanted me either. They liked to say my mother was a whore who left my father for a man in the human world. I had heard it so many times that it barely hurt anymore. Mostly.
Then there was Kai.
He hadn’t wanted me any more than my parents did. I still remembered the shock on his face the day he found out we were mates. He looked like someone had handed him something broken and told him to keep it. He had a guard carry my bags to a spare room and barely said a word to me after that. I wasn’t what he wanted. I wasn’t Selene.
Two years, and we still only talked when it was about pack business. He never once stopped his people from whispering about me. I don’t think he even noticed them doing it.
I pressed my hands over my eyes. “Stop thinking about it,” I told myself. “If he sees how well I care for this pack, maybe one day he’ll claim me.”
A knock came at the door. I dragged myself up and opened it. His personal guard stood there, stiff and formal.
He bowed his head slightly. “The Alpha wants you in his study.”
“I’ll be there in a minute.”
He didn’t move. I understood — he meant now, not in a minute — so I stepped into the hallway and let him lead me to Kai’s study. The floor was cold under my bare feet.
The guard opened the door for me, then shut it once I was inside.
Kai sat behind his desk, buried in papers and letters. He looked tired — dark circles under his eyes, his hair falling loose over his forehead — and still handsome, which annoyed me. He was reading something and didn’t look up right away. My breath caught anyway. My hands were shaking.
Mate is so handsome, Gemma said inside my head, and I almost smiled. Even though I have never shifted, I still have a wolf.
No one knew about her. Not the pack. Not even Kai.
“Sit,” he said, without looking up.
I crossed the room on legs that didn’t feel like my own and sat down across from him.
“You called for me.”
He set the letter down and finally looked at me. His eyes were a sharp green, and they held mine a little too long.
“Why haven’t you left?”
I blinked. “Left? I don’t understand.”
“I haven’t marked you. I haven’t claimed you. It’s been two years, and you’re still here doing the Luna’s work like you owe this pack something.” His jaw tightened. “Aren’t you tired? Angry?”
“I—” The words caught in my throat. “I don’t have anywhere else to go.”
“What’s your name?”
I stared at him. Two years under his roof, and that question hit like a slap. He doesn’t know his mate’s name.
“You don’t know my name?”
“I have more important things to remember.” He said it plainly, like it should have been obvious. Somehow that was worse than if he’d meant to be cruel.
“Eliana Hart,” I told him.
“Eliana.” He said the name slowly, like he was testing it. “How old are you?”
“Twenty-two.”
“I heard you’re wolfless. Why?”
“Why is he asking all this now, Liana?” Gemma’s voice was sharp with two years of anger. “He hasn’t claimed us in two years, and now he wants to know why you don’t have a wolf? Tell him about me.”
Not yet, Gem. Let me handle this.
“I don’t know why I haven’t shifted yet,” I said carefully. “But I do have a wolf. Her name is Gemma.”
Something changed in his face — surprise, maybe, or curiosity. “Gemma. That’s an unusual name.” He studied me the way a predator studies something it hasn’t decided whether to eat. I felt myself shrink under his gaze.
“Get ready, Eliana. I’ll claim and mark you at the next mating ceremony.”
The air left my lungs. “What?”
