Chapter 1

1.

Word had spread through every pack in upstate New York―Caleb Walsh and his Luna, Harper, were fated mates, hand-bound by the Moon Goddess herself.

Everyone said we were made for each other.

Even I believed it.

But on the day of the bonding ceremony, he slipped wolfsbane into my water.

When I woke up, my sister Mia was standing beside my fiancé. Wearing my wedding dress.

I had saved three years for that Vera Wang custom gown. Seven rounds of design revisions. Now it hung loose on her body, and she was smiling like she'd just scored the deal of a lifetime.

The whole ballroom heard the champagne glass shatter in my hand.

I toppled the champagne tower. I ripped down the silk ribbons. I kicked over the rose arch. Everything I had spent three months hand-selecting turned to wreckage in under two minutes.

The groomsmen dragged me into the lounge.

Caleb followed. He loosened his bow tie and looked at me like I was a feral animal that needed putting down.

"Mia's wolf is dying. Three months. Four, at most. She wants to know what it feels like to be marked before she dies. I'm giving her that."

"If you didn't want me to help her," he said, biting off every word, "you should have seen this coming."

I stared at him.

The Caleb I'd known since I was seventeen. The Caleb I'd held through three bloodline rampages in a shitty apartment, rubbing his temples with cheap essential oil.

He was standing in front of me now, telling me―this was my fault.

Because I hadn't predicted my own sister would want my fiancé.

My father's Alpha command slammed down. My knees hit the marble floor. Pain exploded from my kneecap, a hairline crack shearing through bone.

"Mia is dying!" His voice was thunder. "You're her sister! You can't even give her this?!"

My mother stood behind him, arms crossed. The cold in her eyes went all the way to the bone.

"Don't make this uglier than it already is, Harper."

"It's not just your face you're losing face for."

In that moment, the entire world went silent. Every sound vanished.

Seven years. Seven years of things I should have seen―and under that full moon, it took me exactly one second to see them all.

They had never stood on my side. Not once.

The Alpha command bore down on my shoulders. I didn't kneel. My wolf howled inside me, and inch by inch, my knees pushed upward.

In the end, what broke was my body. Not my spirit.

That was the day I woke up.

I decided to walk away from them all.

What they didn't know―was what a woman does once she's awake.