Chapter 1 Sienna:pov

Copper, wet ash, and rot. The smell of my daily poison.

My heart is pounding.

I stared at the cracked ceramic mug shaking in my hands, my stomach already rolling. The dark, sludgy liquid steamed in the chill of the packhouse kitchen.

"Drink it," Helena ordered.

No, I scream.

She didn't yell. She never had to. My stepmother stood over me, immaculate in a silk morning gown that brushed the filthy linoleum. Her platinum hair was pinned back flawlessly, and her pale eyes tracked me with the casual disgust you'd reserve for a cockroach.

I swallowed hard, my throat like sandpaper. "Please. I can barely stand today"

"I didn't ask how you felt, keep your feelings to yourself. Sienna," she cut in, her voice dropping to a deadly whisper. "I told you to drink."

Now drink it you bitch.

Deep in the hollowed out corners of my mind, my wolf scratched weakly at the back of my skull. She was supposed to be a creature of the moon, proud and wild.

h Instead, she was a mangled shadow, curled into a tight, shivering ball. For four years, this tea had beaten her into submission, stripping away my strength until I was nothing but a fragile, aching human shell.

I closed my eyes, held my breath, and tipped the mug back.

It was like swallowing liquid glass. It burned a violent path down my throat, hitting my empty stomach and turning to ice. I doubled over the kitchen island, gasping for air as a fresh wave of nausea hit me. My joints locked. My muscles turned to lead.

I couldn't breathe. I felt my lungs burning.

"Good," Helena murmured. The soft click of her heels approached. A manicured finger tapped my hollow cheek, her skin freezing cold. "Get a mop . Now she commands.

The Alpha King returns today, and my packhouse will not look like a slum when my daughter greets him."

My jaw locked, but I kept my head down, exposing my neck in the instinctive Omega submission she had beaten into me.

"Yes, Luna."

Helena scoffed. "And stay out of sight when the convoy arrives. You're an eyesore."

The heavy kitchen doors swung shut. I clung to the counter, entirely alone, the bitter taste of wolfsbane and dark magic coating my tongue.

I waited for the trembling in my legs to stop. Everything hurts. It always hurts. I cried.

But beneath the ache, a tiny, desperate spark of adrenaline pushed through my sluggish blood.

Today.

I repeated the word like a prayer as I dragged the heavy mop bucket down the long, carpeted hallways. Today.

The Red Dust estate was in a frenzy.

Servants rushed past carrying crates of imported whiskey and massive bouquets of blood red roses. Pack enforcers barked orders out in the courtyard, hanging heavy gold banners from the balconies.

Tonight was the coronation.

Tonight, Ethan was coming home.

Just his name made my chest ache. I stopped by a bay window, pressing my sweaty forehead against the cool glass, looking out at the sun baked dirt.

Ethan Hayes. The pack heir. My childhood best friend. Before my father was murdered, before Helena stole my inheritance and shoved me into the servant's quarters, Ethan had been my entire world.

He'd been gone for three hundred and four days, stationed at the brutal southern border for his final military training. Three hundred and four days of scrubbing floors, eating scraps, and swallowing poison everyday.

I survived it for one reason. The promise he made me the night he left.

"When I come back, Sienna," his voice echoed in my memory, a deep rumble that used to chase away my nightmares. He had wrapped his heavy jacket around my shivering shoulders, his amber eyes fierce.

"I'm taking the throne. I'm getting you out of this house. You're going to be mine. Just wait for me."

I will be back soon.

I rubbed my chest, right over my wildly beating heart. I am eighteen now. Old enough to feel the first, frantic pulls of a true mate bond.

The invisible tether between us hummed with a low, constant vibration.

He was coming back. He was going to look at Helena, strip her of her stolen power, and pull me up to the dais beside him.

A hard shoulder slammed into mine, sending me stumbling. My bare heel caught the bucket, sloshing dirty water over my shins.

I managed to catch my balance and looked up. My stepsister, Chloe, glared down at me.

She was already dressed for the evening in a skin tight crimson gown. Diamonds glittered at her throat.

My mother's diamonds.

"Watch where you're standing,"

Chloe sneered, stepping over the puddle. "God, you smell like damp earth and cheap soap. Go scrub yourself before Ethan gets here. Not that a bath will hide the stench of a crippled wolf."

I bit the inside of my cheek until I tasted blood. I didn't say a word. I didn't need to. Let her wear the stolen dresses.

Tonight, when Ethan stepped out of his car, the mate bond would snap into place. He would smell me, he would know, and Chloe's pathetic delusion of becoming his Luna would burn to ash.

Just a few more hours, my wolf whispered in the dark. He's coming.

coming to save us.

By sunset, the courtyard was packed shoulder to shoulder. The air crackled with static energy, the loud chatter of the pack mingling with the distant, frantic howling of the border guards announcing the king's approach.

I stood at the very back of the crowd, hidden in the deep shadows of a massive oak tree. I was freezing in my threadbare cotton dress, my bare feet numb against the dirt, but I didn't care. My heart was hammering relentlessly against my ribs.

Then, the heavy iron gates groaned open.

The crowd erupted into deafening cheers as four armored black SUVs rolled up the gravel driveway. The heavy thud of the tires sent tremors straight up through the soles of my feet.

The vehicles stopped. The engines cut off. For a split second, the entire courtyard went dead silent.

And then, the wind shifted, and his scent hit the air.

My breath caught. I squeezed my eyes shut, waiting for the familiar, comforting smell of rain and pine needles,rose and chocolate. The scent that always meant safety.

But as the wind carried his aura over the crowd, a violent, bone rattling shudder ripped down my spine.

It was him, but it was... wrong.

something is wrong. I could smell it.

The pine was there, but it was suffocated by something distinctly sour. It smelled like battery acid, rusted iron, and a sick, medicinal sweetness that coated the back of my throat.

My weak wolf, who had been wagging her tail seconds ago, suddenly flattened her ears and whimpered in absolute, paralyzing terror.

Danger, she screamed in my head, scratching desperately at the walls of my mind. Hide.

Hide. HIDE. Run hide.RUN

I gripped the rough bark of the tree, my knuckles turning bone-white. What was wrong with him?

The door of the lead SUV opened. Heavy, steel-toed boots hit the gravel.

Ethan stepped out.

A collective gasp rippled through the pack. He was huge. The lanky boy I knew was gone, replaced by a towering wall of dense, scarred muscle. His blonde hair was shorn close to his scalp, and a jagged, angry scar tore through his left eyebrow.

He radiated an aura so thick, so suffocatingly dominant, that several wolves in the front row were physically forced to their hands and knees, choking on his power.

My chest heaved. I stepped out from the shadow of the oak tree, my body moving on pure, desperate instinct. The mate bond pulled at my navel, a frantic tug demanding I go to him.

Look at me, I prayed, tears pricking my eyes. Please, Ethan. Look at me.

As if he heard my silent plea, his head snapped up.

Across the sea of bowing wolves, his eyes locked dead onto mine.

The air vanished from my lungs. I took a step forward, a relieved, tearful smile breaking across my bruised face.

He found me. He was finally home.

But Ethan didn't smile back.

His face twisted into a snarl so violent, so utterly devoid of humanity, that I froze mid-step.

His eyes, the warm, amber eyes I had dreamt of every single night were completely gone. Instead, they were blown wide, bloodshot, and burning with a toxic, feverish madness.

Sweat beaded on his forehead, his jaw clenching so hard I could hear his teeth grinding from fifty feet away.

There was no recognition in his stare. No childhood promise.

No love.

I was a bit scared.

He stared at me like I was a diseased animal. The brutal, feral malice in his gaze slammed into my chest with the force of a physical blow, stealing my breath.

He cracked his knuckles, the sound like a gunshot in the quiet courtyard, and began to march directly toward me.

My smile shattered. A new, paralyzing realization seized my throat.

The boy who promised to save me hadn't come home.

A monster had taken his place.