Today is the day I marry Lucian.
The woman in the mirror wore a gown of pristine white — but Joanna Ashford's eyes held nothing of a bride's joy. Her best friend Sia's whisper brushed her ear: Everything is ready. After the wedding, we'll meet at the tree-lined path behind the estate.
This was no wedding. It was a transaction between two wolf packs. And Joanna was the bargaining chip.
Joanna had once been loved by her fated mate, Sebastian Lockwood — a border patrol Beta with nothing to his name but his integrity and the warmth in his eyes. Then her father, Roger Ashford, Alpha of the Shadow Pack, gave her a choice that was no choice at all: stand in that courtroom and destroy the man she loved, or watch her mother die on an operating table without a signed consent form.
She lied. Every word out of her mouth was a blade she drove into Sebastian herself.
He severed their bond in front of the entire clan before the gavel fell. He didn't look at her once.
She didn't know, as she watched him be led away in silver cuffs, that she was already carrying his child.
Sebastian survived the exile grounds the way only the most furious do — by refusing to die. He emerged harder, colder, and burning with a single purpose. When he walked into the Northern Pack's challenge circle and took down the old Alpha in under three minutes, no one was surprised. When he announced his chosen Luna — Sophia Carter, who had nursed him back from the edge of death — the crowd cheered.
He had built himself a life with no room for the past.
And then a chef in a flour-dusted uniform looked up from across a banquet hall, and his wolf went absolutely feral.
Joanna had spent three years building something small and stubborn out of the rubble of everything she had destroyed. A kitchen job. A tiny apartment. A son named Theo, with deep brown hair that curled at the nape just like his father's, and gray-blue eyes that saw everything.
Theo's ears hadn't developed properly. The bills were staggering. Every restaurant in the Northern Territory had been warned not to hire her.
She kept going anyway. Because Theo needed her to.
Sebastian paid off her debts without being asked. He transferred her a restaurant. He found her in his office on a full-moon night with his silver cuffs already snapped, and she stayed — and in the dark afterward he said: Move into my apartment. She said: Let's pretend this never happened.
Her wolf Nana came back at last, in a forest surrounded by rogues Sophia had sent to kill her, red fur erupting through torn skin. Go find Sebastian, Nana whispered before going quiet again. Tell him about Theo. He'll love Theo.
Tomorrow is the Moon Festival. Tomorrow is the marking ceremony that will bind Sebastian to Sophia forever.
Joanna has one chance left — and one question she cannot answer.
When Sebastian learns the truth about the courtroom, about the child he never knew existed — will he look at Theo and see his son?
Or will he only see her betrayal?
