I wake up with a pounding head and the phantom feeling of a knife sliding between my ribs. My hands fly to my chest, searching for wounds that aren’t there. Only a nightmare, I tell myself. Then I look around and realize I’m in a bedroom fit for royalty, draped in silk and velvet, far from the forest where I bled out.
Before I can make sense of anything, two maids burst in, squealing about my health. They call me Lady Leandra. A woman in an emerald dress follows, claiming to be my mother. She slaps me when I speak like a commoner, and I slap her back, though my hand barely has any force behind it.
My body is wrong—too small, too soft, with delicate hands that have never held a blade. When I finally catch my reflection, I see a stranger: a blonde, blue-eyed, fragile-looking Omega staring back at me. Panic sets in as I realize where I am. I’m in the heart of enemy territory, inside Alpha Micah’s estate, wearing the face of his son’s fiancée.
My head is worth more than most pack ransoms. And yet nobody recognizes me. They believe I’m Leandra Valtoria, a spoiled Omega brought here to marry Lord Raphael. The truth hits harder when the maids drag me to meet Micah.
A guard announces a guest, and my world shreds apart. Kai walks in. My Kai. The man I loved, trusted, and died for.
He bows to Micah, my family’s greatest enemy, and presents his gift: a blood-soaked bundle. He pulls back the linen, and I’m staring at my own dead face. My body. The demon wolf Arya, killed by her own best friend to prove his loyalty.
I can’t breathe. Everyone celebrates, praising Kai for murdering me. Rafe steps forward to identify the body, and I brace for his triumphant smirk. But there is none.
He kneels beside my corpse, his face carved from ice, cold and indifferent. He doesn’t even care that I’m dead. And that somehow hurts more than the knife ever did. I wake up screaming in Leandra’s bed again.
For a moment, I want to run, to disappear into this pretty face and start over. But then I think of Zara, the woman who raised me, and our pack, the rebels fighting for their lives. I can’t abandon them. I won’t.
No one knows Leandra is really Arya Storm. I’m perfectly placed to gather intel, to stop Kai from destroying everything, and to plunge my blade through his heart myself. The plan is simple. All I have to do is play my part, act sweet and empty-headed.
Then the maids mention my fiancé by name: Lord Raphael. I’m engaged to Rafe. My enemy. The man who spent years hunting me, and I spent years hunting him.
The irony is sickening, but it also feels like a gift. I can’t wait to watch him fawn over his pretty, helpless bride while I destroy him from the inside. But when Rafe finally meets me, there’s no poetry in his eyes. He greets me coldly, tells me to rest, and leaves without a backward glance.
He doesn’t care about Leandra either. And he doesn’t seem happy about my death. He barely seemed to react at all. The next day, I’m still fuming when I stumble upon the training grounds.
I can’t help myself. I criticize the fighters’ form, their stances, their obvious mistakes. Hudson, the Captain of the Guard, challenges me. I lose the spar—this body is too weak, too soft—but he offers me a hand up, impressed.
“Impeccable technique,” he says. “Just need some conditioning. ” And then he drags me to a bar with the rest of the warriors, celebrating like I’m one of them. I get drunk.
Really drunk. I end up draped over Hudson’s lap, giggling about Rafe’s stupid perfect face, until someone pulls me away. Rafe. He carries me to my room, my wolf melting under his scent, and I babble about seducing him, kissing him sloppily.
He stops me, tells me I’m not making sense, and mentions something that makes my blood freeze: he says I tried to take my own life a few days ago, to escape this engagement. The truth clicks into place. Leandra didn’t fall ill. She tried to kill herself over some man named Thomas.
And now I’m wearing her skin, pretending to be someone who wanted to die. The next morning, Rafe asks me to breakfast. He apologizes for his coldness, tells me he wants an equal partner, not a decoration. He says I can join meetings once we’re mated, once he’s Alpha.
The idea of mating with Rafe should terrify me. Instead, it sends a jolt through my stomach. To get to Kai, to protect my people, I have to become his Luna. That night, I notice one of the maids is familiar.
Willa, one of Zara’s best spies. Which means Kai is planning something huge. I follow her through the servant passages to the annex, climbing up a trellis to Kai’s balcony. Through the window, I hear them talking.
Kai is bragging about killing me. Willa mentions Zara. Then he says something that shatters everything I’ve ever known. “It was on her orders that I sacrificed Arya.
”
My fingers go numb. Zara ordered this. The woman who found me, raised me, and called me her daughter set me up to die. Kai says I was his, mine to kill and mine to keep, and then he sees me at the window.
His smile is slow and terrible. He knows. He saw me. The branch snaps, and I hit the ground.
I barely make it back to my room before I’m sick. All those years of loyalty, of bleeding for them, of desperate need for approval—it was all a manipulation. I wasn’t a warrior. I was a puppet.
A toy. Rafe finds me broken on the floor. He wraps his arms around me, murmuring that I’m safe. And for the first time in my life, someone holds me without wanting anything in return.
I sob into his chest until I have nothing left. A week passes. Rafe visits me every day, sitting silently by my side. Then he stops coming.
I find him at the edge of the estate, watching a burning pyre. Not just any pyre—the traditional send-off for a warrior wolf. He tells me it’s for Arya Storm. My body.
He fought his own pack just to honor my death with dignity. I should be angry. I should want revenge. But he points to the hills, scattered with pinpricks of light—my people, gathered from across the land to watch me burn.
They came. They cared. And Rafe says something that makes my chest ache: “She had a light in her that everyone could see. ”
Watching him grieve for me, this enemy I never understood, something shifts.
He’s not the tyrant Zara raised me to hate. He’s a man caught in a war he didn’t ask for. And he gave an enemy more honor in death than my own leaders ever did in life. But revenge still matters.
Kai is here, and he’s plotting to take over the pack. The only way to get within reach of him is to become Rafe’s mate, to be by his side as Luna. The mating ceremony is in two weeks. Before I can find another way, I discover something that changes my plans entirely.
My so-called mother, Isolda, gives me a glass of water laced with a heat trigger. She expects me to use it to trap Rafe, to secure the engagement that would make her powerful. But as I stare at that glass, a different plan takes shape. Kai will be at the engagement ball.
If he smells my heat, he won’t be able to resist. I’ll get him alone, compromise his position, and destroy his standing with Micah in one move. It’s a terrible plan. But I’m out of options.
I drink the water and let the heat bloom under my skin. At the ball, Rafe dances with me, his presence making my head spin. But when Micah pulls him away, I feel lost. The heat is building, making every brush of fabric unbearable.
And then Kai is there, his scent like ice water, asking for a dance. This is my chance. I take his hand, determined to trap him.
But as soon as his palm touches mine, every instinct in me screams to run.
