Hunter’s lips moved against Jade’s with a possessive urgency he had never shown Daphne. One day before their mating ceremony, Daphne had gone looking for him, restless with nerves and hope, and found him in the arms of another woman. He didn’t even stop when she walked in. He just looked at her with glazed, pleasure-drugged eyes, and kept touching Jade.
This wasn’t the first time she had caught them. There had been another time, weeks into their courtship, when she found him holding Jade against his chest; then another, with Jade on his lap, being kissed. Each time, Hunter swore it was over, and each time Daphne had swallowed her doubts. Her pack needed him.
Her sister Diana, the Alpha, had fallen into a strange, mysterious coma, and Daphne, only a beta, could not protect her people alone. Hunter, the powerful Alpha of a neighboring pack, had offered protection in exchange for a mating union. Everyone around Daphne pushed her toward him, seeing the match as salvation. When she told Laura, a childhood friend, what she had seen, Laura just sighed.
“You’re a fool if you think he’s ever going to stop sleeping around. He’s an Alpha. Women will always want him. And you can’t refuse an Alpha—they refuse you, not the other way around.
”
The morning of the ceremony, Jade braided Daphne’s hair with a knowing smile. “Could you fetch me some fresh water? ” Jade asked, though a pitcher sat just within her reach. “In my current state, I need plenty of rest.
” She placed a hand on her abdomen. Daphne’s heart stopped. “I suppose Hunter’s the father,” she said flatly. Jade’s face twisted.
“How dare you imply that it isn’t an honor to serve my Alpha! Of course I was willing. ” She lunged, and Daphne had to twist her wrist to stop the second slap. When Hunter entered, Jade turned into a trembling victim.
“She attacked me. ”
Daphne stayed calm. “Congratulations on the pregnancy,” she said. “You must be excited.
”
After Jade left, Hunter tried to soothe her. He brushed a kiss across her cheek. “Don’t worry about the pregnancy. It won’t change anything.
Jade’s child won’t be my heir. ”
“You said things were over between you two,” Daphne said. “And they were. For a time.
But you can’t expect me to remain celibate before we start sleeping together. ”
“Then I will have lovers,” she replied evenly. His eyes narrowed. “You will never be touched by another man.
Do I make myself clear? ”
Daphne walked down the aisle with her father holding her arm and her grandmother throwing petals at her feet. She told herself she was doing this for the pack. Hunter looked handsome, all golden skin and dimpled smiles, and that made it hurt more.
But when his teeth grazed her neck, she jumped away and gasped, “Wait. ”
Everyone stared. Hunter’s grip on her arm was painfully tight. “What are you doing?
”
“I need a moment,” she mumbled, and then she fled back into the house. In her room, Daphne realized she was afraid. Not just of being mated to a liar. Something else felt wrong.
She remembered Diana’s wariness of Hunter, how he had first courted Diana and been refused, and then Diana had suddenly fallen ill. Gray and unsure, Daphne crept up the stairs and found Hunter and Jade talking. “Why did you have to tell her about the baby? ” Hunter growled.
“I thought she knew. ”
“When I make it with her, we get the pack. ”
“This is about Diana, isn’t it? ” Hunter sneered.
“You were obsessed with Diana. Is that why you poisoned her? ”
Daphne’s heart stopped. Poisoned.
It hadn’t been illness at all. She ran back to her room, shifted into the bird she could become, and threw herself out the window, flying into the night sky. An arrow pierced her wing. Pain exploded through her, and she tumbled from the sky, crashing through branches and landing hard on the forest floor.
She pulled the arrow from her arm, bleeding, fading, as footsteps approached. She woke in a magnificent castle, bathed in an eternal golden dusk. Soft beds, singing water, food that tasted divine. A voice told her not to turn around, and she obeyed, finding herself unable to do otherwise.
She had been shot by a man hunting food, someone who hadn’t realized she was a shifter. He called himself Gray, and he warned her his castle was dangerous. “I’m sorry you were ever here,” he said, and sent her away. She stumbled through familiar woods, only to be found by Hunter and her father.
Hunter shifted, cornering her against a tree. “You promised yourself to me, Daphne. You’re mine. ” He bent his head toward her neck, teeth bared.
Then a voice said, “Freeze. ” And Hunter froze. Daphne froze. A cool hand wrapped around hers, and Gray led her away.
He kept his face hidden, for his curse, he explained, was this: everyone who looked upon his face fell obsessively, irrevocably in love with him, and if he didn’t return the affection, they withered and died of a broken heart. Daphne stayed in the castle, blindfolded when Gray was near. She drew sketches. He left her notes and told her stories to make her eat.
They grew close, closer than she had ever been to anyone, and she almost forgot the danger outside. But the mirrors showed her the truth. Hunter had turned her own pack against her, telling them she had poisoned Diana herself, that she had tried to hurt Jade. Her father cheered alongside the others.
Daphne fell into a depression so deep she stopped eating. Gray coaxed her back with stories, one of them about a vampire Count with a cursed existence. “That man was my father,” he said. She finally learned his history: cursed by the same magic that made him able to command minds, he had hidden in his castle for centuries.
Daphne decided she had to save Diana, the only person strong enough to stop Hunter. With Gray’s help, she snuck into the pack house and carried her sister’s limp body out, pushing her through the woods in a hidden wheelchair. But Hunter had followed them. He had made a wish to the magician Adrien, a wish for the means to kill Gray.
And when Gray threw Hunter’s cloak across the room, Hunter saw his face. He fell instantly, hopelessly in love, his rage dissolving into desperate pleading. The two sisters dragged Hunter back to the pack house, where Jade had taken over in his absence. Diana woke, furious and ready to reclaim her place.
She wanted Daphne to stay, to rule beside her, but Daphne could only think of Gray. She promised to meet him at their tree in two weeks. She waited. He never came.
Daphne realized Gray’s castle could only be found if he led her there, and he was gone. So she made a wish of her own to Adrien: a wish to find Gray, no matter the cost. The price was the castle itself. When Daphne flew back, the castle was crumbling, dissolving into the dark.
She saw Gray, finally, and refused to look away. “It will be fine because I already love you,” she told him, and true love, Adrien had said, is the only thing that can withstand the curse. Gray didn’t believe it. “Happy in a world full of liars?
Sometimes it’s better to be alone. ”
But Daphne threw her arms around him. “You’re not alone. You have me now.
”
The castle dissolved around them, and they fled into the unknown, together.
