“Don’t-“
“You’re a prude.” He said it like reading off a list. Flat, final. “You act like your body is made of gold. Like I should be grateful just to hold your hand.” He looked at Maren, who was watching me with bright, delighted eyes. “Maren isn’t like that. She actually knows how to make a man feel wanted.”
Maren giggled into his shoulder, and the sound scraped across the inside of my skull.
Something crumbled inside me. Not anger. Not even humiliation.
Grief. For the boy who held my face behind the woodshed. The one who never existed.
I grieved him standing in that hallway like he’d died, even though he was right there, kissing my stepsister.
Footsteps pounded up the stairs. A voice I didn’t recognize – sharp, formal, used to being obeyed – called my name from below.
“The escorts are here,” Maren announced, lifting her head. She grinned at me with every tooth. “Better hurry, sis. And try not to get killed by that wolf. I hear it’s nasty.”
I bent down. My fingers found the locket on the floor and closed around it. I straightened up, wiped my face with the back of my hand, and walked away without another word.
Behind me, Maren’s laughter followed me down the hall.
…
The car was black with tinted windows and the royal crest stamped on the door – a snarling wolf over crossed swords. I climbed into the back seat with my bag on my lap, my nails digging crescents into my palms.
The driver didn’t speak. The guard in the passenger seat glanced at my cotton dress and bare face, and something like pity flickered across his features before he looked away. I wasn’t what they’d expected. The candidates they usually transported probably wore silk.
I stared out the window and watched my pack’s territory disappear behind the trees. The houses got smaller, then vanished. The forest closed in like a fist.
I kept replaying Calvin’s voice in my head. You’re a prude. She actually knows how to make a man feel wanted. Each sentence landed fresh, like he was sitting right next to me, saying it again and again.
I pressed my forehead against the glass and closed my eyes. My wolf whined low inside me, and I didn’t even have the energy to push her back down. She was mourning too – not Calvin, exactly. More the idea of him. The version of him I’d built in my head over three years and mistaken for the real thing.
The drive took less than an hour. Shadow Creek bordered the Royal Territory, so I was the first candidate to arrive. The royal packhouse rose out of the treeline like a fortress – stone walls, iron gates, guard towers. The air turned cold and electric the moment we crossed the boundary.
A tall woman in a gray uniform was waiting at the entrance – the Head Omega, the guard told me. She ran the Prince’s household. She looked me up and down.
“Shadow Creek candidate. Name?”
“Lillian.”
She circled me once. “Plain,” she said. Verdict delivered.
Then came the examination. A small room, white walls, no windows. A female doctor with latex gloves and a speculum. I was told to undress. Told to lie on the table and put my feet in the stirrups.
Back home, the pack healer always asked first. She’d put a hand on your arm, say tell me if anything hurts. This woman said nothing. I stared at the ceiling while a stranger confirmed that I was intact. The gloves were cold. The speculum was colder. My wolf snarled low in my chest, and I pressed her down until my teeth ached.
“Virgin,” the doctor announced to the Head Omega, like I wasn’t lying right there. “Healthy. Good bone structure. Stronger than expected for a Gamma’s daughter.”
I dressed with shaking hands, my mother’s locket tucked under the cotton where no one could see it.
The Head Omega led me through corridor after corridor to the far wing of the palace. Two soldiers flanked the entrance. Inside, the room was dim and vast – a bed the size of my entire bedroom back home, draped in dark silk. The air smelled faintly of cedar and frost.
And lying in that bed, perfectly still, was the Lycan Prince.
He looked like he was sleeping. Dark hair against the white pillow. Sharp jaw, dark lashes, hands resting on the silk sheets with fingers that looked like they’d been made to hold weapons or give orders. Even unconscious, even motionless, something about him pressed against the air in the room.
Beside him, curled against his hip, was a pale blue shape. Transparent, shimmering, its edges rippling like light through water. A wolf – massive, luminous – its outline flickering with every breath the Prince took.
His inner wolf. Still manifested. Still guarding.
The wolf lifted its head when I entered. Its translucent eyes found mine.
It tilted its head. Curious. Not hostile.
“Huh,” the servant behind me whispered. “That’s the first time it hasn’t snarled at a stranger.”
He told me to wait here for the other candidates.
I stood alone in the sleeping Prince’s bedroom. My mother’s locket clutched in my fist. My cotton dress wrinkled from the car ride. The ghost-wolf watching me with pale, flickering eyes.
Something deep in my chest stirred. Not fear. Not recognition, exactly. Something older than both.
The Prince’s eyelids twitched.
And then they opened.
Dark eyes, sharp and completely focused, looking directly at me.
“He opened his eyes.”
The servant gave me a skeptical look. He sent for a doctor anyway. The doctor walked to the far end of the room and examined the Prince from a cautious distance, his eyes on the glowing wolf.
“No change,” He peeled off his gloves without looking up from the monitors. “Vitals stable. Brain activity consistent with deep coma.” He peeled off his gloves and glanced at me. “Some candidates try to draw attention to themselves before the selection. It won’t help.”
The Head Omega folded her arms. “Enough with the theatrics. Wait here quietly until the others arrive.”
I closed my mouth. But I knew what I’d seen. Those eyes were awake, and they’d looked right at me.
…
Over the next hour, the other candidates arrived.
Girls from the remaining twelve packs filtered in – some packs had sent two or three. They came in silk dresses and heeled shoes, with curled hair and painted lips and perfume that thickened the hallway air to soup. They chattered and sized each other up, adjusting their necklines, comparing earrings, positioning themselves near the front of the room where the King would see them.
A tall blonde from the Silver Ridge Pack – silk dress the color of crushed pearls, diamond studs in her ears – nudged her companion and nodded toward me. “Is that one a candidate? She looks like she wandered in from the kitchens.”
Her companion pressed her knuckles to her mouth and laughed.
A dark-haired girl from one of the southern packs gave me a different look – not mocking, but calculating. She wore red, and her posture said she’d been training for this moment her entire life.
I stood near the wall in my cotton dress and bare face and felt invisible. Which was fine. Invisible was all I’d ever been trained to be. Calvin had liked me invisible. Quiet, soft-spoken, standing two steps behind him at pack gatherings. The perfect future Luna – seen, not heard.
I wasn’t watching the candidates. I was watching the wolf.
The moment the first new girl entered, the wolf had risen from its resting position. Its translucent hackles lifted. Its pale eyes swept the room, scanning each newcomer, and a rumble spread through the floor – not a sound you heard, exactly, but one you felt in your bones and the base of your spine.
Several girls shifted their weight without knowing why. The temperature in the room seemed to drop.
The far doors opened, and every voice went quiet.
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