Chapter 1

The night before my mating ceremony, I was abducted. For two nights, the men who took me assaulted and tormented me.

When my pack paid the ransom and brought me home, the physician warned me that I might never bear pups.

Caleb Ward, the powerful Alpha I was supposed to marry, abandoned me. He chose my adoptive sister, Blair Sutton, to be his Luna instead.

Everywhere I went, people whispered. I had survived what those men did to me, only to come home and be treated as though I had disgraced my family. At last, I walked into the river, unable to imaginethose men, only to come home and be treated as though I had shamed my family. One night I walked into the river because I couldn’t face another day of it.

Elliot Ward jumped in after me.

He was Caleb’s younger brother, the pack’s Beta. The current nearly took him too, but he pulled me out. When he regained consciousness, he saidcame to, the first thing he told me was that he had loved me for years. He wanted to marry me. He didn’t care whether I could have children.

He promised to stand beside me for the rest of his life.

I believed him.

Two years later, I learned I was pregnant. I was only about four weeks along, and there was still so much to worry about, but I left the appointment crying with happinessfar too early to stop worrying, but I cried with happiness the whole way out of the appointment. I hurried to find Elliot, eager to tell him.

Then I heard my parents talking to him in a private lounge.

“Blair lost control when she sent those rogues after Nora,” my mother said. “Thank goodness you paid them enough to keep quiet. You protected her name.”

My father spoke next. “And you took Nora as your mate, knowing she might never give you an heir. We’ve thought about it, Elliot. You can’t be the end of your branch of the family. Blair’s first pup will inherit Caleb’s Alpha title, but there should be another heir from you.”

“That won’t be necessary.” I knew my husband’s voice as well as my own. “My brother’s pup can be the pack’s sole heir. As long as Blair is happy, that’s enough for me.”

He paused.

“And Nora... I’ll spend my life making up for what she lost.”

I stopped outside the door, my hand still lifted to knock.

Blair had hired the men who kidnapped me.

Elliot had paid to protect her. My parents knew. They were discussing children and inheritance with him as though what had happened to me were a family inconvenience they had already settledsitting with him, talking about heirs, as if what had been done to me were an inconvenience the family had already dealt with.

I pressed my hand over my mouth. If I made a sound, they would come out. They would see me standing there with the news I had been so desperate to share.

I backed away before any of them noticed me.

By the time I reached our home on the Ward estate, a message from Elliot was waiting on my phone.

Pack meeting tonight. Don’t wait up, Nora. Get some rest. Love you.

I read it twice without answering.

Across the hall, the keypad beside his study door glowed.

In the early months of our marriage, I couldn’t sleep unless Elliot held my hand. Even then, nightmares woke me. I would reach across the bed and find him gone.

Whenever I went looking, he was in that study with the door locked.

I had accepted that he needed somewhere to work. Now I stood in front of the keypad and entered Blair’s birthday.

The lock clicked open.

Photographs covered the walls. Blair as a little girl, Blair as a teenager, Blair smiling at parties. There were portraits too, and shelves crowded with gifts and keepsakes.

I recognized some of them. Blair had spent years chasing Caleb, giving him things he barely bothered to look at. Elliot had saved what his older brother rejected.

While I woke up afraid in our bed, he came here to be surrounded by her.

I gripped the edge of a shelf to keep myself upright.

My birth family had found me when I was thirteen. Until then, Blair had been raised in my place, and I had grown up away from the Sutton pack. We had been switched at birth; no one ever explained to me how it had happened.

When they brought me home, my parents told Blair to call me her sister. They told me I was their biological daughter and rightful Luna heir, the girl who should have grown up in the pack’s ruling family.

But being brought home hadn’t made me belong.

For the next ten years, I watched my parents reach for Blair first. They could be kind to me. Sometimes they seemed guilty. Yet she was the daughter whose moods they understood, whose hurt they noticed, whose wishes mattered without an explanation.

When the Ward pack chose me for an arranged mating with Caleb, my parents agreed. I thought there was finally a place for me that Blair couldn’t take.

She had wanted Caleb all along. When the engagement put me in her way, she hired men to abduct me. Afterward, my possible infertility gave him an excuse to reject me and marry her.

And Elliot, who had risked his life in the river, had helped keep her safe from the consequences.

I sank to the floor in front of her photographs. I couldn’t look at another smiling face, but I couldn’t make myself close my eyes eitherslid down to the floor in front of her photographs. I couldn’t stand to look at one more smiling picture of her, and I couldn’t make myself shut my eyes.

My phone began to vibrate.

Mom.