Chapter 2

I'd loved Gideon long before the Moon Goddess said he was mine.

When I was eighteen, he came back from the north border at the front of his guard. Blood had soaked through the bandage around his ribs, but he waved off every hand that reached for him and walked through the pack gates on his own two feet.

I was standing in the crowd. I couldn't take my eyes off him.

That night, I wrote his name all over the margins of my notebook. I drew his face from memory until I knew every hard line of it by heart.

So when the mating ceremony named Gideon Lowe as my fated mate, I thought all those years of waiting had finally paid off.

I thought they'd mean something to him too.

I was four months pregnant with our first when I overheard him and Delphine behind the council hall.

"The minute he's born, he's yours," Gideon said. "He'll be registered as your son from day one. I'm not giving the elders any room to argue about the line."

He didn't say my name once.

That was the first time I thought about dying.

But rogues were still hitting the north border. And a few rival elders were circling my father's seat on the Stonehollow council. He lived out on our family's own land, too far away to watch his back, and they were just waiting for some sign our family had lost Gideon's protection. If I died, they'd rip my father apart.

So I stayed alive.

Every morning, I went to Delphine's house and stood outside the gate, hoping for any sign of my son. Some days I heard him laugh. Some days I heard him cry. Some days there was nothing at all, and I stood there anyway.

I was never allowed through that gate. At first, Gideon at least let me stand outside it. Then Delphine told him the future Alpha needed stability, and hearing another woman outside his home would only confuse him about who his mother was.

After that, I wasn't allowed near my son at all.

Three years went by.

Now my son was three years old, and my daughter was barely four days old. Delphine had claimed them both.

Gideon's line was secure. The border was quiet. My father was safe.

I had nothing left to protect.

The pack hall was packed for my daughter's naming ceremony. Allied Alphas and their Lunas filled the front rows, and the Stonehollow elders stood around the moonstone altar with the pack crest carved into its face.

The tradition was old. Every pup born into the Alpha line had to be presented to the pack before moonrise. A drop of the Alpha's blood confirmed the bloodline, and the elders wrote the name into the registry.

Gideon walked in carrying our son.

My little boy had one arm hooked around his neck.

"Daddy," he whispered.

Delphine held out her hands, and he went straight to her without a second thought.

"Mommy."

I'd waited three years to hear my son's voice up close. He used it to call someone else Mommy.

One of the elders pressed a drop of Gideon's blood to the boy's forehead, renewing his place in the line. Delphine kissed his hair.

"That's my big brave boy."

I sat in the back row and stared down at my empty hands.

When it was my daughter's turn, Delphine turned and looked right at me.

"Her birth mother hasn't even held her yet," she announced. "Let's give her that today."

Give her that.

Like it was a favor.

Every head in the hall swung toward me as Delphine set the baby in my arms.

My daughter's eyes were shut. Her breaths were tiny and quick. Her little mouth hung open right under the curve of her nose.

It was the first time I'd seen her face.

It was the first time I'd held my own child.

She started crying in seconds.

Delphine scooped her right back and rocked her against her chest. The crying stopped almost at once.

Someone behind me murmured, "She already knows who her mom is."

Someone else said, "Blood isn't everything."

I stood there with my arms still curved around a baby who wasn't in them anymore.

The elder finished the ritual. Gideon's blood marked my daughter's forehead. Her name went into the registry under Delphine's. The elder never read it out loud, and nobody thought to tell me what it was. Her place in the Alpha line was official.

That was it.

All around me, people laughed and raised their glasses to the pack's future. They gushed over Gideon and Delphine's beautiful family.

I didn't hear a word of it.

When it was over, I headed for the doors. On the threshold, I looked back once.

Gideon was standing next to Delphine, reading the registry page the elder had handed him. My son was hugging his leg. Delphine held my daughter and smiled up at him.

Gideon reached down and rested his hand on the boy's head.

Nobody looking at them would ever guess another woman had bled to put those kids in Delphine's arms.

They looked like a real family.

And I looked like exactly what they'd turned me into.

An outsider.