Venessa’s POV.

The scent of lilies is going to kill me.

I’m not being dramatic. I think the cloying, sweet-rot stench of five hundred lilies might be an actual biological weapon. Every breath feels thick, like sucking perfume through a greased cloth. It coats my throat, a taste caught between sugar and decay.

My knuckles sting, raw from stripping thorns off two hundred roses since dawn. I’m not allergic to flowers. I’m allergic to this. To the glittering chaos of my twin sister’s wedding eve. To the way my father looked at me this morning—his gaze sliding over my stained apron like I was a piece of furniture, a slightly inconvenient cupboard he needed to move to make room for something prettier.

“Venessa! The ice swan for the champagne fountain is weeping. Fix it.”

I don’t look up. “It’s ice, Aunt Lydia. It’s supposed to weep. It’s melting.”

“Not on the expensive linen, it isn’t! Use a towel. Be useful.”

Useful. I stopped being useful the moment I couldn’t find a mate at 21 like it was my fault or something. But Elara, Elara shines; I hold the light. Elara dreams; I execute. She is the beloved face of our pack. I am the wolf in the shadows, the one with the too-sharp canines and the restless energy that makes the elders frown.

“Venessa.” My father’s voice cut through the floral fog. He stood in the doorway, “The Pack House. They have the final shipment of the moon-lanterns. Go and get them.”

A cold knot formed in my stomach. The Pack House wasn't a place you just “went and got” things from. Not tonight. Not with the rumors swirling about the Alpha son’s return.

“Can’t one of the maid go?” I asked, keeping my voice level. “I’m covered in pollen and dirt.”

“This is family business.” His gaze was impenetrable.

I shrug, wiping my hands on my jeans. “Fine.”

A body slid onto the bench next to me, accompanied by the scent of citrus shampoo and worn leather. Leo. My best friend, and the only person in this pack who didn’t see me as movable furniture.

“You look like you’re plotting a floral-based homicide,” he murmured, swiping a discarded rose stem and twirling it between his fingers.

“Just calculating how many lilies it would take to kill a grown man,” I replied, my voice low. “As a hypothetical.”

“Your dad?”

“The hypothetical is broadening.”

Leo’s smile was brief. His amber eyes, usually full of easy humor, were serious as he watched the controlled chaos of the wedding prep. He was a decent fighter, a good tracker, but his real value was his loyalty. He was solid ground in a pack that felt increasingly like shifting sand.

“Heard your next assignment,” he said casually, too casually.

I paused, a thorn pricking my thumb. I sucked the bead of blood away. “ The Pack House.”

Leo nodded. “Moon-lanterns for the terrace.”

“He’s hoping you’ll get noticed, V,” Leo said quietly, voicing the ugly truth. “With all the unmated warriors gathered… and the Alpha son coming back. It’s a strategic placement. Find a mate, elevate the family status. That’s the subtext.”

The bitterness was a familiar tang on my tongue. Of course. I wasn’t being sent for lanterns; I was being sent as live bait. My father, the dutiful Beta, was leveraging his second daughter like a chess piece. My only value was my potential connection to a stronger male. The realization didn’t hurt anymore; it just settled in my bones, a cold, hard fact.

As I walked out, Leo fell into step beside me. “I’m coming with you.”

“You don’t have to.”

“Yeah, I do,” he said, his jaw set. “Pack House on a night like this? You shouldn’t walk in there alone. It’s not about protection,” he added, seeing the insulted look on my face.

I’m a big girl. I can handle myself but I didn't argue.

Having Leo beside me as I navigated my father’s humiliating mate-fishing task was the only thing making it bearable.

The drive to the Pack House was a quiet transition from one world to another. We left the manicured garden and paved roads of the estate for the dense consuming woods and honestly I felt more at home then than at the fancy cage I lived in.

The Pack House was a sprawling structure of timber and stone, looking less built and more erupted from the forest floor. Even from the parking clearing, the energy hit us. The deep, pounding thrum of drums, not music. Shouts, laughter, the occasional wild howl that spoke of celebration, not ceremony.

“Yeah, they’re winding down for a quiet night,” Leo deadpanned, but his eyes were alert, scanning the perimeter.

We used a side entrance, slipping into a service corridor that smelled of damp stone and old beer. The thump of the drums was a physical vibration in the floor. I found the storeroom, grabbed the box of delicate silver-etched lanterns. Mission accomplished.

“Let’s go,” I said, turning to leave.

But Leo was staring down the corridor toward the source of the noise, a strange expression on his face. “Hear that?”

I did. It was the sound of the pack, truly alive. My father’s crude ploy faded for a second. Curiosity, pulled at me.

“One look,” I said, more to myself than to Leo. “Just to see.”

The scene was breathtaking in its rawness. Firelight danced over a sea of moving bodies. For one reckless, stolen moment, I let go. I slipped from the shadow of the archway into a space near the wall, where the light was dim. I closed my eyes. Just for a few heartbeats, I wasn’t Venessa the Useless daughter, or Venessa, her father’s Disappointment

Then the world stopped.

I opened my eyes.

He had entered without a sound. Kaelen Thorne stood at the head of the hall, flanked by warriors whose eyes held the chill of distant battlefields. He was taller than I’d imagined, his beauty severe and unsettling. Dark hair, sharp jaw, but his eyes were pale ,cold and dead the darkest things I’d ever seen . They swept the room, and everything they touched seemed to freeze in place.

My breath hitched. It was fear. It was like a seismic shift, a siren's call to chaos, promising power but delivering destruction and it scared me.

His gaze passed over the crowd, dismissive, and then… it snapped back. To me.

A SNAP echoed not in my ears, but in my blood, in my bones, in the very marrow of who I was. A connection, hot and terrifying , slammed into place between us. I could feel the steady, powerful drum of his heart as if it beat within my own ribs. I could taste the cold, thin air that clung to him.

Mate.

The word was the truth of my world.

A stunned, breathless smile broke across my face. All the loneliness, the feeling of being sideways in my own life, evaporated. Here he was. The answer and i was terrified of him.

He moved. The crowd parted like a red sea before him. He walked toward me, every step measured, his eyes locked on mine. He stopped so close I could feel the heat radiating from him and I could see just how dark his irises could get . The noise of the pack faded into a distant hum and my heart thumped.

He leaned in. His head dipped toward my neck, toward the place where a claim would be made. The classic, intimate gesture. I held my breath. My heart soared.

His lips brushed my ear. His voice, when it came, was low, and clear.

“I reject you.”

The world didn’t break. It inverted. The smile died on my face, frozen, then shattered.

He straightened, looking down at me as if I were something foul on his boot.

“Aren’t you a desperate little thing,” he said, his voice ringing with cold contempt. “Sneaking in where she doesn’t belong. You are a nobody. Weak. Unworthy of this bond, and of standing in this hall.”

My eyes stung, but I wouldn’t let the tears fall. Not here. I saw Leo, his face pale with shock and dawning fury, starting to push forward from the shadows. I gave a tiny, almost imperceptible shake of my head. Don’t.

The humiliation was a living thing, wrapping around my throat, burning my skin. I held Kaelen Thorne’s cold golden gaze for one more second, letting him see the devastation he’d brought on me. Letting him have his victory.

Then I turned and I ran. Leo was at my side in an instant, his hand on my elbow.

“Venessa, I’m going to kill him, I swear I’m—”

“Drive,” I said, my voice strangely calm. “Just drive.”

The ride back was silent. The bond in my chest was a screaming, open wound, a sickening pull toward the one who had just destroyed me. I stared out the window, seeing nothing.

Leo pulled up not at the main house, but at the old greenhouse on the edge of the property. My sanctuary. He killed the engine. “V…”

I slipped out.

Inside the greenhouse, the sobs came then, silent and wrenching, tearing from a place deeper than I knew I had. My father' s crude plan had worked in the most horrifying way possible—I’d found my mate. And he spat me out in the most cruelest way possible.