Brianna

The wedding dress was made for Paige.

I knew it the second the maids forced my arms into the sleeves. The satin bodice clamped around me like a closing fist, boning digging into my ribs with every breath I dared to take.

"It's too tight," I said. "Could you loosen—"

"Deal with it." The maid lacing me up gave the cords a vicious yank, and I choked back a gasp as they bit into my waist. Her eyes found mine in the mirror, her mouth curved into something between pity and mockery. "Marrying Alpha Colton is more luck than you deserve. A girl like you—" she let the words hang, savoring them, "—a wolfless girl? What better future did you think was waiting for you?"

The other maid, smoothing down my skirts, gave a low laugh. "Right. Did you actually believe Jax would marry you?"

I stared at my reflection and said nothing.

What was there to say? Every word was true. In this pack—in any pack—a person without a wolf barely counts as a person at all. Just an empty shell with a name attached. And Jax, the man I'd believed would stand beside me for the rest of my life, had made it brutally clear yesterday that empty shells aren't worth protecting.

The bride in the mirror was pale as bone. But her eyes were dry.

Good, I told myself. At least your eyes are dry.

The maid pinned the veil into my hair. White gauze fell over my face, and the world blurred into fog.

I don't remember walking to the chapel. I only remember the doors swinging open and the light crashing down on me like a wave.

Hundreds of white candles burned in two rivers from the doors to the altar. The heat of them, thick with the cloying sweetness of lilies, seeped through my veil until my temples throbbed. Every guest turned as one, hundreds of eyes nailing themselves to me—no. To the dress. They thought Paige was under this veil.

To everyone watching, it was a picture-perfect moment: a father walking his daughter down the aisle. Only I knew how deep his fingers dug in. Through the thin fabric of my sleeve, his nails sank into my arm like five burning nails.

He was making sure I didn't run. Didn't scream. Didn't do anything to shame the Duskwood name.

Go ahead. Squeeze harder. You've been doing it since I was a child. And no matter how dark the bruises are tonight, by morning they'll be gone without a trace. As if they never existed at all.

My body doesn't scar. Doesn't bruise. Doesn't keep a single mark.

And in this whole world, I am the only one who knows it.

One step. Another. The red carpet stretched ahead of me like the road to a gallows. My gaze drifted through the haze of my veil, across the front rows of guests—

And stopped.

Jax sat in the second row of the family section. Right beside Paige.

He was leaning toward her, lips nearly brushing her temple as he murmured something. Their hands rested against each other in the shadow between their seats, and Paige's fingertips lingered at his cuff—settling there the way a hand settles somewhere it has rested a thousand times before.

So familiar. So natural. So natural that not a single guest found it strange.

It was this obvious. It was always this obvious. And I was the only one who spent two whole years blind.

One week ago, Colton Westbrook—the Hound of War—sent Duskwood a formal demand for marriage.

He wanted the Alpha's daughter. Everyone knew which daughter he meant: Paige. And from that moment, the entire pack plunged into mourning. Even the servants walked on tiptoe.

We'd all grown up on the stories about that man. The wives who died under his roof. The blood on his hands that would never wash clean. But that was exactly why his pack grew stronger year after year—strong enough that no one, anywhere, dared to tell him no.

And me? For the first time in my life, I was grateful to be worthless. Too worthless to have a name worth remembering. Too worthless for a monster's eye to ever land on.

What I never imagined was that even a worthless girl could be thrown away by her own mate.

Last night, I learned that the bride walking down the aisle this morning would be me.

My parents had spent the entire week locked in the study, scheming a way out of this disaster. And the way out they found—was to feed me to it.

Of course. I should have seen it coming.

I tried to fight it, at first. Right up until Jax stepped to Paige's side and looked at me with a stranger's eyes.

Right up until my father spoke my grandmother's name—in that calm, level voice people use to discuss the price of livestock.

Then I pressed my thumbprint onto the contract. I had no choice. Grandma is the only person in this world who ever truly loved me, and I will protect her with everything I have.

My thumb curled slightly against the stem of my bouquet. I could still taste the copper from last night, when I'd bitten through the skin.

But when I ran my finger over it now, the pad of my thumb was smooth. Whole. The wound had sealed itself without a sound, without leaving so much as a line behind.

Small mercies, I thought, clinging to that flicker of warmth.

I was not walking into this slaughterhouse empty-handed. There was one thing—one single thing—that no one else in this world knew. One card that was still mine to play.

And then the carpet ran out.

The road was so short. Too short to even finish one full breath. My father released my arm and stepped back, and though the marks he left burned like fire, my arm suddenly felt weightless—like being let go at the edge of a cliff.

I didn't dare look up. All I could see was a pair of black boots, polished to a mirror shine, standing motionless in the candlelight at the altar. But his presence had weight.

It pressed down on my head, my shoulders, my spine, until the organ music and the breathing of hundreds of guests all faded into a distant hum.

I moved like a puppet on strings—kneeling, rising, giving my hand, listening to the priest drone through the endless vows.

Someone answered when the questions came. Maybe it was my own voice. I honestly don't know.

Then the priest closed the holy book, smiled, and spoke the words:

"You may now kiss your bride."

A ripple of cheers rose through the hall. My neck was stiff as I surfaced from the fog, inch by inch, and began to lift my head the way ritual demanded—

A low male voice fell first.

Soft. So soft it poured into my ear alone, grazing past the veil, mockery wrapped around a blade's edge:

"You're not Paige. Are you?"

My heart stopped mid-beat.

The candles kept burning. The guests kept smiling. The organ's last note still hung beneath the vaulted ceiling. Not one soul in this chapel had heard those words.

No one but me knew that the gallows floor had just dropped open beneath my feet.

My hand tightened around the bouquet, around the dagger hidden deep inside its stems.

I don't know what this madman is about to do.

But this time, I will not close my eyes and let someone else decide my fate.