LILA'S POV
I stood at the edge of the ballroom holding a tray of champagne nobody had touched yet, and I felt that same familiar tightness settle into my chest, the one that always showed up whenever I was anywhere near my family.
The Silver Fang packhouse smelled like pine smoke and roasted meat and way too many lilies, because Elena had ordered them by the hundred and white always looked pure in photographs. I watched my half sister laughing under the crystal lights in her silver silk dress, and I looked down at my own dress, borrowed and already splitting at the seam, and told myself none of it mattered.
"Careful, Lila," Luna Margot my stepmother said, sweeping past me without slowing down. Her smile never came anywhere close to her eyes. "Try not to embarrass your father tonight."
My father stood near the dais with one hand resting proudly on Elena's back, and he didn't even glance my way. He never did, unless something had broken or gone missing, or unless he needed someone convenient to blame.
Elena caught my eye once across the room and gave me the smile she saved for guests, warm on the surface and gone the second she looked away. I used to think that smile meant something. Some stupid part of me still watched for it anyway, even now, even after everything.
Tonight I turned eighteen. This night the Moon Goddess was supposed to give me a mate, and for the first time in my entire life, somebody was going to know me before they judged me for anything at all.
Then the doors opened, and the whole room went quiet at once in a deafening silence.
Kieran Blackwood walked in tall and in a black tuxedo. His handsome face, broad muscles, and his grey eyes went straight to me like he'd been aimed the second he stepped through the door.
My heart raced faster and my wolf sat up hard inside my chest.
Mate.
The tray slipped out of my hands, glass shattering, champagne spreading gold across the floor, but I barely registered any of it, because Kieran was looking directly at me. Not through me, the way everyone else always did in a condescending manner. I felt the bond pull tight between us and for one stupid second I actually let myself believe it. I forgot the split seam, the borrowed dress and every single thing my family had ever made me feel about myself.
Then his face changed.
It wasn't fast, and that was the part I'd turn over in my head for years afterward. His eyes dropped to the broken glass at my feet, then to my shaking hands, then over my dress, and something cold came down over him like a curtain closing.
Elena turned to see what had caught his attention. When she realized it was me, her mouth opened in surprise she smiled.
Kieran crossed the ballroom while the entire room watched him do it, and my father finally looked at me too, only because everyone else already was. Kieran stopped close enough that only I could hear him.
"You?" he said. "The Moon Goddess must be laughing right now."
"I didn't choose this," I told him, once I remembered how to breathe. "Neither did you."
"No." He didn't blink. "But I get to choose what I do about it." He said with a scowl on his face
Someone whispered near the back of the room. Someone else laughed and tried to cover it badly with a cough then Kieran turned toward Elena, standing under the lights in her silver silk with pearls pinned into her dark hair, looking exactly like a future Luna was supposed to look.
"This is an insult," he said, loud enough now for the whole room. "The Blackwood bloodline will not be tied to a servant girl."
"I'm not a servant." My voice shook, but at least it carried.
"No?" His mouth curved, no warmth in it at all. "Then what exactly are you, Lila Carter?"
I looked at my father, just once, wanting him to say it “Daughter” One word. That was all it would have taken.
He said nothing. His face stayed carved from stone, and Kieran followed my gaze and understood far too fast. "Exactly," he said, like that settled it.
Elena stepped forward then, soft and careful, playing her part for the crowd the way she always did. "Kieran, please It's Lila's birthday don't be cruel." Then she looked at me, pity sitting on her face like something she had rehearsed countlessly. "She can't help what she is."
The room let out a breath at once, relieved to finally stop feeling sorry for me. Kieran reached for Elena's hand, and she let him take it after exactly the right hesitation, the kind meant to look reluctant when it wasn't.
"This," he said, lifting it, "is the woman who should stand beside an Alpha."
Even through the pine smoke and the roasted meat and the spilled champagne, I could still smell him. Cedar and cold rain, a scent my whole body had already decided belonged to me before I'd had any say in it at all.
Kieran turned back to face me one last time.
"I, Kieran Blackwood, future Alpha of the Blackwood Pack, reject you, Lila Carter, as my mate and future Luna."
The bond didn't just break. It felt torn out by the root, and I staggered but stayed on my feet, because there was no way I was falling down in front of Elena's smile, not with my father watching me in shame instead of grief. His shame. Never mine, even though it should have been.
Everyone in that room was waiting to see what I'd do. If I accepted the rejection, the bond would be gone for good. If I refused it, I'd stay tied for the rest of my life to a man who'd just chosen my own sister in front of his entire world. I looked at Elena. Her fingers were still curled in his.
"I, Lila Carter," I said, and my voice came out hoarse but it held, "accept your rejection, Kieran Blackwood, future Alpha of the Blackwood Pack."
The bond snapped. It wasn't sharp the way I'd expected. It was hollow, like something had been scooped straight out of my chest with nothing left behind to fill the space, and my wolf howled somewhere far down inside me, a sound I felt more than heard.
Kieran sucked in a breath. First sign he'd felt anything at all.
Good, I thought. Let it hurt him too.
"Well," Luna Margot said, stepping forward like she was commenting on the weather. "That was unfortunate."
Unfortunate, My birthday, My mate, My rejection, lying there on the floor in the broken glass. My father's face had gone dark, but not at Kieran, because it was never at Kieran, whose pack had money and soldiers and land, It was at me. It was always, only ever, at me.
"Clean this up," he said, quiet, almost gentle, which somehow made it worse than shouting would have.
I looked at him, and for the first time in my life, I didn't lower my eyes first.
"I'm bleeding," I said. A shard had gone straight through my shoe, and blood was already seeping into the champagne pooled across the floor.
His eyes dropped to it, then came back up to my face. "Then clean that too."
I bent down anyway, and the movement finished tearing the seam in my dress. Somewhere near the back of the room, someone laughed and tried to hide it behind a wineglass. I picked up the first piece of glass. It cut straight into my palm.
"Lila." Elena's voice, soft as ever. "Let one of the staff handle it. You've had enough embarrassment for one night."
I looked up at her, standing beside Kieran like she'd been placed there on purpose, and for the first time all night I saw her clearly. Not the sister I used to follow through hallways hoping she'd turn around and notice me. Just a girl who'd never had to earn a single thing in her life, because everything had always been handed to her without asking.
"No," I said, setting the glass back down on the tray and standing up straight, blood still running down my palm. "I won't clean it.