REBECCA

"You're really going to marry a werewolf and pretend like that's normal?"

I didn't turn around when Sofia said it, because turning around meant looking at her, and looking at her meant acknowledging the question, and acknowledging the question meant I would have to answer it. Instead, I kept my eyes fixed on the full-length mirror in front of me.

"I'm not pretending anything," I said finally, smoothing down the front of my robe even though there was nothing to smooth. "I'm marrying the man I love. That's normal. That's the most normal thing in the world."

"Except he's not a man, Rebecca. He's a werewolf. The future leader of the Silver Moon Pack." Sofia appeared in the mirror over my shoulder, and I could see her reflection holding a glass of wine that was already half empty, her dark hair escaping from the loose braid she had thrown it into hours ago. "And those people, they don't exactly roll out the welcome mat for humans like us."

I turned around then, because I couldn't avoid her forever, and because Sofia had been my best friend since freshman year of college, back when we were both just two girls from the city trying to figure out what we wanted from lives that kept trying to decide for us. She was human, like me. She didn't understand the werewolf world any better than I did, but she understood me, and right now, that was the only thing that made her opinion worth hearing.

"I've been with William for five years," I said, and my voice came out steadier than I felt. "Five years, Sofia. If he was going to hurt me, don't you think he would have done it by now?"

Sofia took a long drink of her wine and set the glass down on the nightstand with a little more force than necessary. "That's not how it works, and you know it. The Silver Moon Pack isn't friendly to outsiders."

"I won't be on the edges," I said, but even as I said it, I could hear how hollow the words sounded. "Once we're married, once the mating ceremony is complete, I'll be one of them. I'll belong."

"You'll belong the way a pet belongs," Sofia said, and there was no cruelty in her voice, just a blunt honesty that I had always admired and often resented. "They'll tolerate you because William wants you, but they'll never accept you. His mother has called you 'the human girl' for five years, Rebecca. She's never once used your actual name."

I didn't answer, because she was right, and because the truth of it settled into my chest like a stone that I had been carrying for so long I had forgotten what it felt like to put it down. William's mother hated me, and his pack looked at me like I was a stain on their carpet.

"His mother doesn't matter," I said quietly. "William matters, and William loves me."

Sofia looked at me for a long moment, and something in her expression softened, the way it always did when she realized she wasn't going to win an argument but couldn't bring herself to stop caring. She picked up her glass again and held it out toward me, and I could see the resignation in her eyes.

"To Rebecca," she said, and her voice was gentler now, warmer. "The most beautiful bride this city has ever seen. I hope you prove me wrong."

I picked up the glass she had poured for me earlier, "You're going to be there, right?" I asked. "Tomorrow. You're not going to abandon me at the altar."

Sofia laughed, "I'll be there, front row, ugly crying, the whole thing. Someone has to make sure you don't trip over your dress."

I smiled, and for the first time all day, the flutter in my stomach quieted. Sofia was going to be there. William was going to be there. And by this time tomorrow, I would be Mrs. William Moretti, and all of my doubts would be behind me.

Two hours later, Sofia was passed out on her bed with her mouth open and her glass dangling from her fingers, and I was standing in the middle of the room with my hand pressed against my throat, where my pearl necklace should have been.

"No, no, no," I muttered, checking the bathroom, the kitchen counter, the pockets of every jacket I had brought with me. "Where is it? Where did I put it?"

The necklace had been my mother's. It was the only thing she left me when she died, the only thing I had from a woman who had spent her entire life trying to be enough for a family that never appreciated her, and I had planned to wear it tomorrow, to feel her with me when I walked down the aisle and became someone else's wife.

I checked the bedside table, under the bed, and the trash can, which was ridiculous, because I had definitely not thrown my mother's necklace in the trash, but I was past the point of rational thinking and into the point of blind panic.

"It's at the flat," I said to myself, because saying it out loud made it feel less like a catastrophe and more like a problem I could solve. "I took it off last night when I was getting ready for the rehearsal dinner.”

I looked at Sofia, still asleep, still drunk, and I knew she would call me crazy if she were awake. She would tell me to wait until morning, to send William a text and ask him to bring the necklace with him to the venue, to not go back to that flat alone at midnight when I was supposed to be resting for the biggest day of my life.

I opened the social media app on my phone while I waited for the car, a habit I had developed over five years of being with a man who was always busy.

William's profile showed him as active, online just minutes ago, and his location was set to the gym he had been going to since before we met.

"He's not home," I said, and the relief in my voice surprised me. "He's at the gym. I can slip in and out before he even knows I was there."

I ordered the ride and grabbed my keys and walked out the door.

The flat was dark when I let myself in, I had lived here for three years, and I had never once felt like it was mine.

"Okay," I said, stepping into the bedroom.

The bedside table was empty. The jewelry box was empty. The dresser drawers were empty of anything that belonged to me, and I stood in the middle of the room with my hands on my hips, trying to remember where else I could have put it.

"The study," I said, and the words came out before I could stop them. "Maybe I left it in the study."

I had never been inside the study. William had made that clear from the first day I moved in, his voice calm and reasonable and utterly immovable, telling me that the study was his private space, I agreed, I accommodated, I made myself small so that William could remain large, and I had never once regretted it until now.

"The door is unlocked," I said, and I don't know why that surprised me, but it did. William never left anything unlocked.

I pushed it open and stepped inside, and the first thing I saw was the laptop on the desk, open and glowing in the darkness of the room. I didn't find the necklace, but I found something else.

'Everything carries on as usual after the wedding. She never has to know.'

"No," I whispered, because the messaging app was open, an encrypted thread with a contact labeled only as 'O,' and I knew I shouldn't read it, I knew that this was a violation of everything William had ever asked of me, but my eyes caught a word, a phrase, a sentence that made my blood run cold. "No, no, no."

I read the message three times before the words actually sank in, before the meaning of them settled into my bones like ice water. She never has to know. She. Me. I was the she.

I scrolled up. I couldn't help myself. I scrolled up and I read every message, every exchange between William and the person called O. He was the one who had started this, who had planned this, who had chosen me because I was human and desperate and grateful and easy to control.

"There's a folder," I said, and my voice sounded like it was coming from somewhere far away. "There's a folder labeled Personal."

I opened it without thinking, because I was past the point of thinking, past the point of self-preservation. The photographs loaded one by one, William and Olivia, their arms around each other, their smiles wide and genuine in a way I had never seen from William in five years. William and Olivia and a boy, a dark-haired boy with William's jaw and Olivia's eyes, standing in front of a house I had never seen, in front of a life I had never been allowed to be part of.

"James," I read, because the boy was holding a school report, and the name at the top of the report was James Moretti. "James Moretti, William and Olivia's son."

"Five years," I whispered, and the words tasted like ash in my mouth. "Five years, and I never knew. Five years, and he was living a whole other life without me."

I thought about every dinner I had shared with Olivia, every conversation, every moment of kindness that I had mistaken for friendship.

The dreams I had carried for five years, the future I had planned, the love I had trusted, all of it was gone.