The floor beneath my knees was cold. It was always cold.

I had been scrubbing the same section of stone for twenty minutes, my fingers raw and pruned from the harsh lye soap. But I couldn't move on until every trace of blood was gone. The pack warriors trained in the courtyard above, and their blood always dripped through the cracks, pooling in the dungeon where I worked. Where I belonged.

"Missed a spot, murderer."

I didn't look up. I didn't need to. I knew that voice. Beta Thomas's son, Reed. He was seventeen, cocky, and like everyone else in Shadowmoon Pack, he loved reminding me of what I was. What I had done.

"Yes, sir," I whispered, scrubbing harder at the stones.

His boot connected with my bucket, sending dirty water cascading across the floor I had just cleaned. Laughter echoed from the stairwell where his friends watched.

"Oops." His voice dripped with false sweetness. "Better start over, wolfless."

They didn't leave right away. Reed crouched down beside me, close enough that I could smell the expensive cologne he wore. Close enough that his fingers found my hair and yanked my head back.

"Look at me when I'm talking to you."

I looked. I had no choice. His eyes were cold, calculating. He enjoyed this.

"You know what today is, don't you?" His grip tightened, making my scalp burn. "Alpha Jaxon's birthday. The whole pack's celebrating upstairs while you're down here where you belong." He shoved my face toward the floor. "Seems fitting. The murderer in the dungeon while the future Alpha celebrates life."

More laughter. One of his friends spat on the clean section I'd just finished.

"Come on, Reed," someone called. "Let's go. I can smell her from here."

They left. Finally. I sat back on my heels, staring at the mess. Two hours of work, gone. I would have to start again, which meant I'd be late preparing the Alpha family's dinner, which meant Cook would hit me with the wooden spoon again.

My hands shook as I reached for the mop.

Ten years. Ten years of this. Ten years since the night I killed my adoptive father.

The memory came unbidden, as it always did.

I was fourteen. He came home drunk again, meaner than usual. My adoptive mother had learned to hide, but I wasn't fast enough that night. His fist caught my cheek, splitting the skin. Then my ribs. Then my stomach.

"Worthless!" he roared, his breath reeking of whiskey. "Should've left you at that orphanage to rot!"

I tried to curl into a ball to protect myself, but he grabbed my hair and slammed my head against the wall. Once. Twice. My vision blurred. Blood filled my mouth.

"Please," I begged. "Please stop."

But he didn't stop. He never stopped. His hands found my throat, squeezing, and I couldn't breathe, couldn't think, could only feel the crushing pressure and the darkness creeping in at the edges of my vision.

My hand found something on the floor. The fireplace poker. I swung it blindly, desperately, just trying to make him let go.

The crack of metal against skull.

His hands loosened.

He fell.

And never got up again.

I shoved the memory down where it lived, deep in the dark place inside me. The place where my wolf used to be before she went silent. Before she abandoned me too, leaving me completely defenseless in a world of predators.

"Kira!" Cook's voice bellowed from upstairs. "Get up here! The Alpha family's dinner won't cook itself!"

I abandoned the flooded floor and ran. Running was safer. Hesitation earned punishments.

The kitchen was chaos. Cook directing three other omegas in preparing tonight's feast. Alpha Marcus was celebrating his son Jaxon's twenty-fifth birthday, which meant the entire pack would be here. Which meant I needed to be invisible.

"You're late." Cook's wooden spoon cracked across my knuckles before I could explain. "Take these to the great hall." She shoved a tray of crystal glasses into my hands. "And don't you dare drop them, or I'll have your hide."

I nodded, keeping my eyes down. Always down. Never meet their eyes. Never give them a reason to remember you exist.

The great hall was already decorated with silver and blue banners. Shadowmoon Pack's colors. Omegas rushed around setting tables while warriors lounged in chairs, getting in the way. The massive room could hold three hundred wolves, and tonight it would be full.

I set the glasses down carefully, one by one, my bruised knuckles screaming.

"Well, well. If it isn't the pack's pet murderer."

My stomach dropped. Elena.

I turned slowly. Elena Blackwood stood there in a dress that probably cost more than I'd seen in my entire life. Everyone said she was beautiful. Blonde hair, blue eyes, curves in all the right places. And she was going to be Jaxon's chosen mate. Everyone knew that too.

"Miss Elena," I said softly. "Can I help you with something?"

"You can stay out of sight tonight." She circled me like a predator. "This is Jaxon's special day, and I won't have your cursed presence ruining it. The Moon Goddess knows what you are, wolfless. You're an abomination."

"Yes, Miss Elena."

"And you'll serve my table personally tonight. I want to make sure you understand your place." She leaned in close, her perfectly manicured nail tracing my cheek where Reed had split it earlier. She pressed down on the wound, making it bleed fresh. "You're nothing, Kira. You'll always be nothing. Even your own wolf didn't want you. Even your real parents threw you away like garbage." She smiled sweetly. "And now you're so broken, you can't even heal a simple cut. Pathetic."

The words hit like physical blows, but I'd learned not to flinch. Flinching made it worse.

"I understand, Miss Elena."

She wiped my blood off her finger onto my cheek, then walked away laughing. I stood there, crystal glass in hand, and felt the familiar numbness spread through my chest. The numbness that kept me alive.

Just survive today, I told myself. Tomorrow will come. It always does.

But as I looked up at the decorations, at the celebration being prepared for Jaxon, I felt something twist in my chest. Jaxon. My childhood friend. The only one who'd ever shown me kindness after that horrible night.

He smiled at me yesterday. Just a small smile as he passed me in the corridor, but it was the first acknowledgment I'd gotten from him in months. Maybe tonight, when he became Alpha Heir, things would change. Maybe he'd remember we used to be friends. Maybe he'd speak up for me, just once.

I clutched that hope to my chest like a lifeline. It was all I had left.

By nightfall, the great hall blazed with light and noise.

I moved through the crowd like a ghost, refilling wine glasses and clearing plates. Invisible. That was the trick. Be so forgettable that no one noticed you long enough to cause trouble.

The pack was in high spirits. Alpha Marcus sat at the head table, looking proud as he watched his son. Jaxon stood near the front of the hall, surrounded by warriors and admirers. He looked so different from the boy I'd known. Taller, broader, commanding. He'd grown into his Alpha power, and everyone could feel it radiating from him.

He was magnificent.

Elena hung on his arm like a decoration, her laugh too loud, her touches too possessive. But Jaxon didn't seem to mind. He smiled at her, laughed at her jokes, pulled her closer.

Something sharp twisted in my chest, but I ignored it. I had no right to feel whatever this was.

"More wine, girl!" Someone shoved an empty glass at me. I took it, refilled it, handed it back. Invisible.

"Speech! Speech!" The crowd began chanting.

Alpha Marcus stood, raising his hands for silence. "Tonight, we celebrate not just my son's birthday, but the future of Shadowmoon Pack!" Cheers erupted. "Tonight, Jaxon officially becomes Alpha Heir. And soon, very soon, he'll be taking a mate to stand beside him."

Elena practically glowed. Jaxon's hand tightened on her waist.

"But first," Marcus continued, "the Moon Goddess must have her say. So, as tradition demands, if there are any fated mate bonds to be revealed, let them be known now, before we proceed."

My hands trembled as I poured wine. This was just a formality. The Moon Goddess rarely intervened in pack politics. Fated mates were rare, and chosen mates were far more practical.

But then it happened.

A pull, a tug, a snap. Like someone had tied a rope around my heart and yanked.

I gasped, the wine bottle slipping from my fingers and shattering on the floor. Every eye in the hall turned to me. But I couldn't look at them. I could only look at him.

Jaxon.

His eyes were wide, his hand frozen on Elena's waist. I felt it. I knew he felt it too. The golden thread connecting us, shimmering and impossible and real.

"Mate," my wolf whispered, suddenly awake after years of silence. "Mate. Ours."

The word fell from my lips before I could stop it. "Mate."

Silence. Complete, suffocating silence.

Then Elena laughed. "What did that thing just say?"

Jaxon's face went from shock to horror to something I couldn't name. He looked at me like I was something he'd found on the bottom of his shoe.

"No," he said, his voice carrying across the frozen hall. "No. This is a mistake."

"Jaxon," I took a step forward, my hand reaching out instinctively.

"Don't." The command in his voice made me stop. Made everyone stop. This was Alpha power, raw and absolute. "Don't you dare come near me."

"But the bond..."

"I don't care about the bond!" He shook Elena off and stalked toward me, each step making my heart hammer harder. When he stood before me, so close I could feel his breath, he leaned down until his face was level with mine. "You really think the Moon Goddess would pair me, the Alpha Heir of Shadowmoon Pack, with a wolfless murderer who killed her own father?"

"It was an accident," I whispered. "He was going to kill me."

"I don't care." His eyes were ice. "You're nothing. You've always been nothing. And I will not, I refuse, to accept you as my mate."

The rejection hurt worse than any beating I'd ever received. Worse than my father's fists, worse than Reed's cruelty, worse than ten years of abuse.

"Please," I heard myself beg, hating how broken I sounded. "Please don't do this."

"I, Jaxon Grey, future Alpha of Shadowmoon Pack," his voice rang out clear and formal, and I knew what was coming. The rejection ritual. "Reject you, Kira..."

He paused, and a cruel smile curved his lips.

"I don't even know your last name. That's how little you matter."

Someone laughed. Then everyone was laughing.

"I reject you as my mate. I sever the bond the Moon Goddess mistakenly created." His eyes held mine, making sure I felt every word. "You are nothing to me. You will always be nothing to me."

The bond snapped like a physical break, and I fell to my knees, gasping. It felt like something vital had been ripped from my chest, leaving a gaping, bleeding wound.

I knelt there on the floor surrounded by shattered glass and spilled wine, unable to breathe past the agony.

"Well." Elena's voice cut through the silence. "That was certainly dramatic."

Laughter rippled through the crowd.

Elena walked over to Jaxon and wrapped herself around his arm. "My poor darling. Having to deal with that on your special night." She looked down at me with mock sympathy. "The day is completely ruined. Your ceremony, your celebration, all tainted by her delusion that she could ever be worthy of you."

"You're right." Jaxon pulled Elena closer and kissed her temple, making sure I saw. "But she won't ruin anything else."

Alpha Marcus stepped forward. "This display was an insult to this pack and to my son. You will spend the night in the dungeons to reflect on your place."

The dungeons. Not my closet room. The actual dungeons where they kept prisoners and rogues.

"Please," I whispered. "Please, I didn't mean to. I didn't ask for the bond."

"Silence!" Marcus's roar made me flinch. "You are a murderer and a disgrace. Be grateful we don't execute you for this insult."

Jaxon looked down at me with satisfaction. "You heard my father. Get her out of my sight."

"Jaxon, please." Tears streamed down my face. "We were friends once. You were kind to me. Please don't do this."

Something flickered across his face. Just for a second. His eyes closed briefly, and he looked almost pained.

Hope flared in my chest. Maybe he remembered. Maybe...

His eyes opened, colder than before. "I was never your friend. I was a child who didn't know better." He turned his back. "Reed. Take out the trash."

The hope died.

Hands grabbed me roughly. Reed hauled me up, his fingers digging into my arms hard enough to bruise.

"Come on, murderer," he said, grinning. "Let's get you back where you belong."

He dragged me through the silent crowd. No one helped. No one even looked at me. I was invisible again, but this time it hurt worse because for one shining moment, I'd been seen.

I'd been someone's mate.

And then I'd been thrown away.

The moon goddess gave me a second chance, but that was also ripped away from me.