Chapter 1

The bedroom door exploded off its hinges.

My husband was home — three years late.

He saw my swollen belly.

He drew his blade.

"Whose pup is it, wife?"

I couldn't tell him.

Because the truth would burn his entire pack to ash.

Kane Thorne crossed the room in two strides and hauled me off the daybed by my throat. The cup of moonwine in my hand shattered against the floor.

Three years. Three years of silence, of debt collectors at the gate, of sleeping alone in a bed that smelled like dust. And the first thing he gave me was his hand around my windpipe.

"Answer me, Seraphina." His eyes were gold and blown wide, his wolf riding him hard. "I was gone three years and you couldn't keep your legs closed? Who mounted you?"

"Kane, stop—"

Maren Thorne, my mother-in-law, burst through the ruined doorway. When she saw his fist in my nightgown, her face went bloodless.

"Let her go! She's carrying—"

"Silence, Mother."

His roar rattled the windows. My ears rang. And something inside me — something that had been folded up small and quiet for three years — finally caught fire.

I tore my hand free and slapped his grip away.

"You left without a word," I said. "You dumped a bankrupt pack and a mountain of your father's debt on a nineteen-year-old girl and vanished. Pack law is clear, Alpha. A mate absent one full year without cause dissolves the bond. You and I stopped being anything the day you crossed the border."

His face went red, then white.

"You never even marked me," I added, and I tilted my chin so the whole room could see the smooth, unbroken skin of my neck. "Three years, Kane. You left me unmarked, unclaimed, and laughing-stock of every wolf in Velmara. And now you want to talk about loyalty?"

He didn't answer.

He dragged me toward the stairs.

"You spread your legs for another male and you still have the nerve to argue with me? Fine. Let the whole territory see exactly what their Luna is."

I was seven months along. There was nothing in my body strong enough to stop him.

Maren threw herself in front of us, sobbing. "Kane, listen to me, you don't know what you're—"

He backhanded me across the face. Blood filled my mouth, hot and metallic.

"What did you feed my mother to make her cover for you?" he snarled beside my ear. "She's an old woman and you've got her lying for a whore. I'll handle you myself."

Maren froze. She didn't dare step forward again — she knew if she pushed him, he'd only hit me harder, and I could feel her terror from across the room. The pup. Don't let him touch the pup.

He hauled me out through the great doors of Blackthorn Manor, barefoot, into the courtyard.

A woman in white stood waiting on the gravel.

Delilah Frost.

Of course.

The one he'd panted after since he was sixteen. The one who vanished the same week he did, three years ago. Standing there now with her hair curled and her lips painted, fresh as a bride.

So that was where my husband had been. Playing house on the border with another male's mistress.

She covered her mouth and laughed softly at the sight of me — bleeding, barefoot, enormous. "Goddess. I never imagined she'd be this shameless. How convenient. Now I don't have to lift a finger."

Kane threw me down in front of the crowd already gathering at the gates — servants, warriors, half the town.

"Seraphina Vale," he announced, loud enough to carry. "You kept my house running for three years. For that, I'll be generous. Step down. Take the position of second, hand the Luna's title to Delilah, and I'll let you keep breathing under my roof."

He uncoiled the long black whip from his belt. It hit the gravel with a crack like breaking bone.

"Refuse," he said, smiling, "and I'll gut you and your bastard right here."

I looked up at the man who had once knelt in my father's hall and promised me justice for my mother.

My mother, who had frozen to death alone while I waited for his letters.

And I started to laugh.

"Kane," I said. "You should have asked whose pup it is before you drew that whip."