Chapter 1

When Dominic threw the marriage agreement in front of me, I still wasn’t fully dressed.

My body was covered in the bruises and marks he had left all over me.

“What’s this?” Before opening it, I thought it was another assassination file.

“A political marriage with the Nightthorn clan. You’re going in Vivian’s place,” he said without expression.

“Got it.”

Dominic looked faintly surprised. “You agreed that easily?”

The corner of my mouth twitched.

I had never had the right to say no to Dominic.

He told me to kill, and I killed.

He told me to sleep with him, and I did that too.

Dominic, Alpha of the Silver Ridge pack. Leader of the largest werewolf faction on the East Coast.

I was the assassin he had raised, and his toy—not even worthy of being called a lover.

As for Vivian, she was the foster sister he cherished most. He had always wanted to mark her, but she never quite agreed to it—she enjoyed being chased, loved dangling him between yes and maybe.

Back then, my father owed the Silver Ridge pack a blood debt he couldn’t repay. The day Dominic’s men came to collect, my father shoved eight-year-old me forward and said they could take the child instead.

When I knelt in the hallway of the pack mansion, fourteen-year-old Dominic happened to be crossing the great hall and stopped in front of me.

He tipped his chin up slightly. “I’ll take this little thing.”

He had only recently presented as an Alpha then, and every inch of him radiated the aggression of a young male wolf.

I was skin and bones, dirty all over.

Yet through my bird’s-nest hair, he somehow noticed that my face resembled Vivian’s by at least half.

His eye was viciously sharp.

Or maybe he was just obsessed with Vivian down to the bone.

Dominic was good to me.

And not good to me at all.

The good part was that he trained me to shift and fight, fed and clothed me, and raised me until I looked more and more like Vivian.

The bad part was that he used me as his dirtiest blade, stained my hands with blood, and often came into my room at night. Afterward, he would grab me by the chin and look down at me from above.

“You should be grateful you’ve got a face like Vivian’s. Otherwise, you’d have been thrown into the wilderness to feed wild beasts a long time ago.”

I said nothing.

“Ella, behave yourself. Don’t start wanting things that were never meant for you, and I’ll treat you well.”

Later, an eerie but stable cycle formed between me and those siblings.

Vivian got angry with Dominic, and Dominic came to me and took it out on my body.

Vivian got mad again, came to sneer at me, and when I snapped back, she ran to Dominic to complain.

Dominic scolded me, punished me, then went back to comfort her. Once he finally soothed her, it only took a few days before it all started again.

Over and over.

Never ending.

I was sick of it.

Then word came from the Supernatural Council—for the sake of easing the territorial conflict between werewolves and vampires that had lasted for centuries, the Council required a marriage alliance between the Silver Ridge pack and the Nightthorn clan.

The moment Vivian heard she was supposed to marry a vampire, she exploded.

“Are you insane? A vampire?” she shrieked, her mascara smeared everywhere and not even bothering to wipe it off. “Do you have any idea what they smell like? Rotting flesh and rust! Just standing next to one makes me want to throw up, and you want me to marry one? Sleep in the same bed as that kind of cold-blooded monster? I’d rather die!”

A wolf’s disgust toward a vampire was carved into the genes. Their scents clashed. Their natures opposed each other. We were raised to believe vampires were parasitic creatures that fed on blood, and marrying one was the same as exile and punishment.

But I didn’t care.

Compared to staying by Dominic’s side, how much worse could marrying a vampire possibly be?

Before I left, Dominic dragged me into a corner, gripping my chin so hard it felt like he was crushing something disposable.

“Once you’re married in, find a chance to kill Adrian. If the vampire lord dies, Nightthorn will be leaderless, and their territory will be ours.”

His pupils glowed with the amber gold unique to an Alpha as he stared at me for two seconds.

“When it’s done, I’ll give you the antidote. Don’t disappoint me, Ella.”

The wedding car drove all the way to Nightthorn territory.

The vampires’ land was nothing like the pack’s. There was no scent of earth or pine needles, no wilderness, no moonlight. Instead there stood a Gothic mansion tangled in ivy, every window fitted with dark blackout glass.

Quiet. Elegant. Like another world.

Because Adrian was supposedly “in poor health,” all the complicated rituals were skipped. I was taken straight to the master bedroom.

Honestly, I was pleased.

It was the first time I had ever worn white. The dress had been made to Vivian’s measurements, so it was a little loose on me, but I didn’t mind.

Back at Silver Ridge, because Vivian liked pale colors, Dominic had forbidden me from touching anything bright.

And with my role as an assassin, I could wear almost nothing but black.

I sat in the room, bracing myself for the sharp, disgusting smell vampires were supposed to have.

The door opened.

The footsteps were light, nearly soundless. A pale, elegant hand lifted my veil.

I instinctively took a deep breath.

Ready to meet that legendary stench of decay.

Then I froze.

He didn’t smell like rotting flesh and rust.

He smelled like a forest after rain in the middle of the night. Cool. Clean.

And… good.

“You’re not Vivian.”

His voice was different from what I’d imagined, too. Not eerie. Not cold. It was low, touched with a lazy note of amusement.

I met his eyes. Silver-gray irises, faintly red in the dim light.

A vampire’s eyes.

He had an absurdly beautiful face. Skin so pale it was nearly translucent, lips so faint in color they looked almost bloodless.

“I’m not,” I said frankly with a nod, crossing one leg over the other and swinging it as I looked him over. “How could you tell?”

“I’ve met Vivian,” he said. “She’s not as pretty as you.”

I laughed immediately. “Vivian couldn’t stand the smell of vampires and refused to marry you no matter what, so I got sent instead.”

So tell me, lord of the Nightthorn clan—would you be angry? Would you kill me?

He only asked calmly, “Do you know the consequences of deceiving two races?”

“Sure. But once I shift, I fight pretty well. Not many people can take me.”

At last, he smiled. When he did, his silver-gray eyes curved downward, and the faintest color touched his lips. He was so handsome it made my mind blur.

Still smiling, he turned his head and coughed twice, then looked back at me.

“It’s all right. I’ll marry you.”

The bedroom lights dimmed.

When he kissed my neck, he paused.

His lips hovered over my carotid artery. I could feel his fangs—much sharper than a werewolf’s—lightly pressing against my skin.

My heart skipped a beat.

But he didn’t bite. His lips only moved away and continued downward.

Dominic was always rough, devouring, like a rutting male wolf staking claim to his territory. Once he was done, he rolled over and left.

Adrian was different.

He asked in a low voice, “Is this okay?”

No one had ever asked me that before.

Half lost in pleasure, I heard him ask, “What’s your name?”

“Ella. Dominic thought it was too ordinary, so he gave me the code name Shadow.”

Adrian let out a cold laugh, innate arrogance bleeding through his tone.

“A pack Alpha with nothing but brute force. He really thinks he’s something.”

He lowered his head and kissed my eyes. “Then I’ll call you Ella. It’s a beautiful name.”

The rumors really were worthless.

A man like this, unexpectedly gentle beneath those cool fingertips—how could anyone call him cold-blooded and ruthless?

As he led me toward some place I had never reached before, dazed and drifting, I thought hazily:

Dominic really is a useless piece of trash.

So this could feel good.

Later, Adrian fell asleep.

I didn’t.

I lay in the dark, thinking about one thing.

The mission to kill him.

And I realized I couldn’t do it.