THE ALPHA'S CURSED BRIDE

***VERA***

"Make sure you find your mate at the ceremony tonight. Don't come home early-stay. Your mate might be waiting," Mother said, tugging Tricia's braid into place.

"I'm not a party person, so yeah, I'll leave right after the hurdle," Tricia replied with a lazy smile. Mother pinched her ear anyway.

"My words weren't for you. I was talking to Vera."

I smiled because smiling used less breath than speaking. My fingers were steady, even though my heart felt like a trapped animal. I smoothed my lashes for the twentieth time and the mirror showed the image I had worked months for: a gown that caught the light in soft waves, hair pinned back to reveal my throat. I had practiced this entrance until the thought of it made my cheeks ache. Tonight would be the night.

"Why put so much effort into this? It's the Luna's ceremony, not a mate-hunt," Tricia teased, brushing a stray curl behind her ear.

"It just feels right," I said, twirling once in front of the dressing mirror. The silk whispered against my legs. Last week I'd spoken with the Alpha-two breathless minutes-and something in me had clicked. I'd felt it in my chest and along my spine. I'd known, and I had been certain he'd known too.

"Vera, your makeup was perfect five minutes ago. And ten. And fifteen-" Tricia sang, smiling. She nudged me, and I laughed, the sound brittle with nerves.

Outside, people gathered like a tide. I hopped out of the car and the world flooded with murmurs of admiration. "In!" I squeaked, taking Tricia's hand and racing for the front row. I wanted the Alpha to find me quickly, wanted every pair of eyes to see the moment he would take me. Pride had always tasted like a promise.

"We're an hour early," Tricia said as I dragged her across the empty chairs. "You're ridiculous."

"All the better," I whispered. I had a plan; I had a place in the very front so he wouldn't have to search. It would be quick, ceremonial, perfect. The pack would remember the night the Alpha finally claimed me.

Then Lana arrived like a sudden shadow. She flipped her hair, practiced smile set in place, and leaned just close enough for me to hear. "What's a disgrace doing in the front row? Trying to jinx the Luna ceremony?"

My stomach tightened into a small cold stone. Everything in me bristled. I had spent my life shrinking to make space for other people; tonight I had decided not to. "Who's she talking about?" I breathed to Tricia, too loud to be private.

"Who else but you?" Lana sneered before flouncing off. Her minions followed, eyes bright with malice. Tricia stepped between us like a shield. "Don't you feel ashamed, always humiliating my sister?" she demanded.

"You're pathetic, Vera," Lana said, as if her words were a verdict. "Your little sister has to defend you."

I drew a hollow breath and felt something cold tighten in my chest-not fear. Not yet. Determination. "In a few hours, Lana, I'll give you an answer befitting your status," I said, loud enough that heads turned and whispers snagged like torn thread. They blinked. Her smirk faltered for half a heartbeat, and for the first time since I was small, I felt the sick thrill of standing straight when the world wanted me small.

"Promise?" Tricia asked, eyes pleading. I wanted to tell her everything-the tiny signal I had felt in the woods, the way my wolf had answered a stranger's scent-but the bells started before I could confess.

A hush swept the crowd. The Alpha entered like a sun no one dared stare at. The priestess's voice dropped into the formal cadence I had heard all my life: "Find your Luna."

He walked through the gathered bodies with the slow certainty of someone who had never known doubt. My chest thudded so loudly it felt like applause in my ears. He was coming my way. He had to be. I closed my eyes and held my breath as customs demanded: mark and be claimed.

The world erupted into claps and exultation-faces blurred into light and sound-and a strange expectation coiled in my gut. When he passed near my row, I felt nothing. No warmth. No pull. A silence like snow fell over the part of my chest that had expected flame.

I opened my eyes because I had to. Because the breath I'd been holding needed space to leave my lungs. That's when I saw him.

He wasn't looking at me.

He was at Tricia's side.

The Alpha's hand moved with a claim I thought reserved for myself. His teeth brushed the soft skin at the corner of her throat-a tiny, ceremonial bite-and the priestess's voice swelled with the word I had rehearsed in my head for nights: "Luna!"

The clap around me felt like blows. My knees turned to jelly. I clutched the edge of my seat until the fabric groaned under my fingers. The song in my chest-what I had convinced myself was destiny-snapped like a frayed string.

Tricia's face lit with stunned joy, the kind that comes when someone else's hand takes something from you and calls it yours. She looked at me then, eyes bright with triumph, and for a terrible heartbeat, I loved her for it and hated her equally. Her smile gleamed through the echoed cheers like a blade.

You'd think the world would tilt slowly, that time would pool and stretch. Instead, the room contracted into a needle point of white light and my mind felt full of lead. I tasted metal-bitter, hot-on my tongue and for a second I thought I might pass out.

"You always were dramatic, Vera," someone nearby muttered, equal parts accusation and amusement. Lana's voice threaded through the crowd like a compass needle finding fault.

A laugh rose somewhere behind me, high and cruel. Fingers touched my arm, not in comfort but as voyeuristic curiosity, as if my shame were entertainment.

My wolf, Nyx, whined low and close. She scraped at the back of my neck with her teeth, sensing my falter, her small heart thudding as crazily inside me as mine was. We were always told the bond would present as a fire-bright and unmistakable. Tonight there had been only bitter ash.

I slid out of my seat when the applause stalled, because staying made my bones ache. My legs were noodles but I forced them to carry me away from the center of noise. People's eyes roved over me-pity, disgust, thinly veiled triumph-and every glance was a nail.

Outside, the night air was hard and cold and honest. I pressed my palms to my face and let the tears come, hot and angry and unladylike. I hated the way they dampened my lashes. I hated how small I felt. I hated that every dream I'd held like a shield had been peeled away in front of the whole pack.

"Vera," Tricia's voice came soft, and for the first time since she'd smiled, it sounded fragile. She touched my shoulder in a way that would have been comforting if she'd done it as a sister, not as a Luna newly crowned in the place that had denied me. "I-"

"Don't," I cut her off, voice brittle. I pulled away from her hand, from the offer of consolation that smelled faintly of candle wax and new duties. How could she understand the crater she'd made in me? How could she know the hollow where hope had lived?

She flinched, and for a moment I saw the child she once had been-the one who'd shared bitter roots with me under the same roof-and my chest pinched. I wanted to tell her everything: how the Alpha had felt like a promise, how I had twined my future around that certainty. But the words lodged in my throat like stones.

"Why did he choose her?" I asked into the dark, not because I expected an answer but to hear the question spoken aloud. The night swallowed it. The answer was the sting that marked me: not for lack of trying, not because fate had been cruel, but simply because the world had chosen someone else.

Lana's laughter drifted from the doorway-sharp, triumphant. I wiped my face with the heel of my hand and felt the grit under my nails. For the first time since I was a child, I let myself hate. Not in the soft, ashamed way that kept me small, but with a clean, white-hot anger that untethered my breath.

They clapped for the new Luna inside the hall, a sound like distant thunder. I let them clap. I let the sound wash over me until it dissipated like smoke. I pressed my back against the cold stone and closed my eyes.

This was not the end. My throat burned with a promise I did not yet understand. If destiny could be taken from me with the pressure of a single tooth on a sister's throat, then I would find, somewhere, the parts of me the world had not yet seen. I would learn to be dangerous. I would learn to be necessary. I would learn to make them see me-on my own terms or not at all.

For now, there was only the ache. And the vow.