Dawn bleeds pink across the horizon as I slip through the palace's service entrance.
My shoes dangle from one hand, my feet bare against the cold stone. The chill seeps into my bones, but I barely feel it—the numbness inside is worse.
My hair is tangled beyond saving, pins long lost somewhere between that apartment and the taxi I hailed at dawn. My dress, the simple thing I'd thrown over my ruined leotard, is wrinkled, twisted wrong at the hem.
And the scent. Goddess, the scent.
Two unknown Alphas cling to my skin like brands, like accusations I can't scrub away. Their scent mixed with sweat and sex and choices I can't undo.
I'm almost to the back staircase when Dominic steps from the shadows.
My heart stops. He looks like a storm given human form—jaw clenched so tight I can see the muscle jumping, eyes flashing amber as his wolf paces just beneath the surface.
Every line of his body radiates a fury I've never seen from him before, not in all the years he's guarded me.
But beneath the anger, I see something worse: exhaustion carved into every feature. Dark circles under his eyes. Clothes from yesterday still wrinkled on his frame.
He hasn't slept. Because of me.
"Do you have any idea—" His voice cracks, breaking on the words like they're too heavy to carry. "I thought you were dead, Eva. I thought someone had taken you. I searched every corner of that club, every alley, every contact I could reach without raising alarms."
The guilt floods my chest like ice water, washing away the last dregs of whatever warmth the night had left me.
"Nic, I'm sorry." I reach for him, desperate to bridge the distance between us. "I didn't mean to…"
"You didn't mean to what? Disappear with strangers? Leave me to face your father alone?"
He steps back from my touch, and that rejection hurts more than I expected. More than it should.
"I lied to palace security for you. I covered for your absence, made up stories. And I still got dragged before the Alpha King at four in the morning to explain why his daughter wasn't in her chambers."
The words land like blows, each one deserved. I want to explain—that I panicked, that I saw him coming and knew my freedom was ending, that alcohol had stripped away every rational thought.
But the excuses taste hollow even before they reach my tongue.
"I'm sorry," I whisper again, because it's all I have. "I'm so sorry."
Before he can respond, footsteps echo down the corridor. A house attendant appears, her face carefully blank in the way all palace staff have perfected.
But her eyes—they flick over my disheveled state, my bare feet, my obvious guilt, and I see the judgment she's too professional to voice.
"Your Highness." Her tone is perfectly neutral. "His Majesty requests your presence. Immediately."
I look back at Dominic, but his expression has shuttered closed, the anger retreating behind a wall of professional distance.
He won't follow me to this meeting, he's not permitted in private family matters, but I feel his worried gaze burning into my back as I force my legs to move.
The walk to my father's study feels endless.
Each step echoes against the marble floors, counting down to my execution. The palace that has always felt like a gilded cage now feels like a tomb, its grand hallways pressing in on me from all sides.
Servants avert their eyes as I pass, and I know word has already spread.
The wolfless princess, caught sneaking home at dawn. Another mark in the ledger of my failures.
When I reach my father's study, the door stands open like a mouth waiting to swallow me whole.He stands at the window, his silhouette rigid against the morning light.
He doesn't turn when I enter. Doesn't acknowledge my presence at all.
The silence stretches between us, thick and suffocating, filling every corner of the room until I want to scream just to shatter it.
I count my heartbeats instead. One. Ten. Twenty.
Each one louder than the last.
When he finally faces me, my breath catches in my throat. His wolf glows behind his eyes—ice-white, the color I've only seen a handful of times in my life.
The color of absolute rage. His nostrils flare as he catches my scent, and his expression twists with something that looks almost like disgust.
"You stupid girl."
His voice is quiet. Controlled. And that's worse than shouting—I know how to weather his storms, but this cold precision cuts deeper than any raised voice could.
"You have responsibilities."
He moves toward me with the predatory grace that's always marked him as Alpha King.
"This pack depends on you. The Aldridge bloodline, twelve generations of power, rests on your shoulders. Do you understand that? Do you have any concept of what that means?"
I open my mouth to respond, but he's not finished.
"You are wolfless." The word drips with barely concealed contempt. "A humiliation I have worked to minimize for years. I have protected you from the whispers, shielded you from the worst of the judgment, and this is how you repay me?"
He stops inches away, towering over me as his nostrils flare again.
"Now you return to my house reeking of strange wolves… Do you have any idea what you've done?"
The tears burn behind my eyes, but I refuse to let them fall. Not here. Not in front of him.
I force myself to meet his gaze, to find some fragment of defiance beneath the shame.
"What about what I want?" The words scrape past the tightness in my throat. "Have you ever once asked what I want?"
His laugh is hollow, cruel, nothing like the rare warmth I remember from childhood.
"What you want? You want to destroy this bloodline for one night of freedom? You want to throw away everything I've built because you felt like playing the whore?"
The word lands like a physical blow. I flinch, actually flinch, and hate myself for it. But I hold my ground even as tears finally escape down my cheeks.
His expression hardens into something final. Something irreversible.
"Tomorrow, four Alphas arrive. Princes from allied packs—powerful men who are willing to take you as a mate despite… This."
He gestures at me, at the wreckage of his daughter standing before him, with undisguised disgust.
"Your missing wolf. Your reckless behavior. Your utter failure to be what this pack needs."
"Tomorrow?" My voice breaks on the word.
"You have one month to choose one of them as your mate. One month to secure an alliance that will protect this pack when I'm gone."
He turns back to the window, dismissing me like I'm nothing. Like I'm already gone.
The words don't feel real. They echo in my skull, hollow and incomprehensible. "And if I refuse?"
My father's reflection meets my eyes in the glass. Cold. Absolute. Without a trace of the man who once called me his little moonbeam.
"Then you're no longer my daughter. You can find yourself a new pack. A new name. A new life outside these walls."
I stand frozen, waiting for him to take it back. To show some crack in the ice, some hint of the father who once carried me on his shoulders and told me I'd grow up to be the strongest Alpha the pack had ever seen.
But his silhouette remains rigid. Unyielding. A stranger wearing my father's face.
I walk out on numb legs.
One month. Four Alphas. And a choice that isn't a choice at all.