Alina's POV
The knife under my wedding dress feels like it weighs a thousand pounds.
My hands shake as I grip the bathroom sink, and I hate myself for it. Hands do not shake when you are about to marry the man who murdered your entire family. Hands do not shake when you have planned this moment for five years straight.
But mine will not stop.
I look at the girl in the mirror and she looks back like a stranger. The girl I see is soft. Forgettable. The kind of omega that packs forget exist the moment she leaves the room. She has pale skin and brown hair styled plain. Her eyes are grey but not striking, not memorable. The wedding dress is white and simple. Nothing about her screams danger or power.
Nothing about her screams the truth.
The real me is buried so deep that sometimes I forget she exists at all.
A memory hits me without warning. I am eighteen years old, standing in our pack hall. My father, the Alpha of Moonvale, is showing me a hidden tunnel behind the stone walls. His hands are shaking worse than mine are now, and I remember asking him why.
"So you will know the way," he said. His voice was steady but his eyes were afraid. "If anything happens, you run through here and you do not stop. You understand me, Alina? You run and you survive."
I told him nothing would happen. Moonvale was strong. We were safe.
I was so stupid.
Three weeks later, wolves were screaming outside while I hid in that tunnel. Kael Draven's wolves. The Alpha with the cold eyes and the merciless reputation. The monster who had decided my pack did not deserve to exist.
I heard my mother cry out first. Then my father's voice as he tried to protect her. Then nothing. Just the sound of my own breathing and the sound of my heart breaking in the dark.
Someone knocks on the bathroom door and I jump hard enough to pull a muscle.
"Luna candidate, the ceremony begins in ten minutes," a servant calls through. Not a voice I recognize. Just another person here to watch me marry my family's killer.
"Coming," I answer back. My voice sounds perfect. Soft. Meek. Everything an omega bride should sound like. Years of practice make it easy now. The person on the other side of the door will believe I am nervous because weddings make girls nervous. They will not know I am nervous because I am about to walk into a room with the man whose death I have fantasized about for five years.
I pull the knife out from under the dress and hide it in the small bag I have already prepared. It will be gone before anyone notices. Everything I need is hidden in places Kael Draven will never think to look.
The dress costs too much money. Uncle Thomas used half his savings to buy it from the city, said it had to look expensive so the Council would believe I was worth marrying into their political arrangement. The makeup is heavy on my face, covering the girl I used to be. The suppressants I swallow every morning with breakfast are slowly killing me from the inside, but they keep my scent masked. Kael will never recognize the daughter of the Alpha he slaughtered. I will just be another nothing omega, another piece of a political deal he probably already forgot about.
Perfect.
I turn from the mirror and walk to the window. The fortress below is chaos. Servants rushing everywhere. Wolves in formal clothes standing in groups and talking. My uncle Thomas is somewhere down there, probably sick with worry. He begged me not to do this. Two months ago, when I told him my plan, he actually got on his knees.
"Alina, please." His voice had broken. "You are my only family left. If you go there and something happens to you, I have nothing."
"Nothing is what we already have," I told him. "You hid me for five years like I was broken. Like I was something to be ashamed of. But I am Moonvale. And I am not broken. I am finally going to be what Kael Draven deserves."
He knew better than to fight after that. Uncle Thomas knows revenge when he sees it, because he wanted it too. He just got tired of carrying it around.
I will not get tired.
Another memory pushes in and I let it. I need to feel it now, need to remember why I am here. I am in the ruins of what used to be my home. Everything is ash and bone and silence. I am holding my mother's ring because her body is too burned to remove it any other way. My father is somewhere under the rubble. I am eighteen years old and I am alone and I am screaming and screaming and screaming but no one hears because there is no one left to hear.
When the Council announced they were forcing Kael into a political marriage, it felt like the world tilted. It felt like someone handed me a loaded weapon and said here, take your revenge. All you have to do is walk into his fortress and smile.
Smile.
I have practiced my smile in every mirror for months. It is sad and uncertain. It makes men want to protect me. It makes women underestimate me. It is perfect.
There is another knock, harder this time. I am out of time.
I look at myself one last time in the mirror. The girl staring back is the enemy of everything I am supposed to be. She is a lie made flesh. She is a weapon dressed in white.
She is going to destroy an Alpha.
"I promise you," I whisper to the reflection. To my parents. To the memory of everyone Moonvale lost. "I will make him pay."
The walk to the ceremony feels like walking to my own death instead of to his wedding. The hallway is long and cold and filled with guards who nod respectfully as I pass. None of them see me. None of them wonder. I am just the bride, just another pawn the Council moved across the board.
I reach the ceremony hall and my breath catches.
He is waiting at the altar.
Kael Draven is taller than I remembered. Colder. His shoulders are broad and his hands are large and I know from experience that those hands are strong enough to rip a wolf apart. His eyes are black, like looking into nothing. There is no warmth in him. There is barely anything human in him at all.
He is the most beautiful thing I have ever hated.
He does not look at me as I walk down the aisle. He looks right through me like I do not exist. The Council member leading the ceremony begins speaking but I do not hear the words. All I hear is the sound of my own heartbeat and the sound of Kael not caring that I am here.
Good.
But then something happens that I do not expect.
When I reach the altar, Kael finally looks at me. His eyes meet mine for just a second, and in that second, I see something that stops my breath. I see recognition. I see memory. I see something in his eyes that looks almost like regret.
Then he looks away.
But in that one second, I understand something terrible. Kael Draven is not the simple monster I thought he was. He is complicated. He is haunted.
And somehow, that makes this so much worse.
"Do you take this male to be your bonded mate?" the Council member asks me.
I look at Kael Draven, at the monster who destroyed my world, at the man who just looked at me like he was sorry for something.
"I do," I say quietly.
And I will destroy him.