Chapter 1 Chapter 1 The Shadow of the True Mate

Sylvia's POV

"Get out of the way! Don't interrupt our Alpha's ceremony!" I was shoved to the ground by a snarling she-wolf, her eyes alight with pride not earned but borrowed.

The scent hit me first-a cloying floral note tangled with Zane Thorne's overpowering Alpha musk. When I saw him guide her into the Great Hall for his birth moon celebration, the wolf inside my chest let out a whimper of pure defeat. I knew. With the crushing weight of a bond rejected, I had lost.

I retreated to the shadows, the raucous howls and guttural laughter of the Pack grating like sandpaper on raw nerves. The glow of my phone screen was harsh. Mother's messages were brutal in their simplicity:

"Daughter. He parades his mate before the Pack. The wager is lost."

"Three years. Zane Thorne's wolf refused yours. Return now. Your duty as Frostfang Pack heir cannot wait."

Duty. Heir. The words felt like iron shackles snapping shut. My gaze cut through the crowd to where Zane stood, his arm locked possessively around a slender figure. Chloe Vale. The whispered legend of his True Mate, the Luna lost and mourned, the ghost whose shadow I'd worn for three years.

This was my first glimpse of the woman who had unknowingly held my future hostage. Chloe looked. breakable. Ethereal. Her submission was a tangible force, a quiet power that made the surrounding wolfs seem brash.

So this is what he craved. My tongue traced my teeth, tasting the bitter ash of failure.

Four years ago, at a gathering of young Alphas and high-ranking females, a brash she-wolf from the Stoneclaw Pack had stalked up to Zane. She'd offered herself as a mate, a political alliance wrapped in fire.

Alpha Zane, leaning against the obsidian hearth, had taken a slow drag from his cigarette, his usually warm amber eyes turning cold. That lazy, cruel smirk touched his lips. "Sorry, princess," he'd drawled, smoke coiling. "My wolf prefers 'em. softer. Simpler. Less like a rival Alpha, more like.omega."

Hidden in the shadows, I'd felt my own wolf stir with treacherous hope. I'd loved him silently for two years, drawn to his raw power, the magnetism of his bloodline. But Mother, Astra Frost, the indomitable Alpha of Frostfang, had forbidden it. The enmity between our Packs ran deep, and she viewed the concept of True Mates with icy contempt, a fatal weakness.

Hearing his preference, I'd seen a sliver of light. I'd made the wager: If I could make Zane Thorne's wolf choose me, bind him as my mate, she would bless the union. She'd agreed, doubtless certain I'd fail.

To win, I'd buried Sylvia Frost. Overnight, the Frostfang pack's heir vanished. In her place stood a meek, ostensibly low-born omega, seemingly adrift, unconnected. I smothered my Alpha-born aura, masked my strength, played the vulnerable, gentle creature Zane claimed to want. I wove myself into the fabric of his territory, a silent, unthreatening shadow.

He noticed eventually. One night, after a wild hunt under the gibbous moon, Zane found me waiting. His gaze, blurred with drink, swept over my carefully constructed docility, a spark of lazy interest kindling in his wolf-gold eyes. "Always lurking, little wolf?" His voice was a low rumble that vibrated in my bones. "Got a taste for the real thing?"

I'd nodded, keeping my eyes downcast, my posture submissive.

A dark chuckle. "Wanna see where that hunger leads? Stick close. Be my.girlfriend." He didn't offer the mate bond. Not then. Not ever truly. But it was a foothold.

Three years. Three years of pouring my soul into this charade. I learned human cooking to tend to him, nursed him through wounds ripped open in border skirmishes, endured whispers that I was a love-struck fool.

He'd joked, rough affection colouring his tone, "Gotta look after my little shadow, yeah?" He'd talked of providing, a clear sign an Alpha was claiming responsibility.

The lie festered inside me. The wager felt like a betrayal of the sacred trust a true mate bond should be. After months of wrestling with guilt, my wolf howling for honesty and the claiming bite it craved, I'd resolved to tell him everything on his birth.

Then Chloe Vale walked back into his life.

The energy in the Great Hall shifted the instant she appeared. A hush fell. A Beta male near me, one with a tongue like a serrated knife, elbowed his companion, voice dripping with malice.

"Well, well. the real Luna returns. Guess someone's spot warming the Alpha's fur just got frosty." He shot me a mocking glance. "All that groveling for a taste of power, and the true mate bond snaps shut. Pathetic."

"Hush now," Chloe's voice was soft as falling snow, yet it silenced him. She turned those huge, limpid eyes towards me, swimming in manufactured sorrow. "I'm so terribly sorry. Sylvia, was it? Zane and I. fate tore us apart. I never dreamed his grief, his wolf's loneliness, would drive him to. seek comfort in an echo." Her gaze swept over my deliberately plain attire, lingering. "It was cruel of him to use you as a. substitute. Unworthy of an Alpha. But," she added, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper laced with pity, "you must have gained so much, being near an Alpha like Zane. Surely it wasn't a total waste?"

An omega should be grateful for table scraps from an Alpha, even as a stand-in for his True Mate. The insult to my disguise was sharp, but the deeper insult to my blood ignited a glacial fury.

Zane's attention finally landed on me fully. Tonight, I wore crimson.The wide-eyed innocence was gone.

"Omegas should be yielding."His voice, when it came, was the dismissive command of an Alpha ending an inconvenience. "Chloe's back. What we had. served its purpose. It's done." He pulled a thick envelope from his jacket and tossed it onto the low table before me. "For your time. Consider it settled."

One hundred thousand dollars. Coin for a favored servant, payment for services rendered, not recompense for three years offered to a potential mate. He dismissed my devotion, my fragile hope, with the casual brutality of swatting a fly. The sheer, icy finality of it, the reduction of us to a transaction, slammed into me. The irony tasted like poison.

Three years! Three years he hadn't claimed me, hadn't sealed the bond. He'd kept his distance, saving himself for his True Mate, and I, the deluded fool, had mistaken his restraint for a slow-burning path to the claiming moon.

A laugh, sharp and cold as shattering ice, escaped me. It cut through the murmurs. The fragile dam holding back my true nature shattered."Keep your blood money, Zane Thorne," I said, my voice low, clear, and stripped of every shred of meekness."Honestly? I'm bored. Your performance on the bed was. mediocre. Lacked the endurance one expects from a true Alpha." I picked up the half-full goblet of deep crimson Pack vintage beside me. With a flick of my wrist, the dark liquid flew, hitting Zane square in the face, dripping like gore from his shocked features onto his fine tunic.

The silence was absolute,I calmly picked up a linen napkin, wiping my fingers with deliberate slowness. A slow, dangerous smile curved my lips. "That," I declared, the words ringing with icy finality, "was for three years wasted on a wolf too blind to see the storm standing before him."

Without a backward glance, ignoring the outraged growls building and the stunned disbelief radiating from the Pack, I turned.I turned and walked out, the heavy doors groaning behind me. I didn't look back.

The game was over. The mask was off. Sylvia Frost was going home.

Author's POV

Behind Sylvia, the silence exploded.

"By the Moon's tears! Did she just-?"

"Insolent whelp! She desecrated the Alpha's honor!"

"She refused a hundred thousand! What life does that mongrel think awaits her now?"

Zane stood rigid, wiping the wine from his eyes, fury and humiliation warring on his face. His Alpha aura flared, hot and suffocating, momentarily quelling the outcry but not the undercurrent of scandalized whispers. "Let the omega run," he snarled, the words bitten off. "If it spares Chloe her nuisance, good riddance. She's nothing. Packless. We'll never scent her kind again." He dismissed Sylvia utterly.

Where could she possibly go?, his expression seemed to sneer. No Pack, no powerful kin. She'd crawl back or die alone.

But Sylvia didn't flinch. His words chased her into the night-but she didn't look back.

Zane Thorne thought he'd seen the last of her. He hadn't. Not by a long shot.