Chapter 1

Carya’s POV

“He’s your Alpha now. Show some respect.”

My mother’s soft, sickeningly satisfied voice still echoed inside my skull as I stood outside the main tent. My boots sank deep into the freezing snow.

Lilith had spoken those words with the same quiet, submissive smile she wore when she knelt and bared her throat to the man who was now our Alpha.

Rein.

My father bled out on the border three winters ago. Yet tonight, under the light of the full moon, she willingly bound herself to the new Alpha.

And somehow, I was expected to call him family.

I should have stayed with the lower ranks. Packed into the supply wagons like a dutiful, grieving daughter.

Instead, I hovered in the shadows of his tent, entirely unable to look away.

The heavy cowhide flap hung slightly ajar, letting a narrow blade of firelight slice through the dark. Inside, my mother was on her knees across a thick pile of wolf pelts, her white silk shift shoved roughly up to her waist.

Rein was positioned behind her—massive, bare, and ruthless. The old claw scars raking across his broad back flexed with every powerful thrust.

He didn’t speak. Only low, guttural grunts left his throat—the primal sound of a dominant male claiming what belonged to him.

Her broken, breathless moans spilled into the night, mingling with the heavy slap of skin and the violent creak of the wooden bedframe.

Heat detonated low in my belly. My face burned.

Between my thighs, a shameful, slick heat pulsed in time with his brutal thrusts. My wetness soaked through the thin fabric of my panties in seconds.

I should have turned away.

I didn’t.

I watched the way his large, scarred hands bruised her hips, pinning her in place. The way the thick muscles in his thighs flexed. The way those predatory amber eyes stayed locked on the exact point where their bodies joined, as if he were memorizing the sight of his conquest.

My own body betrayed me completely. My nipples tightened into hard peaks against the cold. I pressed my thighs together, uselessly trying to ease the sudden, agonizing ache of emptiness.

Disgust and raw hunger twisted inside me so tightly I could no longer tell them apart.

Stumbling back from the tent, I turned and ran into the blizzard.

At the far edge of the camp sat the abandoned supply wagon my father once used on his campaigns. The wood was warped, the canvas half-rotted.

I climbed inside, dragged the musty old pelts over myself, and curled into a tight ball.

My fingers closed around the broken hilt of his saber—the only piece of him I had left. The metal was so cold it burned.

“You handed everything he built to the new Alpha before his memory even faded,” I whispered against the icy steel. “You knelt for him while Father’s blood was practically still wet in the snow.”

Outside, the wet, rhythmic sounds of their mating continued, carried on the cruel wind.

Desperate, I shoved my hand beneath my skirt.

My fingers slipped through the slick heat already coating my inner thighs. I bit the inside of my cheek hard enough to taste iron.

It didn’t stop the images from flashing behind my eyelids.

Rein’s amber eyes. Those scarred, powerful hands. The low, animalistic growl he made when he drove deep inside her.

I imagined those eyes turning on me instead. I imagined those rough hands spreading me open exactly the way he had spread my mother.

The thought should have made me vomit.

Instead, it dragged a broken, desperate whimper from my throat.

I rubbed myself harder, faster, ruthlessly chasing the sharp edge of release while the blizzard screamed outside—and while Rein claimed my mother only a hundred paces away.

When the orgasm finally hit, it was violent. Guilt, hatred, and raw, shameful need crashed together until my entire body seized and arched.

I curled tighter around the broken hilt, pressing my sweaty forehead to the freezing metal, and let the aftershocks ripple through me.

Slowly, a cruel, twisted little smile touched my lips.

“Enjoy him tonight, Mother,” I breathed into the suffocating dark. “Because starting tomorrow, I’m going to make sure I'm the only one he ever remembers.”