Chapter 1

Ten years ago, I saved Ethan in the Forbidden Forest. He looked at me and said, "You're the only one for me. When I grow up, I'm going to marry you!"

I thought it was just a kid's joke and never took it to heart.

Ten years later, he became the Alpha of the Silvermoon Pack.

On the day of my Mate Ceremony, he stormed in with his enforcers, crippled my fiancé, and dragged me away by force.

"I told you I'd marry you. I'm the only mate you'll ever have."

He locked me away in his private estate, forbidding any other male from coming near me.

Yet, I never let him mark me, simply because I didn't love him.

Humiliated and furious, Ethan found an Omega mistress who looked almost identical to me. Every single day, he sent me videos of them in bed together.

I still didn't care.

Until his mistress broke into the estate, tortured me to death, and dragged my lifeless body right in front of Ethan.

"Babe, I caught some pathetic bitch trying to copy me. I already took care of her for you."

Alpha Ethan was madly, obsessively in love with me.

He claimed that from the moment I saved him as a boy, his inner wolf recognized me as his Fated Mate.

To win my heart, he kept me locked away for three years, trying every trick in the book to please me. But I didn't love him at all, and I would never accept him.

Recently, though, he found a she-wolf who looked shockingly like me.

They had been flaunting their fling for months.

Just to spite me, Ethan constantly bombarded my phone with intimate videos of them.

I was sitting in the courtyard watching one of those clips when loud, obnoxious voices shattered the silence outside.

"Ethan slips away here every few days. Today, I'm finally going to see what kind of treasure he's hiding in this place!"

"Wait, Catherine, didn't the Alpha strictly forbid anyone from stepping foot on this estate?"

"Yeah, Catherine, I heard someone once sneaked a glance inside, and the Alpha broke all their limbs and gouged their eyes out. Sneaking in behind his back... isn't that a bad idea?"

"What's there to be afraid of? Ethan worships the ground I walk on. He'd never blame me."

Listening to the chatter outside, my stomach dropped.

I knew better than anyone just how unhinged Ethan could be.

As the Alpha of the Silvermoon Pack, his possessiveness was downright psychotic. He treated me like his personal prize, locking me inside this private sanctuary.

Once, an intruder sneaked in out of curiosity and caught a glimpse of me.

Ethan personally broke his arms and legs, gouged out his eyes, and made him disappear from the pack entirely by the next morning.

At first, he was only jealous of other males. But later, he noticed I spoke more softly to the maids than I ever did to him.

In a fit of rage, he fired every single servant on the estate.

He preferred cooking and delivering my meals three times a day himself rather than letting anyone else lock eyes with me.

If those people barged in, they were practically digging their own graves.

I stood up, intending to warn them to turn back before it was too late.

But the second I pulled open the front door, a face that looked ninety percent like mine filled my vision.

Before I could get a single word out, she slapped me hard across the face.

"Where did a cheap whore like you come from? Getting plastic surgery to steal my face and hiding in Ethan's house—are you actually trying to steal my Alpha?"

The sudden blow left my cheek burning with sharp, stinging pain.

"You pathetic fake, do you have any idea where you are? How dare you trespass here?"

"Copying Catherine's face just to seduce Alpha Ethan. You really have no shame, do you?"

It took me a second to realize that the girl standing before me was Ethan's lookalike mistress—Catherine.

Because of Ethan's suffocating control, I had always treated him like a stranger.

Even after he forced me through a Mate Ceremony, I remained completely numb toward him. I never let him touch me. Not once.

Maybe out of pure frustration, or maybe just to fill the void, he had searched far and wide for someone who resembled me.

And Catherine was the closest match he could find.

Right now, Catherine was glaring at me, her eyes practically spitting fire.

"You little bitch. You knew Ethan couldn't get enough of me, so you altered your face to look like mine, hoping you could replace me, didn't you?"

She was vile and arrogant, but knowing she was completely in the dark about the truth, I decided not to hold the slap against her.

Instead, I tried to warn her calmly:

"This isn't a place you're allowed to be. This is the private sanctuary of the Silvermoon Pack's Alpha. You need to leave right now before Ethan gets here, or nobody will be able to save you."