Chapter 2

Before dawn had even broken, rough hands were dragging me off my bed.

"Leah. Alpha Rowan's orders—there's a Royal Banquet at the Royal Palace today. You're to attend as the Miss Seraphina."

The servant's grip was steel. It bruised.

I held down the discomfort rising from yesterday's injuries and let them paint my face.

Seraphina was Rowan's treasured childhood sweetheart—delicate and easily overwhelmed.

She couldn't endure the pressures of a Royal Banquet.

Rowan had long used me as her stand-in—we were close enough in build that behind a veil, no one looked twice.

In the carriage, Rowan sat with his eyes closed and gave me nothing—not a look, not a word.

Only when we reached the royal palace's gate did he speak, cold and precise.

"Alaric will be there. Keep your head down and your mouth shut."

"If you let him see through the deception, you can start preparing a grave for your father."

At the mention of my father, my body went rigid.

Father had been dead in prison for half a month—Rowan knew it, yet still used it to threaten me.

I couldn't tell him the truth.

Caden still needed medicine. The fiction had to hold.

"Yes," I said quietly.

The royal banquet was a sea of wine and conversation.

I sat beside Rowan, eyes downcast, peeling grapes from the plate.

A burning gaze never left my skin.

I didn't need to look up to know whose it was.

Lycan Prince Alaric sat at the hall's head—black robe, dark hair, an untouchable ferocity that his handsome did nothing to soften.

He turned his goblet in slow circles.

His eyes tracked every inch of me, without shame and without apology.

He raised the goblet toward Rowan in a languid toast, but his gaze dragged across my body like a slow deliberate touch.

"Alpha Rowan has excellent taste," he said, faintly amused. "Your female companion may be fragile—but this figure..."

"I feel as though I've encountered it before. Quite... memorable."

Rowan's jaw turned to iron. He raised his cup and drank anyway, smiling through the humiliation.

Under the table, his fingers drove a brutal pinch into my thigh.

The pain jolted through me; my hand jerked and the grapes scattered to the floor.

"Useless," Rowan hissed under his breath.

Three rounds of drink in, Lycan Prince Alaric rose from his seat.

When he passed our table, his steps slowed almost imperceptibly.

A jade pendant slipped from his sleeve—smooth, warm-toned, carved with a wolf sigil—and dropped precisely at my feet.

Rare jade. Worth a year of medicine.

The surrounding guests were all engaged in pleasantries, no one paying attention.

I bent without thinking.

The moment my fingertips touched the pendant, it was still warm from his skin.

Alaric hadn't moved on.

His fingers lifted my chin, his thumb traced ambiguously across the corner of my lips.

"These hands know exactly how to please a man."

"Keep this as your reward. Take it back and practice well."

Rowan's grip on his goblet shattered the stem. Wine bled down his wrist.

I kept my eyes down and said nothing.

That jade could cover three years of Caden's medicine.

On the ride back, I tucked the pendant into my sleeve with care.

"Hand it over."

Rowan's voice cracked the silence.

I stilled. I had no choice. I placed it in his open palm.

Rowan held the jade pendant, then let out a cold laugh.

"A jade pendant? Alaric's being generous."

He glanced at me sideways.

"You think this is a declaration? It's how he collects females. A trick. You're naive enough to treasure it."

He flicked his wrist.

The pendant arced through the open carriage window and vanished into the dark drainage channel below the road.

"No—that was—"

I lurched for the window before I could stop myself, and Rowan caught me, yanking me back against his chest.

"Shut up! It's just a broken stone. Now it's in the gutter where it belongs."

I pressed against the window frame, staring at the dark below.

Cold flooded from my feet straight up through my skull.

That wasn't jade.

That was Caden's medicine.

That was Caden's last thread—the rope he was white-knuckling at death's door.

Rowan watched my devastation with something that looked like satisfaction.

"Remember what you are," he said quietly. "you're just a substitute."

"Alaric wants Seraphina—the Pack Princess, the Alliance contract. Not you, Leah."