Aldous

Something isn't right, and it's not just my dying pack members. Mark had only been a little sick the day before, so the illness accelerating today was a shock.

Were we too late with the ritual? Did it not work? What else can we do?

If only the Delacroix's hadn't been so secretive...but it's not just their fault. I've been so focused on my own life and my own world. Focused on my family and my future and what I wanted for me.

I could have investigated, made sure that the Delacroix's weren't hiding anything. It should have crossed somebody's mind at some point that a pack that would generationally murder their own alpha-born daughters might be doing some shady things.

But we'd just become complacent, I suppose. I'd become complacent. Comfortable.

Then all of this happened so quickly, wolves getting sick and dying...and finding out that there was a Delacroix daughter. She's twenty years younger than me, a few years past adulthood, which is likely what triggered the curse to come out full force in the first place.

I was surprised to find her an omega, the first daughter the Delacroix's didn't slaughter at birth. Why had they let her live? Did they want an omega to abuse before shipping her off to break the curse?

But they had to have known if they kept her alive that would have started making the packs sick...they had to have known that and planned ahead, so why did they wait so long to reveal Lydia's existence?

So much of this whole process makes no sense to me.

But that doesn't matter now. What matters is making sure my pack will survive. And that includes my new wife.

All of this, born out of desperation. Instead of what should have been a beautiful long courtship. Lydia deserves so much more than this.

She deserves the world.

After organizing a sending ritual for Mark, I leave the cabin to find Lydia gone, and that feeling of wrongness grows. In my panic, I hadn't thought to instruct her of where to go—I'm not used to having a mate yet, having to worry about someone new that wouldn't automatically know what to do.

I assume she's gone back to my house, which would make the most sense. But she's feeling...the bond feels strange. It's a mixture of wistful and relieved and...fear?

And it's growing fainter.

"My Lord, a woman is here to see you," Astra announces, approaching from the direction of the center of town.

The wrongness intensifies, it's reaching a fever pitch, because my mate feels farther away from me somehow, and afraid, and...

Astra steps aside, revealing a young woman with long dark hair and pale skin. Even with the sallowness of her cheeks and the rings around her eyes, I can tell she's related to the Delacroix pack. She has Marla's cheekbones and Cedric's steely eyes.

"My Lord," she says, her voice raspy and exhausted, "I am Lydia Delacroix. My parents deceived you, and it has cost us all."

Her words don't register for a moment, because they make no sense. I met Lydia Delacroix yesterday. I mated with her, married her, took her as my own and gave myself to her. I would know if she were lying to me.

Wouldn't I?

"That's impossible," I manage to whisper.

"My parents didn't want to give me up, so they forced the omega of our pack to pretend to be me." She blinks slowly, lazily, as if she were underwater. "But it didn't work, and our wolves are dying faster than before. We've lost four overnight and three more are so sick—" Her words choke off on a sob, and despite the feud between the packs, Astra steps forward to embrace her.

I stare at them both, the elder from my pack, apparently the only daughter of the Delacroix's in her arms.

Astra catches my gaze, and she nods. The old woman has always had a nose for truths.

My wolf thrashes free, rage exploding from every nerve in my body, and I let the shift happen without mercy. I can't contain these emotions—the woman I'd taken as my mate, the woman I'd made love to, the woman who had held me as I cried over my father's corpse...she's an impostor.

Screams echo in the distance behind me, and I'm running. My wolf has her scent, and another infuriatingly male scent. I can feel her despair, her fear, her swirls of dread, and does she feel those out of guilt? Because she knows she's been caught?

How did any of them think this would work? And, what, I'm supposed to just start again with the real Lydia like I don't already have a mate?

A mate who is a lie. A mate who betrayed me.

She'd been forced, Lydia said. She was the omega of their pack and they'd forced her to do this.

But she still could have told me.

Would Mark have lived if it had been the real Lydia? Would my father?

My heart twists into knots and I don't know what to think, what to feel. My paws pound the forest floor as I race to find her.

Her scent is stronger now, but something is happening. All of her emotions, that twisted toil, have turned to one singular essence—desperation. It's as if...she's fighting for her life.

I somehow push even harder, even faster, and then, there's my mate, on the ground, with hands around her throat.

This thing, because no man could ever lay hands on my mate in such a way, no wolf could do so, snarls and grips at her neck as she chokes for air.

I hit him like a ton of bricks, and her gasps—she's alive she's alive—give me strength as I tear into his flesh. Warm crimson splatters against my fur, and his screams are a euphony. He can't even fight back before his body is in tatters and he's gargling on his own blood before he falls silent and limp.

Only then do I slowly turn to take her in, my mate, my wolf, my woman. She's terrified, and the ring of bruises around her throat makes me want to rip the corpse behind me even more.

But he's been dealt with.

Now, I have to deal with this woman who deceived me in the worst way possible.