After My Mate Betrayed Me, The Lycan Prince Stepped In

I had been waiting for this moment my entire life.

Not in the vague, hopeful way that most she-wolves wait — I mean I had been counting. Marking time against it. Every birthday that passed without my wolf stirring, every Pack Run where I stood at the edge of the tree line in human form while the others shifted and disappeared into the dark, every careful smile I held in place when someone asked, with that particular brand of Silverfang politeness that is really just cruelty wearing good manners — "Still nothing, Sabrina?"

Still nothing.

Until tonight.

The Come of Age Ceremony was held in the Silverfang great hall, the same way it had been held for every generation before mine. Candles everywhere. The Alpha's dais draped in silver and deep green. Pack members pressed three rows deep along the walls, their faces warm and expectant, because a Come of Age Ceremony is the kind of event that makes everyone feel like something sacred is about to happen.

For most of them, it already had. Years ago.

I stood in the center of the hall in a white dress my stepmother had chosen, and I kept my breathing even, and I did not let myself hope too hard. I had learned not to. Hope, when it goes unanswered long enough, starts to feel like a wound you keep reopening.

And then it hit me.

Warm. Electric. Like the first real breath after being underwater too long. A scent I had never encountered before but recognized instantly, the way you recognize a word in a language you were born knowing — cedar and something bright, something that made the back of my throat ache with wanting.

My wolf stirred.

Not a nudge. Not a whisper. She came up like a tide, sudden and enormous, and the word she gave me was one word, repeated, insistent:

*Him.*

I turned.

Tyler Montgomery was standing twenty feet away, and he was already looking at me.

The pack erupted. I heard it distantly — the gasps, the laughter, someone crying, Conrad Montgomery's booming voice saying something about destiny — but all of it was far away, because Tyler was crossing the room toward me with that slow, certain smile, the one I had known since we were children, and the scent was getting stronger with every step he took, and I felt something I had not felt in years.

I exhaled.

For the first time in years, I just exhaled.

---

The weeks between the Come of Age Ceremony and the Mate Ceremony were supposed to be the happiest of my life. And they were, mostly. They were also the weeks I started paying attention to things I had been choosing not to see.

The autumn Pack Banquet was the first time I understood that Tyler and I had different definitions of the word *ours*.

He brought her as a guest. Dahlia Palmer, from the Greywood Pack — low-ranking, soft-voiced, with wide eyes that moved