Hazel Pinecrest was supposed to be marrying the man she hated most in the world.
Unfortunately, he looked unfairly good in a black suit.
She hadn’t meant to notice.
She’d spent the walk down the aisle rehearsing every reason she despised Aldrien Black, and somewhere between the third pew and the altar her brain had betrayed her by cataloging his shoulders instead.
The sharp line of his jaw.
The dark, unreadable eyes that never seemed to blink at the wrong moment.
She hated that her body could appreciate any of it while the rest of her wanted to set the altar on fire.
He caught her staring before she could stop herself.
His mouth curved, faint and knowing, and she looked away so fast her veil nearly caught on her shoulder.
Of all the men in the world, her father had chosen the one whose face made her want to commit murder and admire his bone structure in the same breath.
The ceremony was enormous, the kind of spectacle two rival packs staged when they wanted the whole territory watching.
Pinecrests on one side, Blacks on the other, generations of bad blood folded into polite rows of chairs.
Hazel could hear the whispers even over the string quartet.
Some of it was sympathy, soft and pitying, aimed at her like she was a lamb being walked somewhere she wouldn’t walk back from.
Some of it was aimed at Aldrien, admiring, like he’d already won something.
She hated that most of all.
She didn’t want to be folded into the Black pack like a footnote in their history.
She didn’t want to spend the rest of her life being introduced as Aldrien’s wife.
And she certainly didn’t want him thinking, even for a second, that he’d gotten the better end of this arrangement.
The priest began the vows, and they said all the right words in all the wrong tones.
“Do you accept Aldrien Black as your husband?” the priest asked, and Hazel looked straight into Aldrien’s eyes when she answered.
“I do.”
His eyebrow lifted, just barely, like he could hear exactly how much it cost her to say it.
“And do you accept Hazel Pinecrest as your wife?”
Aldrien didn’t look away from her either.
“I do,” he said, calm, almost too calm, like the words weren’t costing him anything at all.
Liar, she thought.
Before the final ritual, an attendant ushered them into a private chamber off the main hall, ostensibly so they could compose themselves.
The moment the door shut behind them, Hazel dropped every trace of the demure bride she’d been performing for an audience of three hundred.
“Let’s get one thing clear,” she said.
“This marriage changes absolutely nothing between us.”
Aldrien peeled off his gloves, unhurried, like her ultimatum was mildly entertaining.
“I wasn’t planning on changing anything.”
“Good.”
“Although you should know something.”
“What.”
He stepped closer, close enough that she had to tip her chin up to keep glaring at him properly.
“You’re my wife now.”
Her stomach did something traitorous and immediate.
She buried it under irritation before it could show on her face.
“And you’re my husband. Try not to sound so thrilled about it.”
“I’m not pleased,” he said, that infuriating half smile back again.
“I’m amused.”
She wanted to slap him.
Instead she closed the last of the distance between them, refusing to be the one who backed down first.
Their faces were inches apart, and neither of them moved.
“You still glare at me the same way you did when we were sixteen,” he said, quieter now.
That stopped her cold.
She hadn’t expected him to remember anything from before the hatred calcified, before their fathers turned them into political chess pieces.
It meant there was a version of this that went back further than either of them usually admitted.
“You were annoying at sixteen too,” she said.
“And yet you remember.”
She turned and walked out before he could see what that had done to her.
They returned to the main hall for the final part of the ceremony, which Hazel had always been told was mostly symbolic.
A joining of hands, a small cut on each palm, a few drops of blood into a ceremonial bowl, their wolves called forward to witness.
An old vow binding two bloodlines that had spent a hundred years trying to destroy each other.
The moonstone altar sat at the center of the hall, ancient and pale, silver symbols etched into the stone glowing faintly under their feet as the priest guided them into position.
The room went quiet in a way that felt different from before, heavier, and Hazel’s wolf stirred under her skin.
Not frightened.
Alert, the way it got before a storm broke.
Across from her, something shifted in Aldrien’s expression too.
For once, he wasn’t performing calm.
The priest cut their palms and pressed their hands together over the bowl.
Their blood fell in together, mingling before it hit the stone, and the instant it touched, the bowl split down the middle with a crack loud enough that half the guests gasped and rose from their seats.
The priest stumbled back, confused, still chanting the last of the vow out of habit more than intention.
Heat rushed through Hazel’s veins like something had been lit under her skin.
Her wolf howled inside her, and somewhere close, she felt Aldrien’s answer it.
She tried to pull her hand free.
He held on.
“Don’t,” he said.
“Let go.”
“Something’s wrong.”
“I noticed.”
The symbols beneath them began to move, sliding across the stone like they were alive, and the priest’s chanting turned frantic.
Hazel looked at Aldrien and saw, for the first time in either of their lives, real fear in his eyes.
Not fear of her.
Fear for her, which was somehow worse, because it cracked something open in her chest that had nothing to do with the ritual.
Then the wind tore through the chamber, all at once, and the candles went out.
The moonstone flared white bright enough to blind her.
Something in her chest felt like it was being pulled loose, unspooling, and she screamed before she could stop herself.
Aldrien reached for her.
She grabbed his hand back.
For one impossible second, everything went silent, and she saw things she had no right to see.
Aldrien as a boy, alone in a room too big for him.
Aldrien watching her across a training field years ago, when neither of them had been anything to each other yet.
Then the world dropped out from under her entirely.
She woke on the floor, head pounding, the silence of the hall pressing down on her.
She pushed herself up and knew immediately that something was wrong.
Her clothes felt wrong against her skin.
Her hands felt wrong when she planted them on the stone.
She looked down and saw hands that weren’t hers.
Large.
Masculine.
She touched her face and found a different jaw, a different nose, skin that didn’t belong to her at all.
She stumbled toward the nearest mirror and saw Aldrien Black staring back.
She screamed, and across the hall, someone groaned and pushed themselves up off the floor.
Long hair.
A wedding dress.
Her own face, wearing an expression she recognized instantly, because it was the same one she’d worn her entire life.
Their eyes met, and Hazel’s stomach dropped, because she knew that look.
She knew the voice that was about to come out of her own mouth.
“Aldrien?” she said, in a body that wasn’t hers.
Her own lips curved into a bitter smile across the room.
“Unfortunately,” he said.
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