Danae’s POV
The mirror gave me back a stranger.
Lounge pants.
Oversized t-shirt.
Hair half-escaped from its braid.
I spun anyway, arms out, watching the lamplight blur into ribbons, because tomorrow I’d be wrapped in silk.
Tomorrow Galen’s face would go soft when he saw me walking toward him, and five years of waiting would finally, finally close.
“Tomorrow,” I told my reflection, “I’ll be Mrs.
Galen Bryneholm.”
The words made me dizzy.
My heart slammed against my ribs like it wanted out of my chest before the sentence finished.
Five years—and at the end of them, the Ashmoon Pack.
A future Delta’s wife.
A world that had always existed behind glass, and now the door was swinging open.
Behind me, Eirwen leaned in the doorway, wine glass angled in her fingers.
Her black curls sat wild around her face.
The dark circles under her eyes hadn’t been there last week.
She was watching me the way you watch something you’re about to lose.
“Get some sleep, Danae.” A slow sip.
“Big day tomorrow.”
“I’m too wired.” Joy kept bubbling up, fizzing through my blood like carbonation.
“And it’s insane that I can’t even see him tonight.
Who actually follows that tradition anymore?” Irritation and longing, knotted together.
I just wanted to be near him.
That was all.
Eirwen made a soft, dismissive sound.
“You’re marrying into the Ashmoon.
They keep traditions that make no sense to humans like us.”
I drifted to the dress—that silk a temperature between cool water and skin—and pressed my fingertips against it.
Galen had done that.
Unlocked this.
Even this apartment of Eirwen’s, borrowed for a single night, sat in a neighborhood I couldn’t have touched on my teaching-assistant salary.
I used to lie awake doing the math on my rent.
Now I couldn’t do the math fast enough to believe it.
“I still can’t believe this is real,” I said.
“Five years ago I was drowning in student loans, rotting in that awful studio—”
“And now you’re marrying up.” Eirwen said it like she was filling in a crossword.
There was an edge on the words—thin, deliberate—and my joy stumbled on it.
I turned.
Read the crease between her brows.
“You don’t like him.” My stomach pulled tight.
“Do you.”
Eirwen exhaled and sank onto the bed.
“It’s not Galen specifically.
It’s that he’s a werewolf and you’re human, and the Ashmoon Pack has never been kind to outsiders.”
“I’m his destined mate.” I sat beside her, fierce and protective, cupping the future in both hands.
“They honor the mate bond.
It’s sacred to them.”
“I know.” Her face softened, but the worry stayed, lodged there like something she couldn’t swallow.
“It’s the hierarchy.
Alphas, Betas, Deltas—all so rigid.
I just don’t want you hurt.”
“Galen would never hurt me.” I said it the way you say the sky is blue.
Immovable.
Given.
“And this marriage means I can actually help Dad with the medical bills.” My voice went thin at the edges.
“No more choosing between his treatment and groceries.”
Eirwen nodded slowly and lifted her glass.
“Then to the most beautiful bride in the world tomorrow.”
Her fingers grazed my cheek.
I smiled back and turned to my checklist, letting it drown out the small cold thing her worry had left behind.
“Shit.
Shit, shit, shit.”
Third time emptying the overnight bag onto the bed.
No pearl necklace.I checked the list again, but the necklace refused to appear.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, a location took shape: the vanity in Galen’s apartment, where I was almost certain I’d taken it off for the last time.
I checked Galen’s feed.
A gym selfie, thirty minutes old.
Last workout as a free man.
The green dot burned beside his photo.
Still there.
Still online.
Perfect timing.
Slip home, grab the necklace, be back before Eirwen finished that bottle.
Galen had insisted on tonight’s separation—some Pack ritual about building anticipation—but what he didn’t know wouldn’t cost him anything.
I scribbled a note for Eirwen, already asleep over her third glass, and called a car.
Twenty minutes later I stood beneath our high-rise, the summer air warm and soft against my arms.
The doorman nodded me through.
This was my life now—key cards, private elevators, faces that recognized mine.
Five years ago I’d taught summer school just to make rent.
Now I was about to live here.
Some nights I still couldn’t make the math add up.
The apartment was silent.
Galen’s obsessive tidiness had squared every throw pillow, polished every surface to a gleam.
I went straight to our bedroom, to the vanity where I’d last seen the necklace.
Empty.
Pulse ticking up, I checked the closet,the drawers,even under the bed…
Nothing.
Nothing.
Nothing.
His study, then.
I stopped at the door with my hand on the wood.
Galen didn’t like me in there uninvited—his sanctuary, he called it, where the Pack meetings happened and the business calls ran late.
But this was an emergency.
I pushed the door open.
Everything as always: leather-bound books he’d never opened, the walnut desk, the executive chair that cost more than my first car.
I started on the cabinets.
Rounding the desk, my hip caught the edge.
The laptop woke—half-asleep, not shut down—and I was already turning away when the words snagged my eye.
My darling.
I froze.
Galen had never once called me darling.
Babe, when he was easy with me.
Sweetheart when he wanted something.
Never darling.
I knew I shouldn’t read further,or behind this word was a fact harder to bear.
But my eyes had already gone ahead without me.
An encrypted app I’d never seen.
The contact: one letter.
O.
And the messages were unmistakably, brutally intimate.
The newest, sent an hour ago: Meet me at our usual place after the gym.
Can’t wait to kiss you.
My stomach turned itself inside out.
Hands shaking, I scrolled up.
Each message hit like an open palm.
Don’t worry about Elric’s private school tuition.
It’s handled.
Everything continues as normal after the wedding.
She’ll never know.
My knees buckled.
She.
She’ll never know.
Elric.
Who was Elric?
I scrabbled for footing and caught one thread: Drusilla.
My bridesmaid.
Drusilla had a nephew named Elric.
O.
Drusilla.
But why was Galen paying for Drusilla’s nephew’s school?
Barely holding on, I pulled open the desk drawer.
A folder marked Personal.
Inside—dozens of photographs.
Galen.
Drusilla.
And a boy who wore both their faces in a way that made the air leave my body.
Elric.
A whole life I had never been let into.
Grinning on a beach.
Laughing at a ski lodge.
Curled together in matching pajamas on a Christmas morning that had never, not once, had a place for me.
Each picture a shard of glass working deeper into the future I’d built inside my head.
At the very bottom, a report card.
Crisp, official, real.
The tears came before the words did.
I read it aloud anyway, my voice unraveling at the seams.
“Elric Bryneholm.”