Ava’s POV
A million dollars.
To give up my birthright.
I stared at this imperious woman.
Rebecca, my father’s partner, my so-called stepmother.
The way she looked at me, you’d think she was deciding whether to drag a bag of trash to the curb.
I didn’t flinch.
Yeah, I’m an Omega, but that doesn’t make me weak.
I’d kept my head down back in the Darkmoon Pack only because I loved Damon and didn’t want to cause a rift between him, the pack, and his family.
And a million dollars?
Seriously?
I knew exactly what the Crawford Pack was worth.
The pack and everything tied to it ran into the billions.
And she thought she could wave one check at me and I’d scurry off like some desperate stray?
Not happening.
Ever.
“I’m not signing anything.” I didn’t even glance at the check.
I met her eyes dead-on.
“How dare you speak to me like that?” Rebecca shot up from her chair, her whole face going stiff.
Before I could answer, a tall, broad-shouldered figure stepped out from behind her.
He was young, maybe my age, with short blond hair catching the sunlight and features sharp enough for a magazine cover.
If not for the cruelty in his eyes.
“Ava, right?” he said, voice low and arrogant.
“I’m Lucas.
Your…
brother.”
He dragged out “brother,” dripping with sarcasm.
“Lucas, stop wasting time!” Rebecca snapped impatiently.
“This pack is yours! She’s an Omega who can’t even shift, what gives her the right to lead the Crawford Pack? Her father knocked up some Omega in a one-night stand and left us this mistake!”
Lucas stared me down, a predator sizing up its next meal, his Beta dominance pressing down on me.
I forced myself not to drop my gaze.
The pack’s heir had to carry Alpha blood, and my so-called brother Lucas wasn’t even my father’s son.
Nobody challenged pack law.
Which meant it had to be me.
“My father’s will named me his heir.” My voice didn’t shake.
“I won’t go against it.”
The temperature in the room dropped a few degrees.
Lucas’s eyes turned vicious.
He took a step forward, the pressure around me cinching like a fist.
“So you’re not just weak. You’re stupid, too. You really think you’re walking out of here today?”
Rebecca’s face twisted ugly.
“Kill her!
With her gone, nobody stands in your way!”
“She’s an orphan and an Omega on top of it,” Rebecca added with a cold sneer.
“Nobody’s coming to avenge her.”
A second later, guards in black poured out of the manor and closed in around me.
Their eyes glinted feral, the air thick with danger.
I stepped back before I could stop myself, my heartbeat slamming in my ears.
My identity might have changed, but my body hadn’t.
I was still an Omega.
Against a room full of Betas and pack warriors, I wouldn’t last a second.
Alvin, the old Beta, hadn’t expected things to spiral this far.
He threw himself in front of me, his old frame straight as a wall.
“Ma’am, you can’t do this!
Ms. Crawford is the Alpha’s chosen heir!”
“Get out of the way, old man!” Lucas flicked his hand.
A burst of raw power sent Alvin crashing to the ground.
“Alvin!” Panic clawed up my throat.
I tried to reach him, but a guard stepped into my path and bared his teeth.
Then, a screech of brakes cut through the tension.
Several black SUVs roared up and stopped hard at the manor gates.
On each door, a blood-red moon emblem caught the sunlight, sharp and impossible to miss.
Bloodmoon Pack.
My stomach dropped.
If the Crawford Pack ran the East Coast, the Bloodmoon Pack owned the entire West, no contest.
What were they doing here?
The doors swung open, and a group of tall, battle-hardened wolves stepped out.
The one leading them had a cold, chiseled face and eyes that swept over us, sharp and precise.
Lucas and Rebecca both went pale.
“The Bloodmoon Pack? What do you want?” Lucas asked, failing to hide the shake in his voice.
The man didn’t even look at him.
His eyes found me, studied me for a second, and then he bowed.
“By order of our Alpha, we’ve come to escort our future Luna.”
Luna?
Everyone froze.
My mind went blank right along with them.
“What… what are you talking about?” Rebecca stammered.
“What Luna?”
He let out a cold scoff, pulled a wax-sealed parchment from his coat, and unfolded it for everyone to see.
“Twenty years ago, the former Alpha of the Bloodmoon Pack and the Alpha of the Crawford Pack struck a pact: their eldest son and eldest daughter would marry when they came of age, binding the two strongest packs on the East and West Coasts.”
He paused, his gaze locking back onto me.
“And now the Bloodmoon Pack has been informed that the only rightful heir of the Crawford Pack, Ava Crawford, has returned. By the pact, she will wed our new Alpha, Adrian Thorne, and become the Luna of the Bloodmoon Pack.”
The whole world went quiet.
I stood there frozen, my head completely empty.
A marriage contract.
With some Alpha I’d never even met, from the strongest pack on the West Coast?
Rebecca and Lucas went white as paper.
A minute ago they’d been ready to kill me.
Now I was suddenly the future Luna of the Bloodmoon Pack, someone now beyond even their reach.
It was more absurd than any drama.
The man rolled up the parchment and gave me a polite “after you.” “Ms. Crawford, I’m Oswald, Alpha Adrian’s Beta. Our Alpha is waiting. Please, get in the car.”
Behind him, every Bloodmoon warrior dipped their head to me at once.
Not out of fear, pure, unquestionable respect for the Luna they’d one day serve.
I looked at my terrified stepmother and stepbrother, then at Alvin being helped back to his feet, shock written all over his face.
One thing was certain: I was safe.
But a fresh wave of nerves hit me, sharp enough to spike my pulse all over again.
Because now I had to meet this fiance who’d appeared out of nowhere.
I didn’t know the first thing about Alpha Adrian.
His pack towered over every pack on both coasts.
A man like that didn’t need to honor some old promise.
The only reason I could come up with: maybe he was hideous.
Maybe something was wrong with him.
Was that why he’d settle for a divorced Luna?