Chapter 1

(Seraphina POV)

Today is my fourteenth birthday. It should be the single most important day of a young werewolf's life. I had spent months dreaming about it: the pack bonfire, the chanting, the painful but glorious first shift surrounded by the supportive alpha, beta families, and my own parents. I had even picked out the decorations—deep autumn hues of burnt orange, rich crimson, and fading forest green. Instead, I am standing in the back of the Obsidian Crest temple, the air suffocating with the cloying scent of wilting white roses and heavy incense. There are no happy autumn banners. There is no birthday cake. We are attending a funeral. My sister's funeral.

My sister, Gwendolyn, died this morning. The shockwave that hit the packhouse shortly after midnight was physical. Alarms blared, warriors shouted, and my parents’ anguished screams still ring freshly in my ears. By werewolf tradition, a fallen wolf must be returned to the Goddess within twenty-four hours of death. Because she died so soon after midnight, everything happened at a breakneck pace. The party I had planned? Canceled. The very tables and chairs set aside for my guests were hastily draped in black cloth. My carefully chosen autumn flowers were repurposed; they were just somber enough to serve as background dressing for her casket. All pictures of me, all celebratory banners, were stripped from the halls, replaced by large, imposing oil portraits of my dead sister.

The loss of Gwendolyn is an apocalyptic event for the Obsidian Crest pack. She wasn’t just the oldest and favored child of Beta Reginald. She was the pristine, untouchable golden child. More importantly, she was universally anticipated to be the fated mate of Sebastian, Alpha Maximilian’s son and our future Alpha. In three short months, on her twentieth birthday, the mate bond would have been officially confirmed. The Alpha was so terrifyingly eager to hand over the reins to Sebastian and Gwendolyn that they had actually broken centuries of tradition, starting her Luna training right after she turned eighteen.

Being completely honest, her early Luna training never sat right with me. Lunas for generations waited until their twentieth birthday—until the Goddess officially confirmed their mates. Why couldn't Gwendolyn wait? It also disturbed me watching her hang all over Sebastian at public pack functions. Public displays of affection before the mate bond confirmation were strictly frowned upon—they bred jealousy and territorial disputes. Yet, for Gwendolyn, an exception was always made. Exceptions were *always* made for her. She was beautiful, vibrant, supposedly kind to a fault. The entire pack worshipped the ground she walked on.

I know I sound bitterly jealous. And maybe part of me is. I loved my sister, and her violent death last night is a nightmare I haven't woken up from. But the grief I feel isn't the pure, unadulterated devastation my parents are currently displaying in the front pew. My grief is barbed and complicated. Because I knew the real Gwendolyn. I knew the girl who would smile sweetly at the Omegas, then turn around and pinch the soft skin of my inner arm until ugly purple bruises blossomed, simply because I had gotten a higher grade on a history exam. I knew the sister who "accidentally" spilled hot tea on the only dress I ever felt pretty in. But if I spoke a single word of that truth while she was alive, I would have been branded a jealous liar. If I speak it now, while her white casket sits at the altar, I would practically be executed for blaspheming the dead. It is safer just to let it go. To swallow my birthday, swallow my truth, and stand in the shadows.

A sudden, vicious cramp tears through my lower abdomen, sharp enough to make me bite the inside of my cheek to muffle a gasp. I taste copper. The only immediate problem with swallowing my feelings and standing quietly in the back is that my body doesn't care about the funeral. Bad timing or not, my first shift is coming. Tonight. Right now. In werewolf biology, there is no pausing the transition. I feel a terrifying heat building in my spine, radiating outward to my joints. I am supposed to have my mother holding my hand. I am supposed to have the pack chanting well-wishes to soothe the agony of bones breaking and reforming. I glance at my parents. My father is physically supporting my mother, who looks like she might collapse from weeping. There is absolutely no way I can pull them aside for thirty minutes to help me through this. I am entirely, completely on my own. And it’s starting to hurt so much that my vision is blurring.