My Alpha Claimed My Sister at Our Mating Ceremony

Three hours into the Winter Solstice Banquet, Preston's chair was still empty.

I stood at the head of the long table in the gown I had chosen four weeks ago — pale silver, high collar to leave my neck bare where a mark would go — and pressed my thumb against the inside of my other wrist. Hard. Hard enough to leave a bruise if I kept it there long enough. I kept it there.

The torches along the great hall snapped and hissed. Two Lycan Council elders sat at the far end of the table, their goblets untouched, their eyes moving between the empty Alpha's chair and me. Every few minutes one of them murmured something to the other. I could not hear the words. I did not need to.

Five years. Five years I had waited for this night — the night Preston had promised, at last, to present me to the Council as his mate. Formal. Public. Recognized. He had chosen the date himself.

His chair was still empty.

A cluster of mid-rank wolves stood by the pillar to my left, close enough to be overheard, which was exactly the point. Eleanor's voice lifted just enough to reach me.

"I just notice these things," she was saying, swirling her wine. "It's interesting, isn't it. Some Lunas go five years without a marking ceremony. Five whole years. Makes you wonder — is an Alpha who won't mark his mate in public really claiming her at all?"

A soft, muffled laugh rippled through the little group. Someone stifled it behind a hand. Someone else did not bother.

I did not turn my head. I did not blink.

I set my untouched glass down on the table with a small, even click, gathered the silver skirt in one hand, and walked out of the hall.

Outside, the cold hit me like a slap I welcomed. The banquet lights fell away behind me. I did not stop walking. My heels bit into the frozen path, then the packed snow, then the harder ground where the eastern border began. The trees rose black against the sky. I needed air. I needed a corridor of silence where Eleanor's voice could not follow.

I told myself he would have a reason. He always had a reason.

I reached the frozen tree line and stopped to breathe.

That was when the scent hit me.

Cedar and iron. Preston's musk — I would know it in a coma, in a grave. It was here. Fresh. Threaded through the bare branches like a warning.

And braided through it, sweet and unmistakable, was honeysuckle.

Cassandra's honeysuckle.

My body understood before my mind did. My knees locked. My throat closed on the name — my sister, the pup my family had pulled from the snow, the girl who braided my hair when we were small — and then, before I could push the thought all the way through, the bond detonated.

A white brand of heat tore across the left side of my neck.

I could feel his teeth.

I could feel his teeth sinking into skin that was not mine. The pressure of his jaw, the exact angle a mating bite takes, the intent of it — the slow, deliberate finality of a claim being placed. It came through the bond in real time, unfiltered, my body cast as the receiver of an act being performed on someone else. My mark, my ceremony, my night — used elsewhere.

My knees hit the frozen ground. The impact did not register. The pain in my neck had eaten everything else.

Something inside me — the part of me that had been silent for twenty-four years, the wolf I had never met, the wolf everyone assumed I did not have — slammed against the walls of my chest. Once. Twice. A howl I could feel but could not hear. She was awake. She was not sad. She was furious.

I stayed on my hands and knees in the snow and I made myself breathe.

One breath. Two. The burn on my neck did not fade — it settled, a phantom brand where a real one should have gone. I lifted a hand to it. The skin was smooth. Unmarked. Untouched. And still burning.

Mate bonds do not lie. They cannot lie. Preston had just marked another woman, and the bond had made me witness it.

Cassandra.

The name arrived in my mouth like something metallic.

I put my palm flat against the frozen ground and pushed myself up. The gown tore at the hem. I did not care. I reached inside my chest for the mind-link — the private channel, the one only Marcus and I used — and I opened it.

The transmission came out ragged. I could feel it going through in fragments, scent and heat and the shape of a name.

*Marcus.*

*Chelsea?* His voice snapped back instantly, sharpened by the state of mine. *Where are you.*

*Eastern border. Tree line.* I forced the words to hold. *Preston has marked Cassandra. Just now. I felt it.*

There was a beat of silence on the other end. Not disbelief. Marcus never wasted a second on disbelief. He was calculating.

*Stay where you are,* he said. His voice had dropped the way it did when he was already moving. *Do not go back to the hall. Do not let anyone see you like this. I'm coming to you now. I'm bringing coats and I'm bringing two wolves I trust. Give me nine minutes.*

*Marcus—*

*Nine minutes, Luna.*

The link cut.

I stayed kneeling in the snow, one hand still at my burning neck, and listened. Somewhere behind me, past the black trees, I could already hear paws breaking ice.