My Mate Chose My Sister, But the Alpha Chose Me

I waited for him to call the guards.

Jacob didn't move. He just watched me stand there with my father's threat still ringing in my ears.

"Sit down, Fiona."

"Are you going to lock me up?"

"Sit down," he said again. Softer this time.

My knees gave out before my pride did. I dropped onto the edge of the couch across from him, and the folder sat between us like a loaded gun.

"How long have you known?"

"Since you left the grounds." He tapped the arm of his chair. "Your father's house has three windows facing the road. One of my men watches all of them."

"You've been spying on my family."

"Your family has been spying on mine for six years." He said it without anger. "I just got better at it."

I stared at the red stamp. *CLASSIFIED.* My fingers itched, and I hated myself for it.

"He said if I don't bring him this, he'll tell the council I'm not his daughter."

Jacob was quiet for a moment.

"Are you?"

"I don't know." A laugh slipped out of me, thin and ugly. "Isn't that funny? I don't even know whose I am."

He picked up the folder.

For one sick second, I thought he was going to hand it to me. A test. A trap.

Instead, he leaned over, pulled the grate open, and dropped it on the dead ashes. He struck a match. The flame caught the corner and crawled up, curling the maps black.

"Those were real," I whispered.

"They were. Now they're not." He sat back, the firelight carving deep shadows under his cheekbones. "I have copies. Your father doesn't."

"Why are you showing me this?"

"Because I want you to hear a question. And I want you to answer it with nothing in your hands."

The paper popped and hissed.

"Do you want to be their pawn," Jacob asked, "or do you want to be yourself?"

Nobody had ever asked me what I wanted. Not once in eighteen years.

My throat burned.

"I don't know how to be myself," I said. "I've never had the chance."

"Then start tomorrow." He rose on his cane, slow and stiff. At the door, he paused. "Goodnight, Fiona."

I sat there until the fire went out. Something in my chest refused to go out with it.

...

The next afternoon, I walked to the edge of the forest to breathe.

I didn't hear Leo until he grabbed my wrist.

"There you are."

"Get your hand off me."

He spun me around and pressed me against a pine trunk. Bark bit into my shoulder blades.

"You've been avoiding me."

"I've been *married*, Leo. It's a full-time job."

"Stop." His eyes searched my face, hungry and sure. "I saw how you looked at me yesterday. You're still angry. That means you still care."

"It means I'm still angry."

He kissed me.

Hard. His mouth crushed mine, his fingers digging into my jaw so I couldn't turn away. I shoved at his chest. He didn't budge. He tasted like mint gum and arrogance.

When he finally pulled back, he was smiling.

"See? You didn't bite me."

"You didn't give me room to."

He laughed like I'd flirted. Then he cupped my face, and his voice dropped low and gentle. The voice he used to use under the bleachers.

"Listen to me. Jacob's dying. When he's gone, I'll be Alpha. Your father's already promised the votes."

"Congratulations."

"Winnie will be my Luna. Publicly. She has to be, she's got the wolf and the name." His thumb brushed my cheek. "But you, Fi? You'll be mine. Privately. I'll get you a house near the river. Nobody will touch you. Nobody will laugh at you ever again."

I just looked at him.

"You have no wolf," he said, like he was being generous. "Nobody's going to marry you for real. But I can keep you."

The slap cracked through the trees.

My palm stung. His head snapped sideways. A red print bloomed across his cheek, and for a moment, the forest was dead silent.

Leo touched his face.

Then his eyes went gold.

"You shouldn't have done that."

The air got heavy. Thick, like wet sand pouring into my lungs. It was the Alpha blood in him, the pressure every wolf in the pack bowed to without thinking.

I had no wolf to fight it.

My knees buckled. My palms hit the dirt. Pine needles stabbed my skin.

"Kneel," Leo said. "That's where you belong. You always did."

"Go to hell."

"Kneel, Fiona."

The weight doubled. My spine bent. My forehead dipped toward the ground, inch by inch, and I felt tears sting my eyes. Not from pain.

From *rage*.

Eighteen years. Eighteen years of *broken*, *hollow*, *waste*. Of watching. Of kneeling.

*No.*

Something cracked open inside me.

Not a bone. Deeper. Like ice breaking on a frozen lake, a long groan and then a roar of cold water rushing up.

Light spilled out of my skin. Silver-white, bright enough to throw Leo's shadow across the trees.

And in the dark behind my eyes, something enormous lifted its head.

A wolf. White as snow. Bigger than any wolf I'd ever seen, bigger than the Alpha statues in the great hall. Her eyes opened slowly, and they were the same silver-blue as the wedding flame.

*Fiona.*

Her voice filled my skull. Warm. Ancient. Almost amused.

*I've waited for you a very long time.*

"Who—"

*Stand up.*

I stood.

The pressure didn't just break. It *reversed*. A wave of force burst out of me and slammed into Leo's chest. He flew backward like a kicked doll, crashing through a bush and hitting the ground six feet away. He rolled twice and stopped on his back, gasping.

My hands were burning.

I looked down. Silver fur rippled up my forearms. My nails had lengthened into curved white claws. My jaw ached, my teeth pressing sharp against my lips.

I wasn't scared.

I was *laughing*.

"Fiona."

I turned.

Jacob stood at the tree line, one hand braced on a trunk, his cane forgotten in the leaves behind him. He'd run. I could tell from the way his chest heaved.

Leo scrambled up on his elbows. "Jacob, she attacked me—"

"Shut up." Jacob didn't even glance at him.

He was staring past my shoulder.

I twisted to follow his eyes. The light behind me had shaped itself into something hanging in the air. A crescent moon, framed by rings of silver lines, turning slowly like a clock face made of stars.

"What is that?"

Jacob didn't answer.

He took one step toward me, then another. The calm mask he'd worn at the altar, in the war room, by the fireplace, was gone. His lips parted. His fingers trembled.

"That's a moon sigil," he said hoarsely. "Only the first Alpha bloodlines carried it. The founding families. They've been extinct for three hundred years."

"That's not possible. I don't *have* a wolf. I never—"

"You do now." His dark eyes locked on mine, wide and searching. "Fiona, your wolf... she can't be just an ordinary wolf."

Inside my head, the white wolf chuckled softly.

*Ordinary,* she repeated. *Tell him what they did to us, Fiona. Tell him who buried me.*