"You're a special little girl, Eliana," Grandma Abbey said, her craggy hand stroking my cheek. "You have your mother's eyes—that same fierce green—and her smile is in you.
I wanted to believe her. God, how I wanted to. But "special" didn't match my experience — not when I learned what "abuse" meant as a five-year-old, not when my stepbrother Jaxon first assaulted me at eleven, and not now.
You had to be a special person to live the way I lived.
Grandma's words rang in my head as I examined the contract in front of me. Staring down an offer I couldn't refuse three weeks after escaping hell and here I was at the Black Moon Pack's imposing headquarters.
"What?" Alpha Eric's silver-streaked hair and imposing presence filled the room as I looked up at him, my voice cracking. Denver (my secret weapon, my terror) stood behind him, face unreadable.
"You are going to marry my son." This wasn't a question, Alpha Eric's declaration. His voice was heavy with decades of command, of decisions untapped.
My heart pounded against my ribcage. Marriage? To Denver? The Alpha everyone knew as the playboy with a bad reputation, one that preceded him all over the territory? The man who'd rescued me but also made me pay for it every day?
We locked eyes from across the room — his cold, calculating, mine widening in shock. A wordless message was relayed between us. This was his idea of repayment.
I bowed my head, submission seeping through my veins like venom. "I'll marry him," I whispered, surprised at how steady my voice was.
Alpha Eric nodded, satisfied. "You are not at all like your father. After you've made a complete recovery, we'll hold the ceremony. It is a legal union, nothing else."
Nothing more. The words should have hurt, but they actually eased the pain. I looked at Denver, searching for a sign of his reaction, but his face was a mask.
The wedding took place in a haze. A stretch of white silk over my mending skin, makeup covering the sickly remnants of bruises, Denver's hand — firm, solid — gliding a diamond ring onto my finger.
Nobody had any idea that this was a business deal. They murmured of the wild Alpha at last tamed, of the woman no one knew the origins of, yet had clearly ensnared his heart. If only they knew the truth.
My breath caught in my throat when Denver suddenly pulled me close. His eyes — dark green, hazard green — connected with mine before his mouth descended upon me in a kiss that exploded fire through my body.
"Pretend," he said against my ear when he pulled away, the phrase too low for anyone but me to catch.
We walked down the aisle, hand in hand, and I forced a smile and my heart raced. Just three weeks ago, I was a slave. Now, I was a future Luna. The whiplash of my shifting fortune made me dizzy.
"I've got to get out of this dress," I said nervously as Denver took me to his chamber.
His hand shot out and clamped down on my wrist. "Where do you think you're going? The dangerous edge to his voice sent my blood running cold.
Once inside, he shut the door with an authoritative click. It smelled of him in the room — pine, musk, a sense of power. My heart was pounding when he loosened his tie, his eyes glued to mine.
"Denver, I should return to m—"
"Take off your clothes." His command pierced my protest.
I froze, panic wonted within my chest. Denver must have realized that, because he loosened up. He cupped my face with his hands, shockingly tender. "Do not be afraid, little one."
"All this is to produce an heir for my father," he said, tracing my jawline with his thumb.
The revelation stunned me. Why else do you think he wanted this?"
Words failed me. I hadn't yet gone past survival, past fleeing my past.
Denver's fingers grazed the zipper of my dress, his breath warm against my throat. What I felt, with every touch, was something my body had not known for so long — fear, desire, confusion. The fabric pooled at my feet and he just looked at me for a long moment, something unreadable flashing in his eyes.
"We don't have to do this so soon," he said, wavering from his habitual ice.
"No," I whispered, shocking myself. "I want to." I moved nearer, compelled by some nameless force. "I'm better now."
My intimacy had been based in pain and degradation. But I felt this one could be different. This could be mine to claim.
Denver placed me gently but not gently onto the bed. "I'll be gentle," he said, and he was.
His kisses traced my body: passed over my lips but owned everything else. When he finally slipped inside, the connection crackled—it was confirmation of what I had suspected. We were mates. The universe's cruel joke, I suppose, much to a man whose purpose for me ended rather than begin.
Tears flooded my eyes as warmth coursed through me. Not from pain, but rather from the bittersweet knowledge that this moment — this beautiful, intimate moment — was meaningless to him.
The moment ended, Denver just got up, put on her clothes and left, without saying anything, without looking back.
I held the sheets to my chest, reality tumbling down around me. This was just business. An agreement penned in flesh and obligation.
The cycle continued for months. Clinical, emotionless "mating days" every two weeks. Each time, after the doctor's visit, same devastating news: "I'm sorry, you're not pregnant."
With each failure, Denver's resentment increased. Not in words — he didn't talk at all with me — but in the frustrated way his jaw was set, the coldening of his eyes when the doctor delivered her verdict.
I slid through the pack, whispers trailing behind me. "She's barren." "Such a failure." "Can't even do the very thing that she's here to do.
I cried myself to sleep in my empty bed, Grandma Abbey's words mocking me every night. Special? I couldn't even do the one thing I was supposed to be doing.
Thus two miserable years went by. Two years of watching hope rise and crash, of feeling like my now cold hometown was growing colder, of feeling more alone than I had ever felt even amongst my father's abusive pack.
Then came the call.
Days after our most recent altercation, my phone rang. A number from the doctor was calling. I typed with shaking fingers, steeling myself for the inevitable letdown.
"Eliana," she said, her voice changing this time. "You're pregnant."
I almost dropped the phone. Everything froze — my breath, my heart, time itself.
I was pregnant. After weeks, months, years of this, all these failures, I was carrying Denver's child.
What I didn't know then was that this miracle would propel a series of events that would tear apart everything I thought I knew about myself, about Denver and about what it really meant to be special.