CHAPTER ONE
The bruises and scrapes from Andrew Radcliffe’s violence have all but faded and healed, helped along by Mai’s magic, but I still wear the evidence of his brutality in the dark circles beneath my eyes, in the way I flinch when startled, the way I look over my shoulder everywhere I go.
Buried beneath tons of crumbled concrete by the omega he forced to work as his personal bodyguard, he won’t soon be forgotten—even in death.
I brought him down, but I’ll always carry the scars he left on my soul.
Ian zips up the midnight-blue silk gown I chose for this year’s Lunar Ball, then brushes the backs of his fingers over the bite on my neck, catching my eyes in the mirror. Blue and blue clash, heat sizzling between us. There’s fierce pride in his bright eyes, an unspoken claim he’ll forever have on my heart. My once imperious professor, now my imperious, perfect mate.
I wear more marks than just my scars to this year’s celebration of the Feast of Lunaria. Three mating bites grace mybody: two at my neck, one just below my wrist. In just a year, so much has changed. In months, really. Had Cassian not mated me on the night of Yule, my life would look very different today—if I’d even still be alive.
And Ian might still have his job.
I frown up at him in the mirror as I secure the final lock of my blond hair in the elaborate updo I’ve chosen to show off my bites. The claims of my mates. The matesIchose.
Ian hasn’t seen his old colleagues and students since leaving his position the day he chose me over his dreams. Teaching lit this man up in a way few other things do, and he was a natural professor. Agoodprofessor. And Andrew Radcliffe took that away from him with a few choice, compromising photographs sent to Headmaster Langford. Ian chose me without hesitation, but I still can’t shake the guilt over taking away the calling he loved so much.
There will be talk tonight. Rumors. He’ll be showing up at my side just weeks after resigning; it won’t be hard to figure out why he left his position as Casting professor at Fairhaven Academy. Whispers will surround us.How long has this been going on? Did anyone else know? Did he take advantage of a defenseless sophomore… or was she a freshman when their sordid affair began?
“Juniper?”
I startle and meet his eyes in the mirror once more.
“You’re troubled,” he murmurs, ghosting the tips of his fingers over his bite on my neck. Pride flashes in his blue eyes once more.
I’m still getting used to my mates being able to sense my feelings through our mating bonds; as much as I try not to read them through my affinity, I still pick up on their emotions easily, but feeling them through our bonds is something else entirely. Something far more precious.
“People are going to talk, Ian.”
He huffs, spinning my chair around, and looms over me, towering over me in a way I’ve never been able to resist. “You still don’t see it, Juniper. Those people, their opinions? They don’t matter. I chose you, and I’ll choose you a million times more. All that matters to me is that you are my brave, brilliant darling, and I am your mate. Nothing else. Just that. You think I have regrets, but I don’t.” He drops into a crouch and tilts up my chin with a single finger. “I could never regret this. Could never regretyou.” He kisses my forehead, each of my cheeks, the tip of my nose, and finally, taking care not to smudge my lipstick, drops a sweet kiss on my lips.
He stands, but not before stroking his fingers over his bite again. He digs around in my jewelry box and passes me the velvet box that holds my lavender pearl earrings, then holds up my strand of pearls. “Are you wearing your pearls or showing off my bite on your lovely neck tonight?”
I shiver at the heat and promise in his deep voice. “Showing off your bite.”
He all but growls. “Good girl.”
I groan as his rumbled words cut straight to my core. “Ian,” I whine. “We don’t have time.”
He smirks. The bastard—myimperious, perfect bastard—smirks.
For one heart-pounding instant, I consider stripping off my expensive designer gown and dragging the alpha at my side to my nest, but as I already said, we don’t have time. I’m determined to make a showing at this year’s Lunar Ball. After the terror of last year’s ball, after Trinity Wells nearly shot Grace Cassidy, after I wrestled control of the poor omega’s mind away from Andrew Radcliffe’s sinister blood magic, only for her to turn the gun on herself and pull the trigger…
After all those sins and more, carried out by my former betrothed against imprisoned omegas, Imuststand tall. I will show the world that he didn’t defeat me.Itriumphed. I dealtthe Soldiers of Saint Aldous a blow they won’t soon forget and toppled the first domino in the sinister conspiracy, Project Halcyon: the collar project to make omegas more biddable—especially omegas with affinities.
And I plan to topple the second. My own father, Redwood Rose, pioneering CEO of biomagical Rose Pharmaceuticals.
All starting with my pack’s first official outing as Pack Rose.
My father will bristle at the name I’ve chosen for our pack, but we’ve looked over the legal statutes a thousand times; there’s no law against a pack taking the surname of their omega. It isn’t common—after all, alpha pride is a potent and dangerous thing—but it isn’t illegal. It was a bold choice for me, and one my pack didn’t immediately understand. After all, being the “Rose omega” has brought me so much pain and strife. For years, it encouraged the lascivious touches of high society alphas who wanted to claim me: pinches, brushes, hands at my hips. Being the Rose omega saw my magic stolen from me by my dastardly father and led to my betrothal to the vile Andrew Radcliffe.
But it also brought me to Fairhaven Academy and into the arms of my amazing men. It let me spend my sixteenth summer splashing in the waves at Rose Beach with Cassian Leclerc and then find him again when I came to Fairhaven. It let me forget myself in the arms of Luca Anders, an alpha my father never would have approved of, and drove me to find joy in the wicked-sweet kisses of my beta lover, Simon Monroe. It pushed me into the arms of Ian Reinhardt, let magic and love swirl around us when he unlocked the magic my father locked away.
It brought me the pack that gave me the strength to stop a dangerous alpha and his plans for controlling omegas.
Though, Cassian shook his head in bemusement and told me, “That was allyou, Juniper. Not your family name.”
But it wasn’t just me. It was the pack I found by being the Rose omega, the pack that encouraged me to reclaim my name.
