PROLOGUE
ELLIE
The dress was wrong.
I stood in front of the gilt-edged mirror in my suite at the Savoy, smoothing my hands over deep green silk that had looked perfect in the boutique but now felt like it was trying too hard. The neckline dipped lower than I usually wore, and I kept tugging at it, wishing I'd chosen something else. Something safer.
Stop it. You look fine.
I didn't look fine. I looked like someone pretending to be something she wasn't—like a girl playing dress-up in a world that had never quite felt like it belonged to her.
The mirror reflected back what it always did: a woman who was too short at five-foot-four, too soft in places Nathan's carefully controlled glances suggested she shouldn't be. I'd straightened my hair tonight—tamed the natural curl that wanted to spring free into something sleek and sophisticated, the way he preferred. It fell past my shoulders now in a darkcurtain that caught the lamplight, so different from the wild waves I'd worn when we first met.
My eyes looked darker in this light. Brown, almost black in the dim glow of the suite. My skin was pale—winter pale, the kind that would tan easily come summer but right now just made the freckles across my nose more obvious. I'd tried to cover them with foundation. Hadn't quite managed it.
The dress clung to my hips, my waist, emphasizing the hourglass shape I'd always liked about myself even if Nathan's careful suggestions about gym memberships said he didn't quite agree. I'd never set foot in a gym. Didn't plan to. I hiked when I had time—long walks through the Peak District or the hills around Manchester—and that had always been enough for me.
It should be enough for him too.
The silver bracelet Nathan had given me last month caught the light as I adjusted my hair for the third time. It was delicate, understated, the kind of thing that whispered thoughtful without shouting expensive. I'd worn it every day since, even though the clasp was finicky and it slid too loosely around my wrist.
Small gestures. That's what we had. Small gestures and long silences and a relationship that lived mostly in the spaces between his work trips and my classes.
It was fine. It wasenough.
I touched the bracelet again, turning it slowly, and let myself remember when he’d given me it. It was the first time he'd called memon cœurover dinner in Paris. The warmth that had spread through my chest. The way I'd believed, just for a moment, that this could be everything I'd hoped for. And it was. Sure, it wasn’t the romantic, sweep you off your feet relationship I’d dreamed about as a child, but then this was reality, and Nathan Cole was handsome, charming and intelligent. I was a lucky woman, I reminded myself.
The adjoining door swung open without warning, and Dave Rollins strode in, dressed in his tuxedo, looking sharp and self-satisfied in a way that made my stomach tighten.
"Stand straighter," he said, circling me like I was a sculpture he was considering buying. "And smile more. You look nervous."
"Iamnervous." I tried to laugh, but it came out strained.
"Well, don't show it." He adjusted his cufflinks in the mirror, not looking at me. "Tonight's important, Eleanor. You need to look the part."
The part.As if I were auditioning for something instead of attending a ball with the man who was supposed to be my fated mate. My one true love. My happily ever after.
Dad checked his watch, then his reflection one last time. Despite his words, he was more nervous than me. Having his only child mated to Nathan Cole would bring plenty of lucrative benefits to his medical supplies company and Dad had never been one to let an opportunity slip through his fingers. I'd heard enough of his phone calls to understand that much. Nathan's connections in the pharmaceutical world, his family's influence—it was all part of a bigger picture that had very little to do with fate and everything to do with business.
"You ready?" Dad asked.
I nodded, not trusting my voice. The Winter Solstice Ball was London's premier supernatural event—a gathering of the most powerful shifters, vampires, and magic users in Britain. Nathan had been attending for years. I'd never been invited before.
"You'll sit beside Nathan at dinner," he continued, smoothing down his lapels. "Let him lead the conversation. Laugh at his jokes. Touch his arm occasionally—nothing too forward, just enough to remind everyone you're together."
I nodded, feeling something cold settle in my chest. Instructions. That's what I got from Dad these days. A manual on how to be Nathan Cole's perfect mate.
"And for God's sake, Eleanor, eat something at dinner but not too much. You don't want to look like you're overindulging."
I just nodded. I had always been perfectly comfortable with my figure. I was soft in certain places, and rounded in some others, and not always the right places, but I was fit and could easily do a twelve hour shift in a busy kitchen, unlike some trainee chefs I’d met recently. Regardless, the instructions kept coming, each one a tiny cut that didn't quite draw blood but stung all the same. I wondered, distantly, when my father had stopped seeing me as his daughter and started seeing me as a chess piece to be moved strategically across someone else's board. Maybe it had been after Mum died. Maybe it had started before then, I just hadn’t been old enough to realise it.
"Dad," I said quietly. "Do you think Nathan's happy?"
He stilled, just for a second, then resumed adjusting the silk. "What kind of question is that?"
"I don't know. I just…" I hesitated, trying to find the words that wouldn't sound ungrateful or foolish. "He's been so distant lately. And we only see each other once a month, and even then, Megan's always there. I just wonder if—"
"You're overthinking. And Megan is his personal assistant, he needs her around." He turned to face me, impatience flickering across his features. "Nathan Cole is one of the most influential alphas in Europe. A scientist. A leader. You'reluckyhe even looked twice at you."
