Chapter One: Fear's Betrayal
The first crack in Freya's world came quietly.
It did not arrive with blood or screams or omens in the sky. It came with a lie that felt too heavy for her chest and a silence that answered questions no one dared speak aloud.
Fear—her husband, the alpha she had married for duty rather than destiny—stood before her and said no.
Not with conviction. Not with strength. But with something hollow, something rehearsed.
"No," he said again, his voice steady, his eyes refusing to meet hers. "I had nothing to do with it."
Freya felt the word echo through her soul. Nothing.
It scraped against every instinct she had learned to trust.
She had come to him not as a wife seeking affection, but as an alpha's daughter sensing imbalance. The pack whispered. The elders avoided her gaze. Movements were made in the shadows without her knowledge. And somewhere deep within her, fear had taken root—not the kind that weakens, but the kind that warns.
Fear had been her name long before it became her fate.
"You swear it?" she asked softly.
Fear lifted his head then, meeting her eyes at last. There was no warmth there. No bond. Just patience, like a man indulging a child's foolish worry.
"I swear it on my soul."
The words should have soothed her. Instead, they chilled her.
Freya left his chambers unsettled, her steps slow as she walked through halls that no longer felt like home. She told herself she was imagining things. That marriage required compromise. That she had chosen this path for her brother, for her pack, for balance.
She told herself love was not necessary for survival.
She was wrong.
That night, unable to silence the pull in her chest, Freya followed a path she had never walked before—one that led beneath the council wing, into a section of the stronghold few were permitted to enter. The guards did not stop her. That alone should have warned her.
The door was slightly open.
Light spilled out. Voices followed.
One of them was his.
She paused.
Every lesson her father had ever taught her urged caution. But Freya had never learned to distrust openly. Not yet. Not fully.
She stepped inside.
The scene carved itself into her memory with cruel precision.
Fear stood close—too close—to another. A woman of influence, cloaked in silk and confidence, her hand resting on his chest as though it belonged there. They did not spring apart. They did not look ashamed.
They looked… settled.
Freya's breath caught. The room felt smaller, the air too thin.
Fear turned slowly, recognition flickering across his face before smoothing into something unreadable.
"Freya," he said, almost casually. "You shouldn't be here."
The woman glanced at Freya with open assessment, her gaze sharp and unapologetic. There was no attempt to hide. No scramble to explain.
The truth stood naked between them.
Freya felt something inside her fracture—not shatter, but split, like a fault line opening beneath solid ground.
"What is this?" Freya asked.
Her voice did not tremble. That surprised her.
Fear exhaled, irritation flashing across his features. "This isn't what you think."
She laughed once, softly, because the alternative was screaming. "Then tell me what it is."
Silence.
The woman withdrew her hand but did not step away. That, too, was an answer.
Freya turned fully to her husband. "You swore on your soul."
Fear's jaw tightened. "I told you I had nothing to do with that matter."
"That matter?" Freya repeated. "You mean the secrets. The movements. The decisions made without me?"
"Yes."
"And this?" she gestured between them. "What is this?"
Fear looked at her then—not as a husband, not even as an ally—but as a calculation.
"This is nothing," he said plainly.
The word struck harder than any blow.
Nothing.
Not betrayal. Not disrespect. Not a violation of vows sworn before packs and elders and ancestors.
Nothing.
"You married me for power," he continued, his tone cold now, stripped of pretense. "Don't pretend you expected devotion."
Freya's hands curled at her sides. "I expected honesty."
Fear shrugged. "Naivety."
The woman beside him smiled faintly, as though amused by Freya's shock.
Something broke then—not loudly, not visibly—but irrevocably.
Freya realized, in that moment, that she had never been a wife in this place. She had been a bargaining piece. A bridge between packs. A symbol.
Expendable.
"You lied to me," Freya said.
Fear met her gaze without remorse. "And I would do it again."
The room seemed to tilt. Memories flooded her mind—every sacrifice, every silence, every night she lay awake convincing herself this marriage was necessary.
She had turned away from destiny for this.
For him.
Freya stepped back, her heart pounding, her instincts screaming now—not in warning, but in grief.
"This isn't over," she said quietly.
Fear did not look concerned. "It is," he replied. "You just haven't realized it yet."
She left without another word, her spine straight, her expression calm. But inside, the world she knew was already collapsing.
She did not yet know how far the betrayal would go.
She did not yet know what would be taken from her.
She did not yet know the price of refusing her mate.
But fate had begun to move.
And Freya, still naive, still believing in mercy, walked straight into the darkness that would one day give birth to her revenge.