Reborn For The Alpha Rival

Elena stood in front of the mirror in her old bedroom, and the woman looking back at her did not feel real.

"Hold still," Nadia said, pinning the veil into place. "You're shaking."

"I'm not shaking."

"You are. It's your wedding day. You're allowed to."

Elena let out a breath. In less than an hour she would kneel before the Imperial Council and become Luna of the Cross territory. She touched the pendant at her throat, the one that had belonged to her grandmother. Nadia had suggested she leave it off. Elena couldn't.

"He's a good match for you," Nadia said. "Your father would be proud."

"I know."

She did know it. Five years ago, Damien had come to the Vale estate with an easy smile and asked her father for her hand, and her father, already dying, had wept with relief at the offer. The last comfort Elena had given him was a promise: that she would be safe, that the Vale name would be folded into something strong enough to protect what was left of it.

She had loved Damien for that promise before she loved him for himself. Maybe that was how it started for everyone. But she loved him now, she told herself, firmly, the way she always did whenever a small voice inside her tried to say otherwise. In a few minutes she would stand before the kingdom and become his Luna, and there would be no more waiting, no more wondering if she was worthy of the title.

A knock came at the door.

"Come in," Elena said, expecting the last of the flowers.

Serena stepped inside instead, already dressed, gold-brown hair swept into a twist.

"You look lovely," Serena said, though her eyes moved over the gown with something Elena couldn't name.

"Thank you." Elena and Serena had never been close, not since their parents married when Elena was twelve and Serena eleven, two girls forced to share a name they hadn't chosen. But today Elena wanted peace. "I'm glad you're here."

"Where else would I be?" Serena's smile didn't reach her eyes. "It's not every day my sister marries an Alpha."

Something in the way she said it snagged at Elena, but horns were already rising faintly from the courtyard. She didn't have time to chase down every odd feeling.

"Is Damien ready?" Elena asked.

"He looked very handsome, last I saw him. Talking with his men."

"Which men?"

Serena's gaze flickered toward the window. "Just his men, Elena. Don't worry so much. You're going to be Luna in an hour. Nothing else should matter today."

Elena let it go. She wanted, more than anything, to let it go.

Nadia stepped back at last. "There. Perfect."

Elena looked at herself one more time and thought she looked exactly like a woman about to become someone important. Someone chosen. Someone safe.

The horns sounded again, closer now.

"It's time," Nadia said.

Elena gathered her skirts and turned toward the door. Serena held it open, stepping aside with a small, unreadable smile.

As Elena passed her, she caught the scent of Serena's perfume and heard her murmur, almost too quiet to catch, "I hope it's everything you think it will be."

Elena turned to ask what she meant, but Serena was already moving down the hall, leaving Elena standing alone with her heart beating strangely fast.

---

The great hall was full by the time Elena reached its doors. She could hear it before she saw it: the low hum of hundreds of voices, the shuffle of chairs, the distant sound of a horn being tuned for the processional. Somewhere behind those doors sat every Alpha family that mattered in the kingdom, waiting to watch her become one of them.

Her father's old steward, Marcus, waited beside her, offering his arm the way her father would have if he'd lived long enough to see this day. "Ready, my lady?"

"Ready," Elena said, and meant it.

The doors opened.

Sunlight poured in from the tall windows lining the hall, catching on silver thread and glass, and for a moment all Elena could see was light and color and the blur of turning faces. Then the crowd settled, and at the far end of the aisle, she saw him.

Damien stood at the altar in dark formal robes, golden hair catching the light, and he was smiling at her the way he always smiled at her, like she was the only person in the room worth looking at. Elena felt something in her chest loosen. Whatever strange unease Serena had stirred in her a few minutes ago began to dissolve the moment she met his eyes.

She started down the aisle.

Halfway there, she noticed Damien's gaze flick away from her, just for a second, toward the side of the hall where a cluster of his personal guard stood near a side door that led out toward the kennels and the training yards. It wasn't unusual for guards to be posted at a wedding this size. But something about the way one of them nodded at Damien, small and precise, made the hair rise on the back of Elena's neck.

She kept walking. Marcus's arm was steady beneath her hand. The music swelled. Somewhere in the crowd, she thought she saw Serena watching her with an expression that didn't match a wedding at all.

By the time Elena reached the altar and Damien took her hand in his, the guards by the side door had already slipped out of the hall entirely, and no one but Elena seemed to have noticed them leave.

The officiant's voice carried through the hall, steady and formal, reciting words that bound two territories together as much as two people. Elena barely heard the first half of it. Her mind kept drifting back to the guards who had slipped out the side door, and to the small, precise nod Damien had given them before they left.

"Alpha Damien Cross," the officiant said, "do you accept Elena Vale as your mate, your Luna, and the mother of your future pack?"

"I do." Damien's voice rang clear across the hall, warm and certain, and when he looked at Elena his eyes softened in a way that made the whole room sigh with approval.

"Elena Vale," the officiant continued, "do you accept Damien Cross as your mate, your Alpha, and the protector of your bloodline?"

Elena hesitated only a heartbeat. Long enough that Damien's fingers tightened slightly around hers, a small pressure, a reminder.

"I do," she said.

The hall eru