The moment Riana stepped off the plane onto the rain-slicked tarmac of Ambrose City’s airport, she let herself hope—just for a moment—that her husband might be there to greet her.
‘CRACK’
As her designer’s heels sank into the ground, they broke. She looked up at the sky and sighed, “Really?”
Fate was unkind to her lately, but Riana was not going to give up hoping. Walking towards her car, with her hair frizzing in the humidity, she clutched her designer carry-on bag like a needy pet.
Inside her bag, her phone buzzed relentlessly with birthday wishes—pack members, distant cousins, colleagues, friends—all except the one that mattered.
Wesley Winters.
Alpha of the Winters Pack. Her husband of seven years.
The familiar ache settled deeper into her chest. Another to let her know better—their marriage had never been forged for love.
Just a match made for the Pack’s benefit. No love. No luck. Quite the opposite of a sweet fairytale story.
Yet here she was, dragging her designer carry-on through the downpour like some hopeful fool. And it all began eight years ago.
Seated in the back seat of a luxurious car, that fateful night eight years ago came back to her mind again.
Eight years earlier, the scent of wolfsbane incense and spiced mead hung heavy in the Regalia Pack's moonlit gardens. Eighteen-year-old Riana, dressed in her grandmother's ivory lace dress, had slipped away from the Ceremony - the one place her father's new wife couldn't glare daggers at her for "tarnishing the family name."
That's when she saw him - Wesley Winters, leaning against the obsidian fountain, moonlight glinting off the whiskey in his tumbler. The most powerful unmated Alpha in three territories.
Handsome was an understatement. But a Prince Charming? Nothing close.
"You look like someone poured ice water down your gown," he'd remarked, those glacier-blue eyes scanning her trembling hands.
“None of your concerns.”
He smirked and offered her a drink.
"Just avoiding my stepmother's cronies," Riana admitted, accepting the drink he offered. The whiskey burned, but not half as much as the way his thumb brushed hers when taking the glass back.
What happened next was a blur of stolen kisses behind the ancestral oaks, his growl of "You smell like storm clouds and vanilla," the way her dress pooled like moonlight on the grass—
Riana's grip tightened on her phone as her mind snapped back to the present time. She could still hear Wesley's accusation the morning after:
"You planned this. You Regalias always scheme."
As if she'd orchestrated her own ruin. As if she'd wanted to become the stain of the family.
The pregnancy test had been the final nail. She'd sat cross-legged on the bathroom floor of her childhood home, whispering to the tiny cluster of cells growing inside her:
It was a memory of mixed emotions that she could never forget.
"However you came to be, I'll love you enough for both of us."
Willa. Her miracle. The only good thing to come from that unforgettable night.
Riana allowed herself a small smile, remembering her daughter's excitement last month: "Daddy promised we'd celebrate your birthday together this year!"
Even after everything, the child still believed in her parents' fragile truce.
Her thumb hovered over Wesley's contact - still saved as "Beastly" in her phone after all these years. For Willa, she could endure one more civil conversation. For Willa, she'd pretend they were still the picture-perfect family the Pack expected.
The call connected.
"Hello?" A sultry female voice answered. Not Wesley.
Riana's blood turned to ice. In her mind, she was already imagining a scene of punching the other woman’s face, repeatedly.
Taking one deep breath to calm her anxiety, she finally spoke.
“Delilah.” Riana didn’t need to ask. The voice alone was enough to make her claws extend, piercing through her manicured fingertips.
Her half-sister. The daughter of the woman who’d shattered her family—her mother’s life.
If her marriage to Wesley was a tragedy since the beginning, then Delilah's dramatic claim of being Wesley's fated mate at their wedding reception had been the final act.
The Regalia elders had shipped the girl off to Switzerland that very night, but the damage was done - Wesley now had permanent proof that Riana was the villain in his love story.
A rather beautiful villain, she thought with a smile.
“Oh, Riana,” her half-sister crooned, saccharine-sweet. “How are—”
“Put Wesley on.” Her voice was ice.
“Mm, he’s… occupied. In the shower.” A deliberate pause that was meant to mock Riana. “We just finished hot yoga. He’s all… slippery.”