A brisk wind blew through the branches of the tree outside my window.
It was early March. Five months had passed since I’d woken up in the Houston cemetery in a body not my own.
“Chloe! Hurry your ass up! We’re going to be late!” a female voice rang down the hall.
A lot had changed since then.
I sat at Chloe Danes’ white vanity table. The mirror reflected a face that wasn’t mine.
I didn’t see Claire’s round, pale face. I didn’t see her pudgy tummy or her lank brown hair.
It never got any easier, but today was going to be particularly difficult.
An invitation was sitting beside the vanity table. In curling font were the words:
“Miss Chloe Danes is cordially invited to the mating ceremony of Maxine Simmons and Eugene Harris, with reception to follow…”
It was the same mating ceremony Chloe had been so interested in five months ago at the library.
The Beta of the Texas Pack had found his mate.
Which, as Chloe explained, was a powerful, irrepressible bond between two werewolves that could never be broken.
Even by death. If one mate were to die, the other would shortly follow.
The idea gave me the creeps.
I hated this. I hated looking into the gorgeous reflection in the mirror and knowing that I was a fake.
I startled as Chloe’s words pierced through my reverie.
I bit back a retort. Since returning to her parents’ home, Chloe had become increasingly tense and sarcastic.
I couldn’t entirely blame her. The Danes family could be a bit difficult to deal with.
Chloe and I were still working on privacy. She could hear most of my thoughts, as well as sense my moods and emotions.
Still, sometimes it was easier to talk face-to-face.
I closed my eyes in the “real” world and entered what I had come to think of as my “inner” world.
Even if it only existed in my imagination.
Chloe looked up from her seat on the bed as I entered.
I had to be very careful not to stay too long in this room, since it required going deep into my own thoughts, almost like a trance.
Couldn’t risk Chloe’s family walking in to see me drooling at the mirror.
“Do I have to do this?” I asked wearily.
Coming in here had taken a lot of practice at first.
But I was now becoming more adept at keeping half my focus on the real world—in which I sat at Chloe’s vanity table—and half of my attention on the “mental” world, where I was Claire Hill.
Chloe rolled her eyes. “My mom is one of the event planners for this ceremony. My sister is mated to the press secretary for the Texas Pack.
“Yes, Claire, we have to go to this God-awful party,” Chloe said.
“How’s your wolf?” I asked, knowing what she was really stressing about.
Chloe looked up. “She hasn’t come out from her corner in days.”
I peered over the side of the bed to see the silvery-blonde wolf crouched on the floor near the window, where she spent most of her time.
Since the werewolf part of Chloe’s soul had severed from the rest of her, the wolf had become increasingly listless.
I’d tried several times to shift into her werewolf form, but so far had been unable to shift a single toe.
“You should probably go. You’ll be late,” Chloe said in a tight voice.
“Yeah...I guess. Are you sure you don’t want to try taking control? It might work this time?”
This was something else we had been struggling with—trying to see if Chloe could push her way forward and take control over her own body.
“No. No point, is there?”
I sighed. I could appreciate the difficult situation that Chloe was in but trying to get her to stay positive could be a struggle.
“Okay, well...see you later, I guess?”
“It’s not like you’re going far,” she said, smirking.
My lips tugged upward into an answering grin.
Chloe’s sarcasm could be annoying at times, but I had learned that it was her way of dealing with stress rather than outright bitchiness.
I opened my eyes at Chloe’s vanity table.
Just in the nick of time, as there was a knock on her bedroom door, and a willowy young woman with blonde hair walked in.
She looked similar to my reflection in the mirror, except that her hair was cut into a chic bob.
She eyed my peach dress with a sneer.
“What the hell are you doing in here?” she continued. “Did you not hear me say we’re going to be late?”
Personally, I had to agree.
Caitlyn was three years older than Chloe and had yet to say anything to me that wasn’t at least somewhat passive-aggressive.
I blushed and looked down, which had become my response to almost everything since turning up at the Danes’ house back in June.
Caitlyn rolled her eyes and exited my bedroom without bothering to close the door.
It turned out that resurrecting Chloe had been her parents’ idea.
A week after her death, they’d apparently heard about some guy who claimed that he could bring people back from the dead.
Where did you even look for that? Some sketchy website, like Beta's List?
The magician guy did some kind of ritual in the cemetery, but when Chloe hadn’t popped up out of the ground like a dandelion, they had assumed that he’d failed.
Until their darling daughter showed up on their doorstep a week later.
Or at least the person they thought was their daughter.
No one could explain the delay. The magician had told them that it might not work.
I had been trying to maintain the act ever since, but sometimes I wondered if Chloe’s family wasn’t starting to suspect.
But if there was a rule in Chloe’s family, it was to keep your chin up and never discuss your problems or feelings with anyone.
It was the reason why, after five months, not one of them had talked to me about Chloe’s death or subsequent revival.
I still didn’t even know how she’d died, or why her parents had gone to such lengths to bring her back.
There was no obituary listed online, which was odd enough in itself.
“Chloe! Move your ass, we have to go!” Caitlyn shouted from down the hall.
Chloe was right about one thing. The Texas Pack had spared no expense in the mating ceremony for their Beta.
Eugene Simmons and his bride Maxine danced in the center of a glittering ballroom.
I sat at a table near the front with Chloe’s dad. Caitlyn was on the dance floor, swaying softly to the music with her mate, Barry.
Chloe’s mother, Norma, was running around like a maniac trying to ensure that this extravagant affair went off without a hitch.
My eyes scanned the crowd, trying to find one werewolf in particular among the five hundred or so guests that had gathered for the reception.
I’d seen him again. The handsome man from the blog article last June.
Walking down the aisle of the ceremony hall on the arm of a bridesmaid.
He was freshly shaven, and the muscles of his arms were clearly defined under the tailored tuxedo jacket.
I recognized him instantly as the man I had accidentally scalded with hot coffee on the day I was killed.
He didn’t even glance my way as he proceeded down the aisle, followed shortly by the bride herself.
All through the ceremony, I feasted my eyes on him.
As if the man—I still didn’t know his name—wasn’t entirely out of my league.
Or at least, out of Claire Hill’s league.
Chloe Danes was gorgeous, rich, and from an influential werewolf family. I was just an imposter hiding in her skin.
I could never approach that handsome man while he thought I was her.
“Why aren’t you dancing?” Chloe’s father Jefferson asked, interrupting my restless searching. “It’s not like you to be such a wallflower.”
He was looking at me with something bordering on suspicion.
Chloe had been far more extroverted than me in life, it seemed.
“I—I don’t really like this song.”
Jefferson’s brow creased. “Isn’t this Taylor Swift? I thought you were crazy about her?”
“Yeah—uh— I just meant—” I stammered.
Thankfully, I was saved by the screeching sound of microphone feedback.
Everyone turned to look as a man came to stand near the grand piano that was set up on a raised dais.
My mouth went dry.
“Good evening, everyone,” the man said. His deep baritone sent a shiver right through me.
He settled the microphone into brackets on the roof of the piano and sat down.
“For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Zachary Greyson, the Beta of the Millennium,” he said with a short chuckle.
There were laughs among the guests. Clearly everyone was supposed to know who he was.
Now so did I.
Zachary Greyson.
The Beta of the Millennium.
Chloe had told me enough about the Millennium Wolves for me to understand the weight of his title.
And I thought he was out of my league before.
Zachary leaned into the microphone. “This one is for the newlyweds.”
He began to play.
I watched, completely spellbound, as his fingers flowed like water over the piano keys.
I imagined what those supple hands would feel like on my bare skin.
Indeed, Zachary Greyson was only a few years older than I would be.
If I hadn’t died.
I needed a drink.
I stood from the table and headed for the bar outside the main reception hall.
Twenty minutes and half a gin-and-tonic later, I was trying and failing to focus on anything other than the way Zachary’s fingers had caressed the piano.
Of the beautiful music he had created.
All I really wanted—the whole point of this nightmare evening—was to keep up the ruse that I was Jefferson and Norma’s dearly returned daughter.
“Hey,” a man’s deep voice spoke from behind me. My thighs went weak at the sound of that one small word.
I turned to see Zachary Greyson standing behind me, an unreadable expression on his gorgeous face.
A warm fire ignited in my belly.
He extended a hand toward me, and I blinked at it in disbelief.
His next words sent my heart rabbiting in my chest.
“Would you like to dance?”
