“For three years, I was Alpha Laurence's fated mate, a title he never honored. He was in love with another woman, Rosalie, and I was just an inconvenient placeholder he refused to mark. The night my father lay dying, I begged him for the life-saving medicine he had promised to deliver. He was with Rosalie. Through our mental link, I heard her laugh in the background before he cut me off. "Stop bothering me with trivial matters," he snarled. His lover then faked an illness, pulling every senior healer away from my father's side. He died while my mate was choosing a tuxedo with another woman. My father's life was a "trivial matter" to the man who was supposed to be my other half. In his obsession, he had become an accomplice to murder. But he had no idea what I had done. Days earlier, while he was distracted by a call from her, I slipped a single page into a thick stack of documents. He signed it without reading, and with a flick of his wrist, he severed his own soul. He had just signed the Ritual of Rejection.”