I agreed to be his bride for one year. He already knew fate had chosen me forever.

I married an Alpha to save my mother's house.
I didn't know I was walking straight into a contract with my fated mate.

Ninety days. That's all I have before the bank takes the last thing my mother left me.

Then Alpha Rafe Hartwell offers me an impossible way out.

Marry him. Move into his estate. Stand beside him as his Luna. Play the devoted wife for one year, and every debt hanging over my head disappears.

One contract marriage. One year. No promises. No forever.

Rafe is cold, controlled, and impossible to read.

Except whenever I get too close.

His eyes follow me across crowded rooms. His wolf reacts to my touch. He keeps putting distance between us as if being near me might make him lose the control he guards so fiercely.

Living under the same roof was supposed to be part of the arrangement.

Instead, forced proximity begins turning our convenient marriage into something dangerously real.

Then my own wolf starts changing.

A strange power wakes inside me. A mysterious mark appears on my skin. An ancient Moonborn bloodline I never knew I carried begins pulling me toward the very man who refuses to tell me why he chose me.

Because Rafe didn't choose his temporary bride by accident.

He knew who I was before I ever signed his contract.

He knew my blood might be the only hope of saving his dying nephew.

And from the moment I walked into his study, he knew the truth he was most afraid to tell me.

I am his fated mate.

By the time his secrets finally come apart, I'm already falling for the Alpha who was never supposed to become anything more than my husband on paper.

So I walk away.

But an ancient family curse is closing in. A rival Alpha has discovered what I am. And the mate bond between us refuses to disappear simply because my trust did.

Now Rafe says he no longer wants the woman bound to him by a contract.

He wants the woman who chooses him freely.

But after everything he hid from me, I haven't decided whether this Alpha deserves my forever... or whether his temporary bride is finally ready to walk away for good.