Chapter 1

Just as I was excitedly preparing for our mate ceremony, my fiancé Alexander was ambushed.

His wolf took devastating damage, leaving his memories intact for everyone in the world—except me. He erased me completely.

I tried again and again to help him remember.

It only made him despise me more, driving him straight into the arms of his new chosen mate.

Her name was Vivian—a girl who looked eerily like me, but possessed a powerful wolf of her own.

Time after time, he tore my heart to shreds.

He even threw me out of the pack territory, abandoning me to barely survive a brutal rogue attack.

It wasn't until I tumbled down a rocky cliff, broken and bleeding, that his memories finally snapped back. He rushed toward me, weeping, screaming that he remembered who I was.

Too bad. My awakened wolf whispered inside my head: "We don't know him!"

"I told you, I don't know who the hell you are!"

Alexander violently jerked his arm away from my grasp.

Vivian, a she-wolf sent from our ally, the Ridge Pack, stood glued to his side, gloating at my misery.

"Ms. Davis, Alexander doesn't remember you anymore," she purred sweetly. "Why keep embarrassing yourself?"

I couldn't understand. Why did he forget only me?

Before the ambush, I was the one he loved above all else.

I stood frozen, humiliated and pathetic, but I couldn't bring myself to walk away.

Right then, Alexander reached out and clasped a delicate necklace around Vivian's throat.

"Is this for me?!" Vivian gasped in pure delight.

"Yeah. It looks gorgeous on you," Alexander said, his eyes full of tenderness.

My breath hitched. That sapphire necklace—Alexander designed it with his own hands as a surprise for our mate ceremony.

He had been ambushed on his way to pick it up from the jeweler.

"No! You can't!" I blurted out.

Both of them looked up at me.

Alexander’s eyes held a cold, venomous disgust I had never seen before.

He leaned down and pressed a soft kiss to Vivian's neck.

"Only you deserve a sapphire this breathtaking."

I watched Vivian blush with smug satisfaction, stumbling backward a few steps.

Before my tears could spill over, I turned and ran.

Back at our house,

I yanked open the liquor cabinet and poured whatever bottle I grabbed straight down my throat.

In my drunken haze, I saw Alexander standing in the doorway.

Grief-stricken, I threw my arms around him, burying my face in his chest.

It wasn't a dream.

I was actually holding Alexander in my arms.

His body stiffened, but for a second, he didn't shove me off.

Like an instinctive reflex, he muttered under his breath.

"Ella..."

My heart stopped. I jerked my head up to look at him.

Before I could even process it, a brutal force shoved me backward onto the hard floor.

Vivian swayed in front of Alexander, shielding him with an ugly sneer.

"Ms. Davis, have you no shame? Alexander is my mate now."

Those words pinned me like daggers.

I stared at Alexander in utter disbelief.

Whatever tenderness he had shown vanished instantly. He glared down at me, his voice pure ice.

"What the hell are you doing in my house? Pack your shit and get the fuck out."

Before his voice even died down, pack enforcers grabbed me by the arms.

Under his orders, they ransacked every drawer and cabinet, destroying the home I had built with my own hands.

Vases shattered on the floor.

Pastries were stomped into paste.

All our matching mugs and couple items were dumped straight into the trash can.

I bit the inside of my lip, fighting back the burning tears.

"Alex, when your memory comes back, you can treat me however you want. But right now... you can't do this to me."

He let out a harsh scoff.

"If I forgot you, it only proves you never meant shit to me in the first place. What else is there to explain?"

That one sentence sealed my fate.

I was thrown out into the dirt along with my battered luggage.

My stomach flared with agony. I curled up on the pavement, soaked in cold sweat.

Alexander used to strictly forbid me from drinking.

My stomach was notoriously frail.

He had pampered and protected me so well that I had completely forgotten my chronic pain.

Yet tonight, I just wanted to lose my mind in numbness!

Alexander stepped outside, looking down on me like I was dirt under his boots.

His eyes flicked over my pale face and frail frame, a mocking smirk tugging at his lips.

"I heard you don't even have a wolf."

He crouched down, grabbing my chin and forcing my eyes to meet his.

"Werewolves shift at eighteen. How old are you now? Twenty?"

"A pathetic cripple who can't even awaken her own wolf—how the hell did I ever settle for you?"

His voice dripped with revulsion, as if handling toxic garbage.

"You know what the first thing I did when I woke up was? I asked Vivian—'Who is that woman?'"

"She told me you were my fiancée. I almost laughed out loud."

"I'm Alexander, son of the Alpha, the future leader of this pack. How could I ever love a wolfless defect like you?"

He let go of my jaw, wiping his fingers on his pants as if he'd touched something filthy.

"You aren't fit to stand beside me."

He turned his back on me and tossed over his shoulder:

"Get lost. Don't let me ever catch sight of you again."

I lay collapsed on the ground as the rain started to fall.

A drop, two drops, and then a violent downpour.

I had been frail since childhood. While other pack kids ran through the woods all night, I was breathless after a thirty-minute walk.

At eighteen, every wolf my age shifted into their beast, except me.

To my face, pack members stayed quiet, but behind my back, they called me "the pack disgrace."

Only Alexander never cared. He told me he loved me for who I was, not for my wolf.

And now, he didn't even remember.

Rain soaked my clothes, ice seeping deep into my bones.

My fragile body was never built to endure this torture.

My forehead began to burn, and my vision swam.

I tried to push myself up, but my knees buckled, sending me crashing face-first into a puddle.

Nobody came to help.

I collapsed in the rain, a raging fever swallowing my consciousness into black.