He Stabbed Me and Called It Love — Then I Woke Up as His Enemy’s Bride

Part 1

He Stabbed Me and Called It Love — Then I Woke Up as His Enemy’s Bride

The knife went in so clean I almost didn’t feel it.

Almost.

Dorian’s face was right above mine — gold hair, gray eyes, that familiar half-smile I’d trusted my whole life.

“It’s okay,” he whispered.

His thumb brushed my cheekbone like I was something breakable.

“I’m here, Vera.”

I opened my mouth to ask why.

What came out was blood.

I hit the forest floor hard, dead leaves crackling underneath me, and the only thought in my head was: this doesn’t make sense.

Dorian would never.

Dorian was my brother, my partner, my whole reason for surviving the worst years of my life.

And yet there he was — watching me bleed out with those calm, beautiful eyes — not even flinching.

I tried to grab his wrist.

He stepped back.

Then he drove the knife in again.

The memories came with each blow.

Him teaching me to track at twelve years old.

Both of us running under a full moon, laughing too hard to stay upright.

The night he pulled me out of a frozen river and swore he’d never let anything happen to me.

I’d given him everything.

Every fight, every scar, every sleepless night guarding his back while the world tried to tear our pack apart.

And this was what I got.

I died absolutely furious, his name on my lips like something I wanted to spit.

Then I woke up.

Wrong bed.

Wrong room.

Wrong everything.

The ceiling above me was carved plaster, not pine branches.

The sheets were silk — actual silk — and two girls in matching black uniforms hovered over me like I was a bomb about to go off.

“My lady, you’re awake,” one breathed.

“We were so worried.”

I looked around for whoever they were talking to.

There was no one.

Just me.

Just this body that felt like borrowed shoes — too soft, too light, the center of gravity tilted somewhere unfamiliar.

A woman in an emerald dress swept in and grabbed my hand, calling me daughter, and I was too stunned to yank it back.

It took a mirror to make it real.

There was a girl at the vanity across the room — delicate, blonde, baby-blue eyes, the kind of face that made people automatically lower their voices.

She frowned when I frowned.

She raised her hand when I raised mine.

Her name was Elena Hartwell.

And for reasons I still couldn’t explain, I was living inside her body.

I found out fast where I was.

The Voss estate.

Enemy territory.

The one place on this earth where Vera Ashford — the Demon Wolf, the rebel fighter, the most-wanted rogue in three packs — would be thrown in the deepest dungeon on sight.

Except nobody knew I was Vera.

They thought I was Elena, a proper Omega, the future Luna of this pack.

I told myself to run.

Disappear into the countryside with this pretty face and never look back.

Then Dorian walked through the front doors.

He was carrying something wrapped in bloodstained linen.

I knew before he set it down.

I knew before he pulled back the cloth and the room went still.

My body.

My real body.

Dark hair matted with blood, multiple wounds in the chest, eyes already glassing over.

“These are the remains of the Demon Wolf,” Dorian said.

His voice was proud.

The room erupted.

People clapped.

Someone laughed.

Alpha Aldric nodded like he’d received a particularly fine gift.

And I stood there in silk slippers and a powder-blue dress, watching them celebrate my murder.

Then the crowd parted.

Nikolai Voss moved through the room the way he always had — like the air stepped aside without being asked.

I knew that walk.

I’d studied it across a dozen battlefields.

He was Aldric’s son.

My enemy’s heir.

The wolf I’d spent years trying to outmaneuver.

And apparently, according to the maids who’d dressed me that morning — my fiance.

He knelt beside my body.

His hand hovered over the linen and didn’t pull it back right away.

The whole room held its breath.

When he finally lifted the cloth, something crossed his face — not triumph, not relief.

Just emptiness.

He stood without a word and left.

I should have been glad he didn’t care.

Instead, something pulled tight in my chest at the blankness in his eyes.

Dorian was smiling.

The crowd was cheering.

The only person in that room not celebrating my death was the man I’d been raised to destroy.

That night I lay in Elena’s enormous bed and made a list.

One: find out what Dorian was planning.

Two: stop him before he handed everything our people had built straight to the enemy.

Three: make him answer for what he did.

The only path to any real power in this estate ran straight through Nikolai.

Through the mating ceremony.

Through becoming his Luna.

The thought should have made me furious.

It didn’t.

That scared me more than the knife ever had.

A week passed.

Then another.

I fought Dorian for scraps of information through hallways and half-overheard conversations.

I eavesdropped from trellises in the dark and heard things that turned my stomach.

I trained with the guards until my borrowed arms shook and Captain Breck looked at me with something that wasn’t quite pity.

I cried — in Nikolai’s arms, in a dark garden, beside a funeral pyre I wasn’t supposed to be anywhere near — over things I couldn’t explain without revealing everything.

And somewhere in all of it, without meaning to, I started to understand him.

Nikolai Voss was nothing like what Mira had told us.

He lit funeral fires for enemies.

He argued with his father over the rights of people who’d spent years trying to kill them.

He sat quietly at my bedside when I shattered and didn’t ask for a single thing in return.

That made him more dangerous than any weapon.

Tonight, standing at the top of the grand staircase in a dress that cost more than I’d ever owned, his hand warm at the small of my back — I understood exactly how trapped I was.

Across the ballroom, Dorian lifted a glass in my direction.

His smile hadn’t changed at all.

White amber and frost — his scent hit me before I could brace for it, and for one terrible second I was back in the forest, leaves under my palms, tasting copper.

Then the heat started.

It came on slow, then all at once — warmth spreading beneath my skin, everything suddenly too sharp, too close.

Dorian set down his glass.

Started walking toward me.

His eyes moved over me the way they always had — like I was something that belonged to him.

He stopped in front of me and extended his hand.

“I believe they’re playing our song,” he said.

I looked at that hand.

I thought about the knife.

About the forest.

About the hills behind the estate, lit up with torches — all the people who’d stood in the dark because no one would let them any closer.

A smile curved my lips.

I placed my hand in his, and smiled like I wasn’t already planning exactly how he was going to fall.