The full moon bled silver across the obsidian sky as the drums of fate pounded through the clearing.
Tonight, the forest held its breath.
All around Lyra Vale, young wolves stood in perfect lines beneath the Moonblood Stone, their eyes aglow with anticipation, hunger, and the promise of destiny. Mates would be found. Bonds would ignite. Weak would rise. Or fall.
She clenched her trembling hands as the wind whispered her name like a curse.
"Lyra Vale."
Her bare feet scraped over the ancient stone floor as she stepped into the circle. Dozens of eyes tracked her. Some amused. Some pitiful. Most cruel. She heard the snickers before she saw the sneer.
Alpha Kieran. Her lifelong crush. Her childhood friend. The one she'd dreamed was her mate.
He looked at her like she was filth.
Her heart thundered in her chest as the light from the Moonblood Stone pulsed, ready to reveal the truth. One by one, the sacred magic would draw mates together, revealing bonds with a golden glow that seared across the skin.
She waited. Hope like a blade in her throat.
The silence stretched.
And then… nothing.
No glow. No bond. No wolf rising within her. Just the hollow echo of rejection.
Kieran stepped forward, lips curled in disdain. "You thought you were mine?"
Her breath hitched.
He smirked cruelly. "I wouldn't mate with a defect. You don't even have a wolf, Lyra. You're a disgrace."
A gasp rippled through the crowd. Someone laughed. Another spat at her feet.
"I—" she tried to speak, but the words failed. Her vision blurred, not from tears—but from rage, shame, and something primal twisting deep inside her chest.
"Get out of the circle," Kieran snarled. "You're polluting the sacred ground."
"Alpha Kieran," the Elder began, but he raised a hand.
"She's rejected. Officially. Let the bond be broken before it ever was."
The finality of it cracked something inside her.
Lyra turned, stumbling backward from the circle, from the stares, from the whispers. Her heartbeat roared in her ears as she fled into the trees, her ceremonial robe catching on branches, her bare skin slashed by thorns.
She didn't stop running.
Not when the cold crept into her bones.
Not when her knees gave way and slammed into mud.
Not when she reached the edge of the forest everyone feared—the Cursed Woods, where rogues and nightmares were said to dwell.
Her breath hitched as she collapsed to the ground. The sting of rejection burned like acid in her chest. Her heart felt like it had been carved out with claws.
She curled on the forest floor, alone. Empty.
Unwanted.
"Why…" she whispered, voice hoarse. "Why wasn't I enough?"
And then—
A shift in the air. The scent of smoke. Power.
Something ancient stirred in the shadows.
From the darkness between the trees, two golden eyes glowed like twin suns. Watching. Stalking. Claiming.
A voice, low and rough like thunder wrapped in silk, rumbled through the silence.
"You are mine."
Lyra's breath caught in her throat. She tried to scramble back, but her limbs refused to move — too cold, too bruised, too broken.
Those eyes didn't blink.
They advanced, slow and predatory, and soon a figure emerged from the shadows — tall, cloaked in black, with silver-trimmed armor that shimmered beneath the moonlight. His presence pressed against her skin like thunderclouds before a storm.
She could barely breathe.
"W-What are you?" she whispered, though her soul already screamed the answer.
He stepped into the moonbeam.
A man. A wolf. A prince. A predator.
His features were sculpted in a way no boy's ever were — sharp, noble, lethal. Midnight hair swept back from a pale, regal face. His lips were set in a hard line, but his eyes… those golden eyes glowed with something ancient. Something wrong.
"Don't be afraid, little wolf," he murmured, voice like velvet over broken glass.
"I'm not—" she choked on the lie, heart slamming against her ribs.
"You reek of pain," he said, crouching beside her. His fingers brushed her cheek. She flinched. "Rejection. Shame. But also... something more."
She didn't speak. Couldn't.
His touch drifted to her neck — to the spot where a bond mark should have appeared. He frowned.
"No mark," he said softly. "Yet your scent... calls to me."
Then his eyes snapped back to hers, darker now, wild.
"Do you feel that?" he growled, low and feral. "The pull? I shouldn't. Not to you. You're not mine."
And yet, even as he said it — his hand closed around her arm.
The air shimmered. Heat bloomed between them like fire set to dry grass.
"No," Lyra whispered, shaking her head. "I don't want this. I don't even know you."
He looked at her for a long moment. Something shifted in his gaze — from curiosity to war.
Then… he bit her.
Not gently. Not sweetly. His teeth sank into the tender flesh between her shoulder and neck — not enough to maim, but enough to mark.
Lyra screamed as fire seared into her bloodstream.
Her skin burned. Her mind cracked.
The bond formed — and it was nothing like the golden light of the Moonblood Stone.
It was dark. Violent. Binding.
A power surged through her veins, awakening something that had long slumbered beneath her skin. Not her wolf — something else.
When he pulled back, his lips were stained with blood. Her blood.
"You don't know me," he said quietly, licking the wound closed. "But you will."
Her body convulsed as the magic settled.
She was marked.
Claimed.
Bound.
His breath touched her ear as he spoke the words that would change everything.
"You belong to me now."