BITTEN UNDER THE RAINBOW

Chapter 1 – The Snap

Kael

The treaty grounds smelled like old blood and wet pine.

I stepped out of the black SUV and shut the door harder than necessary. The sound landed final. Soren’s boots hit the gravel a second later, exactly one pace off my left shoulder the way they always did. The rest of the Ironfang contingent followed in silence. We had come armed. Everyone had.

The neutral valley sat between our territories like a wound that had never closed properly. Ironfang to the west. Neon to the east. The old wooden hall in the center looked like it had been waiting for this meeting longer than any of us had been alive. Torches already burned along the path even though the sun hadn’t fully dropped. The light was the color of rust.

My wolf paced under my skin, restless and unhappy. It disliked being this close to Neon land. It disliked the idea of sitting across a table from people we had spent generations treating as a slow-acting poison. Most of all, it disliked that the rogues had become organized enough to force us here at all.

Three coordinated attacks in twenty-eight days. Supply lines cut. Two outer patrols erased so cleanly the bodies were left in neat rows when we found them. Whoever led the rogues wasn’t some half-mad exile. He was patient. He was smart. And he wanted both packs bleeding.

I adjusted my cuffs and walked toward the hall.

Inside, the air was thicker. Woodsmoke. Polished steel. The overlapping scents of two packs that had never learned how to share the same oxygen. Ironfang smelled of cold forest, iron, and old loyalty. Neon smelled sharper—city rain, ozone, something almost electric that made the back of my throat itch.

The long table had already been set. Our side on the left. Theirs on the right. A strip of empty space down the middle like a border no one intended to cross.

Elder Marrow took his seat with the slow dignity of a man who still believed the world ran on rules he had memorized as a boy. The other elders followed. I remained standing a moment longer, scanning the room the way I scanned every room—exits, threats, the order in which people would die if things went wrong.

Then the Neon Pack arrived. They entered without ceremony. No measured ranks. No formal steps. Just a loose cluster of fighters in dark clothes and one man at the front who moved like the floorboards already belonged to him.

Riven Cross.

I had seen the photographs. I had read every report. None of it prepared me for the actual presence.

Silver-white hair fell past his ears in a way that should have looked careless and instead looked deliberate. He was leaner than me, built for speed rather than force, and he carried himself with the loose confidence of someone who had won too many fights by being faster than the other person expected. A black sleeveless shirt showed the edge of a crescent moon tattoo on the side of his neck. His eyes were a bright, poisonous green.

What struck me harder than the hair or the eyes was the way the people around him watched him. Not the way warriors watched an Alpha for orders. The way people watched a flame. He didn’t demand attention. He simply owned it.

So this was Neon’s famous Alpha. He looked younger than the reports had suggested. And far too alive.

Those green eyes swept our side of the table once, dismissive, and then landed on me. For a few seconds nothing happened. He gave me that half-smirk I had already decided I disliked. The kind that said he found the entire room—including me—mildly entertaining. I held his gaze and let him see exactly how little I was entertained. His smirk deepened a fraction. Then he spoke, voice carrying easily across the space.

“Ironfang still brings its full honor guard to a conversation. I’m flattered.”

“Neon still mistakes arrogance for strategy,” I answered. “I’m not.”

A couple of his wolves shifted. One of mine went very still. The air between the two sides of the table tightened the way it always did when old blood remembered itself.

Riven’s eyes stayed on mine a second longer, still amused, still assessing.

My wolf went silent first. Not calm. Silent in the way a predator goes silent when it has locked onto something it intends to keep.

Then it spoke one word inside my head, clear and absolute.

Mine.

Heat tore through my chest with no warning. My pulse slammed against my throat hard enough that I felt it in my teeth. Every sense sharpened until the room became too loud, too bright, too full of one scent that should not have mattered and now mattered more than breathing.

Ozone. Smoke. Something sweet-edged and dark underneath, like rain on stone.

No.

The recognition landed a heartbeat later, heavier than the physical reaction.

Mate.

Absolutely not.

The moon did not make mistakes. The bond did not choose incorrectly. Whatever this was, it had to be something else.

My wolf did not care about laws. It was already trying to claw its way out of my skin.

I locked it down with everything I had. My fingers dug into the edge of the table hard enough that the wood creaked under the pressure. For half a second my nails threatened to lengthen into claws before I forced them back.

Across the table, Riven Cross had gone completely still. The half-smirk was gone. His pupils had blown wide, swallowing most of the green. A low, involuntary sound scraped out of his throat—half growl, half broken breath. His hand flexed once at his side like he was fighting the urge to reach across the space between us. He felt it too. That knowledge was somehow worse than the bond itself. I could tolerate being cursed by fate. I could not tolerate knowing he was cursed with me.

Lyra Kane, the Neon Beta with the teal-tipped undercut, stepped closer to him and murmured something too low for human ears. He didn’t look at her. He dragged his attention away from me like it cost him, and the loss of that eye contact felt like something tearing.

I finally took my seat. The wood of the chair was solid under me. I used that solidity. I folded my hands on the table so no one would see the tension still locked in them.

Elder Marrow cleared his throat.

“We are here because the rogue threat has escalated beyond what either pack can ignore,” he began. “Three coordinated attacks in twenty-eight days. Supply routes severed. Patrols erased. The leader styles himself Torren Black. We know little else, except that he is not acting like a common exile.”

Someone farther down the Neon side muttered under his breath. Riven’s voice cut through the room before the argument could grow.

“We’re not here to reopen every old wound. We’re here because the alternative is watching both our territories burn.”

I kept my eyes on the map someone had spread across the table.

“Agreed,” I said. The word came out colder than I intended. Better cold than the alternative.

We moved into the details of the attacks. Numbers. Routes. Timing. I forced myself to focus on the information the way I focused on any battlefield report. Containment. Borders. Hierarchy. Clear chains of command. The only strategies that had ever kept Ironfang alive.

Riven pushed back almost immediately.

“Your idea of containment is letting the outer settlements take the first hit while the main forces stay protected,” he said. “Some of those settlements still have children in them.”

“And your idea of cooperation is dismantling every structure that has kept the packs standing for generations,” I answered. “Structure is the only reason either of us still has a territory to argue over.”

His green eyes flicked to mine across the maps. The bond pulsed once, sharp and unwelcome. I saw the same war in his face that I felt under my own ribs—want and rejection locked together with nowhere to go. He looked away first.

The meeting stretched. Proposals were made and rejected. Temporary joint patrols. Shared information. A limited ceasefire on old grievances while the larger threat was handled. Nothing was settled with trust. Everything was settled with the understanding that the alternative was worse.

When the light outside the high windows had dropped low enough to turn the torchlight dominant, Elder Marrow folded his thin hands.

“There is one additional matter of security,” he said. “The rogues have shown they can strike deep. Until the immediate threat is assessed, the two Alphas will remain on neutral ground under joint guard. A secure cabin has been prepared half a mile from this hall. You will both stay there tonight. Separate rooms. Continuous watch. In the morning we reconvene.”

No one moved. No one breathed loudly enough for me to miss it.

The cabin was already prepared. Two rooms. Guard rotations already assigned. Marrow’s voice carried the calm certainty of a decision made well before this meeting began. I filed the observation away and did not examine it further. The rogue threat was real. That was enough.

Riven’s voice was very quiet. “You’re ordering us to share a building.”

“I am ensuring neither of you is taken in the night and used as leverage,” Marrow replied. “The cabin is defensible. The alternative is returning to your respective territories and risking another coordinated strike while you are separated and vulnerable. The council has already decided.”

My wolf surged at the word separated . The bond did not want distance. It wanted the opposite of distance. It wanted the end of every wall I had spent my life building.

I kept my face empty.

“Understood.”

Riven’s eyes met mine one more time. Something complicated moved through them—anger, reluctance, and underneath it the same helpless recognition I was still trying to crush.

“Fine,” he said. “But if any Ironfang wolf so much as breathes wrong in my direction during the night, the treaty ends before dawn.”

“Likewise.”

We rose.

The walk to the cabin was short and silent. Two of my warriors and two of his formed a loose perimeter. The structure itself was older than the hall—thick logs, a steep roof, a single heavy door reinforced with iron bands. Someone had lit a fire inside. The windows were small and high.

Soren caught my eye before the door. A question lived in his steady gaze. I gave the smallest shake of my head. Not here. Not yet.

Riven stepped through the doorway first. I followed.

The cabin was one main room with a stone hearth, a rough table, two chairs, and two narrow doors leading to separate sleeping quarters. The air already smelled of woodsmoke. Underneath it, fresher and more dangerous, was him.

The door shut behind us with a solid thud. The guards took their positions outside.

For a long moment neither of us spoke.

Riven stood near the hearth, back half-turned, shoulders tight. The fire painted the edge of his silver hair in shifting light. I remained by the door, every muscle locked. I had led Ironfang through five years of scarcity and challenge and blood. I had buried my father. I had put down internal threats without hesitation. I had never once doubted the shape of the world I was meant to protect.

Now the moon itself had marked the one person I was supposed to oppose. Riven turned his head just enough to speak over his shoulder. His voice was rough.

“This doesn’t mean anything.”

I met the green of his eyes in the firelight.

“It means everything,” I said. “And we are going to pretend it doesn’t until one of us figures out how to survive it.”

Outside, the wind moved through the pines.

Inside the cabin, the bond waited between us—impatient, absolute, and completely uninterested in the war we had come here to prevent.

We had arrived to negotiate a treaty between two packs. Instead, the moon had declared war on both of us. I walked to the door of the left-hand room without another word and shut it behind me.