The Alpha King's Cursed Breeder

Lyra

Daren was supposed to claim me tonight. Instead, he stood on the raised stage beside Elira Voss, her hand resting on his arm while two hundred wolves watched.

Torchlight stretched my father’s shadow across the dirt floor.

"Tonight," Alpha Corwin’s voice boomed over the crowd, "we complete a bond." He didn't glance toward the tree line, where I stood pressed against a cold pine trunk. "Daren Ashborn. Do you accept this woman as your Luna?"

"I do." The answer left Daren’s mouth without a second of hesitation.

Whispers broke out instantly. Heads turned, eyes searching the dark until they found me. For three years, I had kept our bond a secret. I thought Daren’s silence was patience—that he was just waiting for the right moment to stand beside a girl whose wolf never turned up. I was wrong. He was just waiting to see which way the wind blew before picking a side.

"What about his fated mate?" my cousin sneered from the front row. "Doesn't she get a say?"

Daren’s jaw tightened. Across the fire pit, his eyes locked onto mine—flat and empty.

"There's nothing to say." He turned back to the crowd, raising his voice so it hit every corner of the yard. "I reject the bond. I reject her."

The quiet hope I had carried for years didn't just break—it went completely cold.

"Cursed blood doesn't lead a pack," Daren added, smirking as the crowd leaned into his words. "Lyra Ashborn was never going to be a Luna."

A quiet laugh started near the stage and spread through the crowd. My cousin’s cackle rose above the rest, joined by low chuckles from the elders who had ignored me my whole life.

"Nothing to say to that?" Daren called out, stepping to the edge of the stage. "Not even a thank you, Lyra? I just set you free."

My throat felt raw, but I forced my chin up anyway. "You never asked me. You just waited for two hundred witnesses because you wanted an audience."

Daren’s smirk vanished, his brow furrowing as the murmuring around us shifted tone. "Careful."

"No Alpha in this territory would want your bloodline," he snapped. "I'm just the first one honest enough to say it out loud."

My spine went stiff. I dug my fingernails into my palms until my skin nearly broke, refusing to let my hands shake.

"You'll remember tonight," I said, keeping my voice flat and completely steady. "And it's going to cost you."

I turned on my heel to walk away before he could touch Elira again, but a heavy hand slammed onto my shoulder. Alpha Corwin shoved me back into the light. His nostrils flared, his chest heaving with quiet anger.

"You've embarrassed this pack enough," Corwin growled, his voice vibrating through the dirt. "Get out of my sight. Don't come back to the packhouse tonight—or tomorrow."

I ripped my shoulder out of his grip, turned toward the trees, and ran.

The woods swallowed the sound of the drums and the crowd within seconds. Damp pine needles slid beneath my boots while sharp roots caught at my ankles, but I kept pushing deeper into the dark.

I finally slowed down by a mossy oak, leaning against the trunk to catch my breath. The noise of the clearing was gone, replaced by the heavy silence of the trees, but the sting of two hundred laughing faces still burned. Nineteen years of being treated like a ghost in my own pack, tolerated only because of my father's title. Now even that was gone. Discarded and cast out.

My feet started moving again, carrying me away from the packhouse and the bonfires, straight toward the northern edge where the stone ruins of the old amphitheater sat in the fog.

A flicker of yellow light stopped me dead in my tracks.

Near the broken altar at the center of the ruins, a single lantern swayed in the wind. I dropped behind a shattered granite pillar, pressing my back flat against the cold stone.

"You think you can hide what's coming?" Ionna Greymark’s voice trembled—a frantic sound I had never heard from the Moon Oracle before. "The Moon sees what you're trying to hide."

"The Moon is silent tonight," a man replied. His voice was smooth, unnervingly calm, completely devoid of emotion.

I peeked around the jagged edge of the stone. A tall figure in a heavy black cloak stood over Ionna. The sharp edge of a long blade caught the lantern light. But Ionna wasn't looking at the steel. Her eyes were fixed on the man's exposed wrist, wide with pure terror.

Etched into his skin was a silver mark—a jagged, strange rune unlike anything worn by the packs in this territory.

Ionna opened her mouth to speak again, but the blade moved in a silent, fast arc.

She hit the stone floor without a sound. The lantern knocked over and went out, plunging the ruins into complete darkness.

A sharp gasp tore out of my mouth before I could stop it. My boot slid back on the loose gravel, snapping a dry stick under my heel.

The silence that followed stretched thin as a wire.

"Someone's out there," the calm voice cut through the dark. "Find them. Now."

I bolted.

Low branches whipped across my cheeks and tore at my clothes as I threw myself through the brush. Heavy boots crashed through the thicket right behind me. A harsh howl split the night—not a pack call, but a deep, guttural sound I didn't recognize. A second voice answered from the left, then a third from the right.

I sprinted between the trunks, the freezing air burning my lungs as the shadows shifted around me. But as the footsteps closed in, I realized what was happening.

They weren't trying to catch me. They weren't surrounding me to strike. Every heavy step, every snapped branch, and every low shout was driving me in a straight line—forcing me directly toward the ancient, black boundary stones no wolf was ever allowed to cross.