Mateless
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher or author, except as permitted by U.S. copyright lawI was eighteen when the moon told me I would never be loved the way my bones were built to be loved.
It wasn’t dramatic at first. No thunder. No screaming wind. Just the familiar pull in my chest that came every full moon, that gentle ache like something inside me was stretching its arms after a long sleep. I’d grown up with it. All of us had. Betas like me and Lucas felt it quieter than the Alphas, steadier than the Omegas. We were the backbone—that’s what Dad always said. The ones who held the pack together when instincts got messy.
I believed him. I believed everything would make sense eventually.
That night, I went into the trees alone.
The clearing behind our pack land had always been mine. Lucy used to come with me when we were kids, before she got brave and I stayed careful. Before life started counting down toward things like turning eighteen and finding your mate. The grass there was silvered by moonlight, every blade glowing like it had secrets it was itching to tell. I sat cross-legged in the dirt, pressed my palms to the ground, and breathed the way Mom taught me.
Open yourself. Listen.
The moon answered.
She didn’t appear the way the old stories say she does—no woman woven from starlight, no crown of crescent moons. She came like gravity. Like truth settling into my marrow whether I wanted it there or not.
Lani, she said, and my name sounded older in her voice. Heavier.
I smiled. Gods help me, I smiled. Because I thought—this is it. I thought she was finally going to tell me who he was. Somewhere out there, my other half was breathing under the same sky. Somewhere, a boy was growing into the man whose heartbeat would one day line up with mine.
Instead, the ache in my chest sharpened.
Your mate has crossed beyond the veil.
I didn’t understand at first. The words slid right off me, meaningless.
“What do you mean?” I whispered, my voice small even to my own ears. “I’m only eighteen.”
The moon did not soften.
He died before your paths could cross.
I remember the sound I made. Not a scream. Not a sob. Something broken and animal that ripped itself out of my throat without asking permission.
“No,” I said. “No, that’s—no. That’s not how this works.”
I waited for her to correct herself. To say I spoke too soon or the threads shifted. Anything.
Instead, she showed me fragments.
A boy I never touched. Hands I never held. A laugh I would never hear except as an echo that wasn’t really sound at all. I felt him the way you feel warmth after a fire goes out—proof that something existed, even though it’s gone now.
I dropped to my knees.
“Why?” I asked her. I didn’t know who I was asking for. Him. Me. The universe.
Because fate is not mercy, she said. It is balance.
Balance.
That word lodged in my ribs like a splinter.
“So that’s it?” I demanded. Tears blurred the moon into a smear of white. “I just—what—live without him?”
The silence stretched. When she answered, it was quieter.
You will live. Loving is a choice. Mates are not promises.
The connection snapped like a thread pulled too hard, and suddenly I was alone in the clearing, dirt under my nails, chest heaving like I’d run for miles.
I stayed there until dawn.
Lucas knew something was wrong before I said a word.
That’s the thing about being twins—we’re not, technically, but we might as well be. Same birthday. Same rank. Same steady Beta pulse that kept us grounded while everyone else’s emotions ran hotter. He was sitting on the porch when I came home, elbows on his knees, eyes sharp.
“You look like hell,” he said gently.
I sat beside him and stared at the horizon, where the sky was just beginning to bleed color.
“He’s dead,” I said.
Lucas went still. “Who?”
“My mate.”
The word tasted wrong in my mouth, like something borrowed that I had no right to say anymore.
He didn’t ask questions. He just wrapped an arm around my shoulders and pulled me in. I shook against him, years of expectation collapsing into a pile of useless dreams. Lucas held me like he always did—solid, quiet, unbreakable.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured. And because he was my brother, because he loved me, his voice broke too.
Lucas found his mate last year.
I was happy for him. Truly. I smiled at the bond snap into place, watched the way his whole world tilted toward her like gravity had finally claimed him. Mason—our Alpha—clapped him on the back and laughed, said it was about damn time someone in this pack got lucky.
I laughed too.
Then I went to my room and cried until my ribs hurt.
Lucas never made me feel like I was lacking. He never pitied me. But sometimes I caught him watching me when his mate laughed, his eyes soft with something like guilt, and that hurt worse than anything else.
Mason still hasn’t found his.
He jokes about it, loud and easy, says the Moon Goddess must be saving the best for last. He doesn’t know what she told me. None of them do, except Lucas. Sometimes I wonder if Mason senses it anyway—the way I flinch when mates are mentioned, the way my smile is always a fraction too slow.
Lucy turns eighteen next month.
She’s vibrating with hope, already planning outfits for the full moon like fate cares what you’re wearing when it rearranges your life. She talks about the pull, about the dreams, about how she just knows her mate will be someone perfect and surprising and real.
I nod. I tease her. I tell her she deserves every good thing.
And I mean it.
But at night, when the pack sleeps and the moon climbs high, I press my hand to my chest and mourn a boy whose name I will never know. I mourn the life that was written for me and erased before I could read it.
The Moon Goddess said loving is a choice.
Maybe one day, I’ll believe her.
For now, I wake up every morning with a scar I can’t see and a bond that never got the chance to break—because it never had the decency to exist at all.
And somehow, heartbreak like that still leaves you breathing.
Even when you’re not sure you want to be
