Chapter One – The Bond That Burned
The Moon Goddess had a cruel sense of humor.
I’d waited my whole life for this moment — the pull of the bond, the lightning strike of recognition, the whisper of destiny in my blood. When my eyes locked on his across the training grounds, it was everything the stories promised. My heart stuttered, my wolf surged forward, and one word echoed in my mind.
Mate.
Alpha Darius.
Strong. Commanding. The kind of wolf every female dreamed of. And he was mine.
But instead of claiming me, instead of pulling me into his arms like every fantasy I’d ever had, his lips curved into something sharp. Cruel.
“I reject you.”
The words sliced deeper than claws, shredding through the bond before it had the chance to settle. My knees nearly buckled, my wolf howled inside me, clawing to reach him. The pain was blinding, like my soul was being torn in two.
And then, before I could even breathe, she stepped out from behind him. Selene. Beautiful, perfect Selene — the Beta’s daughter. She slid her arm through his as if she belonged there, tilting her chin at me with a victorious smirk.
Darius’ voice carried across the training grounds, loud enough for every wolf to hear.
“This is my chosen mate. My Luna.”
Gasps rippled through the pack. Whispers. Stares. My heart cracked in my chest as I stood frozen, fighting to breathe. The bond still tugged, cruel and unrelenting, urging me toward him even as he paraded her in front of me.
And the worst part? He made sure I watched.
Every touch. Every smile. Every lingering kiss Selene pressed to his jaw as they walked past me, the Alpha and his Luna, basking in the pack’s approval.
My wolf whimpered, broken. But I forced myself to lift my chin, nails biting into my palms as I held back tears.
If this was the Moon Goddess’s plan, then she hated me.
But I swore, as Darius’s laughter drifted back to me, that one day the bond wouldn’t be my prison. It would be my weapon.
I made it back to my tiny room on the farthest edge of the pack house before the dam finally broke.
Pain. That was all there was. A savage, unrelenting burn ripping through every nerve in my body. The mate bond didn’t care that he’d rejected me — it still pulled, still demanded. Every smile he gave Selene, every touch, every kiss sent knives tearing through my chest.
By the time night fell, the whispers outside my window told me the truth I dreaded.
They were mating.
The howl that tore from my throat was silent, trapped in my chest. My wolf convulsed against me, clawing and thrashing as if trying to escape the cage of my body, desperate to reach him, to answer the bond. Heat and fire consumed me, waves of agony breaking through every bone. I clawed at the floor, at my own skin, but nothing eased it.
The bond was killing me.
Tears blurred my vision. So this was the Moon Goddess’s grand design? To bind me to a man who despised me? To let me wither away while he buried himself in another?
My heart stuttered once, then again, weak and failing.
I thought I might actually die.
The door slammed open.
“Lyra!”
Through the haze of pain, I saw him — Kieran, the Alpha’s Beta. Broad-shouldered, sharp-eyed, loyal to his core. He shouldn’t have cared. I was nothing to him. Nothing to any of them.
But his face twisted with something like fury as he dropped to his knees beside me.
“Moon Goddess… you’re burning alive.” He caught me as I convulsed, his hand pressing against my cheek. “What did he do to you?”
I tried to speak, but only a strangled sob escaped. My body arched, the bond screaming with every movement Darius made with Selene just floors above us. My soul was being torn to ribbons.
Kieran’s arms wrapped around me, anchoring me in the storm. “Hold on,” he growled, his wolf’s aura pouring over me in protective waves. “Don’t you dare give up, Lyra. Don’t let him destroy you.”
I clung to the sound of his voice, the strength in it, as darkness threatened to swallow me whole.
And somewhere, through the agony, through the humiliation and heartbreak, a vow rooted itself in my chest.
If this pain didn’t kill me tonight, I would never let Alpha Darius have power over me again.
