Chapter 1
The Girl Before the Moon
Kendra
Before the moon chose me, I was just a girl in love.
I didn’t know how fragile that made me.
MoonRidge had always felt like home in the safest way—like the earth itself had decided to keep me. The pack lands stretched wide and green, the air always smelling faintly of pine and rain, and the people… they were my people. Or at least, I thought they were.
I was eighteen and unshifted, which in our world meant I was watched carefully, protected carefully, and spoken to carefully. Too carefully. Everyone knew what I was meant to be long before I did.
A future Luna.
They never said it outright, but it lived in their eyes when they looked at me. In the way elders smiled softly. In how warriors dipped their heads just a little lower when I passed. In how my brother, Jax, walked half a step behind me, broad-shouldered and silent, like he could shield me from fate itself if it dared touch me wrong.
And then there was Mack.
Mack Moon had been mine long before the moon ever whispered his name into my soul.
We grew up together—running through the woods barefoot, laughing until our sides hurt, stealing apples from the orchard near the eastern border. When he shifted at sixteen and became Alpha soon after, everyone said it was only natural that I would be his Luna one day.
I believed them.
I believed him.
He was charming in a way that made people lean closer when he spoke. Handsome in that sharp, confident way that made other girls sigh and look away when he caught them staring. But with me, he was softer—or so I thought. He brushed my curls back from my face like I was something precious. He kissed my forehead and called me his future.
“You’re safe with me, Kendra,” he used to say, his voice low and sure. “Always.”
I clung to those words like a promise etched in stone.
The night before my eighteenth birthday, we sat beneath the stars at the edge of the training grounds. The moon was nearly full, glowing heavy and bright, and my chest felt tight in a way I couldn’t explain.
“I’m nervous,” I admitted, pulling my knees to my chest.
Mack smiled at me—slow, knowing. “You’ll be fine. You’re strong.”
I remember thinking how his hand felt warm where it rested on my thigh. Familiar. Comforting.
I remember thinking that if he was my mate, then the moon had been kind.
I didn’t see the way his eyes hardened when he thought I wasn’t looking.
I didn’t notice how his smiles never quite reached his eyes anymore.
I didn’t understand why Kyle—the beta—had started watching me with something like worry.
I didn’t know that love could be a mask.
If I had known then what I know now, I would have run. I would have begged my brother to take me far from MoonRidge before the moon rose fully and claimed me.
But I stayed.
I stayed because I trusted the boy who held my hands.
Because I believed in the pack that raised me.
Because I didn’t yet understand that sometimes, the most dangerous monsters are the ones who promise to protect you.
The moon was only one night away from changing everything.
And I had no idea that by the next full rise, I would no longer belong to myself at all.
