Twenty-one
Nyx grew up in the San Lak pack as its lone orphan, the sole child spared when the Alpha annihilated her entire family for treason. Their bones were scattered across snowdrifts and pine needles—uncles who dared to stand against him, parents who would not fight by his side. Nyx was merely a toddler when the Luna intervened, sparing her life to shield the pack’s warriors from the horror of slaying a child. Raised first by kindly foster parents in a cramped, smoky den, she was later shoved into the sprawling, ramshackle pack house once her caretakers set out on the trail.
From her earliest memories, life there was unrelenting cruelty. She spent long sunless mornings hauling buckets wet laundry around, back-breaking afternoons scrubbing floors until her small hands bled, and bitter nights curled in a corner too cramped to stretch out. School was a luxury often denied—her place was cooking, cleaning and caring for others, and every refusal invited blows. Threats of death and violation followed her like a stench; teenage boys would trap her in shadowed hallways, their whispered promises rattling her insides until she trembled so fiercely she couldn’t hold herself. They never truly harmed her—only drove her terror to the point where dampness pooled between her trembling thighs—then left her there to sob alone on splintered floorboards. It scarcely mattered that her bloodline ran to alphas; most either forgot or never knew.
Nyx never quite fit the mould of her kind. She’d never yearned for transformation, never felt that primal lurch to shift into wolf form and sprint beneath the moon. She carried a constant whisper in her mind—her wolf, Skyla—but Skyla’s paws could not tear across open tundra. In exchange for this muted existence, Nyx had lost nearly every heightened sense that defined her brethren: the keen smell of spring’s first thaw, the prickling awareness of distant footsteps. Yet she bore a rare gift of her own—an untested power to mend flesh and bone.
Now only two months remained until her seventeenth birthday—the day she would finally be counted an adult. Freedom gleamed just beyond the horizon of her life: once declared of age, the pack would be required to pay for her labour, and she would have coin enough to finish her final year of school. Nyx’s sharp mind had carried her through stolen lessons and whispered tutoring; her grades were immaculate despite a pitiful attendance history. University, a life beyond the pack’s shadow, beckoned like dawn’s first light. She would not slip away in the dark, a fugitive on frozen trails—she would step into the sun, her head held high, unbound. No Luna’s oath, no Alpha’s bloodline, no hollow pack rituals chained her here. In just a year, she would walk out the door and vanish into the world she had always dreamed of owning.
It was the alphas’ only son’s 21st birthday today. Every female without a mate who had less than 6 months to go before their 17th birthday, and therefore a chance of feeling some of the mating bond, was expected to attend. Nyx did everything she could to avoid the boy alpha; he and his friends had been some of her worst tormentors over the years. Their favourite game was cornering Nyx, locking her in small cupboards despite her claustrophobia, throwing spiders and worms on her hair, and taking her food. They took delight in generally making her life hell.
Nyx had been sitting in the back of the room while the young alpha circled the other women looking for his Mate. Wolves usually had one fated Mate, one chance at lifelong happiness and fulfilment. Your Mate is supposed to complete you. They are the perfect other half for you, and when you find them, you never want to leave their side. For a while, you can’t; some couples even follow each other to the bathroom to avoid the pain of even that small separation. Especially in the days after marking one another.
Nyx knew that she would leave the main territory for one of the human towns long before she found her Mate; she knew she would never be fulfilled, never feel the soothing, comforting hand of him, but if he were one of these men, no boys, she would not want to find him. A Mate bond was unbreakable; the only surefire way to sever it would be to kill your Mate or yourself. In reality, it would usually kill both of you anyway. Most wolves longed for the day they found their fated Mate. Nyx longed for the idea of her Mate, but knew that she would probably only face more torture and rejection.
Shifting in discomfort - she had taken a horrible beating from a few of the other girls earlier in the day, and her ribs were broken, she suspected from the bruising. She healed faster than a human, but not as quickly as a wolf. She decided to head into the kitchen for some ice.
Her oversized, holey, men’s, hand-me-down t-shirt pulled up to the edge of her bra, exposing her side, all shades of black and blue. The ice pack pressed against her side.
Nyx sat at the kitchen table, large enough for a dozen people but almost always empty around her. The door creaked open, and she jerked upright, knocking her bruised hip against the wood.
“I wasn’t running away….” She started to say, looking around at the person who entered the room. Finding herself face to face with none other than the young Alpha himself. Her stomach dropped.
Her heart was racing and her palms sweating, her eyes wide, everything else fell away, she could smell him and only him, he smelt of trees and grass, and outside, freedom, it was intoxicating.
’It’s him…..he’s ours, Nyx….. He found us….. Mate!’ She hears Skylar in her head.
Sky was pushing her to move towards him, but Nyx wanted only to be swallowed by the ground. “M… Mate?”, she whispered uncertainly; the feeling was faint because of her age, but unmistakable all the same.
There was a tingling in her lower abdomen; her feet felt like they were glued to the spot, even as Skylar urged her on: “Go to him!” Idiot! Touch him! Kiss him! We need him!’ Nyx didn’t reply. She stood, staring up at him like an idiot.
Thorne had been conversing with a perfectly polished but absolutely vapid brunette when the sweetest, brightest scent crossed his path. ‘Mate… that’s Mate… follow her,’ Eli howled in his head, surprising Thorne as Eli rarely spoke to him, preferring actions to words. Thorne struggled to maintain his composure, his eyes dilating and his concentration split between the pointless conversation about car colours and tracking the scent of his Mate, who apparently was in the room after all.
‘Mate…Mate…Mate’, Eli growled, increasingly frantic. Thorne eventually managed to extricate himself from the brunette, not even sure why he started the conversation in the first place any more. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply.
*Fuck fuck fuck*
Her scent was fading now; she’s moved.
Thorne tracked the scent with a single-minded determination, shoving other girls and women out of the way as he passed, grunting in an approximation of an apology. He followed the scent through the room and out through the small door into the kitchen used only by the staff.
“M….Mate,” the sweetest voice, and the fruity scent - what was that? Pineapple? Mango? No… it was something uniquely her that couldn’t be named.
Thorne’s eyes found her at last. He took in the bruises visible on her too-thin body, the scruffy blonde hair, the confused and wary blue eyes. The tatty hand-me-down clothes and the ice in her hand.
Nyx. How did he miss this? The girl had lived under the same roof as him since she was about 7 years old. He shook his head. No, the traitor’s daughter could not be his Mate. She could never be the Luna that the pack deserved. What the actual fuck was the moon goddess playing at? To pair him, Thorne Mitchell, with… with… trash.
She looked terrible: malnourished and tired, dressed in rags and with no apparent care for her appearance, broken nails and hair long overdue a cut. Had his mother made the girl prepare all the rooms single-handed? Part of him hoped not, but the bigger part was simply confused why he cared. What did it matter to him if she was worked to death?
