Chapter 1
## Anja POV
Once upon a time, the worlds of witches and packs were separated by a line of hatred and mutual animosity. Everything changed seven years ago, on a rainy evening, when I found an injured boy deep in the forest.
I was only sixteen and not exactly the athletic type. When I saw him in the woods, I was terrified. He was massive, tall, with shoulders as broad as the trunk of an old oak tree—even unconscious, he seemed dangerous. Dragging him back to our settlement was the most physically exhausting thing I’d ever done. When I reached the settlement, I was covered in his blood, which stuck to my hands, mixed with my own salty sweat.
The elders reacted with immediate expulsion.
“It’s a werewolf!” they thundered, their voices echoing across the square. “Get rid of him, Anja!”
I stood up for him, trembling all over, but feeling a strange certainty that didn’t come from my mind, but from my very heart. I promised that I would take responsibility for him, that I would take full blame for his every action. They agreed.
As I was leaving the Elders’ meeting, I saw her. Rebecca. She was standing in the shade of the trees, surrounded by a group of admirers who hung on her every word. At nineteen, she was the embodiment of perfection—tall, with a bust that drew the eye like a magnet, and a face that looked as if it had been painted by the finest artist. Not like me: a girl most people preferred to avoid looking at. I wore unfashionable, wire-rimmed glasses that slid down to the tip of my nose at the slightest movement. I was far from slender, and self-consciousness made me feel clumsy with every step. The only thing I liked about myself was my red hair, though even that usually looked like a messy pile of hay.
When her gaze fell on me—on my bloodstained shirt and trembling hands—she laughed, a sound like the whistling of the wind.
“Did you have to find an injured mutt just to get a guy to even look at you, Anja?” she snapped with a mocking tone that cut into my skin deeper than thorns.
I felt the blood rush to my face. To her, I was nothing but a laughingstock, the “ugly cousin” who couldn’t even hum a simple spell correctly without stuttering. But she didn’t know that when I touched the stranger’s wound, I felt a vibration. It was like the first bolt of lightning striking my soul.
I took care of him nonstop. For several days, he had a very high fever—those were the worst moments of my life. I thought he was going to die, but eventually his condition stabilized.
And finally, he woke up. He lifted his eyelids, revealing eyes of a mesmerizing shade of blue.
“Hi,” I said uncertainly.
“Hi,” he replied in a hoarse, magnetic voice. He twirled a few strands of my loosely hanging hair between his fingers. “Spark,” he added, giving me that disarming smile with the dimple in his cheek. I fell in love with that nickname right away.
Now that he’d regained consciousness, it was easier to make sense of everything. I divided my time between taking care of him, school, spell classes, and home. After my parents died when I was fourteen, I was supposed to move in with my aunt’s family. It quickly became clear, however, that this wouldn’t work—Rebecca never missed an opportunity to humiliate me. My aunt and uncle, though they loved their daughter, weren’t blind to her behavior. Instead of forcing me to live with them, they offered a reasonable compromise: I returned to my family home, and they provided me with care, meals, clothes, books—all those everyday essentials. Every day I’d visit them, or my aunt would bring me food to make sure I had everything I needed. Now, however, it was Kaleb who shared this space with me, turning it into more than just an empty house. And once he started getting out of bed, he quickly took over the household chores as a way of thanking me for looking after him.
He told me about himself, about the attack on the pack, about his wolf—Finn. And I opened up to him in a way I hadn’t been able to with anyone else. That’s how our life together began. Kaleb became not only my guest, but my only confidant in a world where I felt increasingly out of place.
“Aaaaah, here we go again!” I exclaimed in frustration, slumping heavily onto the couch in the living room.
“The spells?” he asked, looking at me intently. He knew full well how much this hurt me.
“As soon as I try to start humming, something blocks me,” I confessed, folding my hands across my chest. “It feels like something’s choking me in the throat. I can’t muster even a shred of magic.”
Kaleb thought for a moment, then looked at me with his blue eyes.
“Maybe you’re going about it the wrong way?” he suggested gently. “When I first received the wolf’s gift, Finn was pure chaos in my head. I couldn’t tame him until I learned to quiet my senses. My wolf suggested that I stop fighting the voice and just start… listening to it.”
His words resonated with me. And that’s how our trips to the forest for meditation began. Kaleb wasn’t slacking off either; even though his wounds from the attack were still healing, he returned to physical training with maniacal persistence. I watched him with admiration, seeing how he regained his predatory form with each passing day.
One afternoon, looking at his focused face, I asked timidly:
“Could… could you train with me, too? Since I’m not getting the hang of magic, I at least need to learn to defend myself in some other way.”
Kaleb smiled—it was one of those rare, sincere smiles that made me forget the whole world.
“I’d be happy to, Spark. I’ll teach you everything I know.”
Training with Kaleb became more than just learning to fight for me. I was captivated by him—not just by his strength, but by how naturally he treated me like a human being, not like a doormat, which is what the rest of the clan had gotten me used to. With each passing day, our bond grew stronger through touch as he adjusted my stance, corrected my grip, and when I fell under his weight during exercises, for a split second our bodies touched in a way that turned the oxygen in my lungs into fire.
Despite being distracted by his touch, I was making progress. One day, I finally did it! I took advantage of a moment of his inattention and knocked him off his feet. He ended up beneath my feet, and I, without thinking about the consequences, pinned him down with my weight, straddling his hips.
I was panting heavily, still feeling the adrenaline, and my hands rested on his sculpted, hot chest. I smiled triumphantly from ear to ear, prouder of myself than ever before. But then it dawned on me where I was and what I was doing. Kaleb froze, and something predatory flashed in his blue eyes for a moment. He sat up abruptly, bringing our faces just a centimeter apart. In that closeness, in the scent of his skin, I felt so exposed that I chickened out. I ran away without looking back.
From that day on, the training sessions became awkward. So when the time came for my weekly report to the Council—where I had to describe my “guest’s” activities in detail—I agreed with relief to the suggestion that Kaleb start training others as well.
It was the biggest mistake I could have made.
Suddenly, everyone became interested in him. The teenage girls in the clan, led by Rebecca, suddenly felt a burning need to learn self-defense. When they saw him in person—muscular, sweaty, and often working out shirtless—they lost their heads. Kaleb didn’t seek out company; he was cool and aloof, which only turned them on even more.
“Hey, Wolf,” Rebecca always greeted him in the same defiant way, making her presence known. “Maybe you could show me that stance one more time?” She winked at him, clearly flirting.
Kaleb didn’t even look at her, adjusting his grip on the wooden sword.
“Rebecca, I’ve shown you this a dozen times already. Even kids younger than you have figured it out,” he replied with cool composure. “Anyway, if you want, Spark can demonstrate it for you. She’s the best at it.”
He pointed at me, and there was a note of warmth in his voice that stood in such stark contrast to his behavior toward the rest of us. But I knew better—it was all a facade, so he could hurt me, just like the rest of them.
