Chapitre 1
⚠️ READERS WARNING This story contains dark themes, strong emotions, and violent or disturbing situations. It explores submission, rebellion, loyalty, and survival in a universe where rules are dictated by the pack and by blood. Certain scenes may offend sensitive readers. 👉 Intended for mature audiences only. 👉 Any unauthorized reproduction or distribution is strictly prohibited.
Welcome to the world of Aube — the Alpha’s daughter, sold for peace, but born for war.
AUBE
I still see that moment like a slap in the face. When my father, the feared Alpha Mateus, ordered me to return urgently, I hung up with my heart pounding against my ribs and a tight lump in my throat. I stammered a quick, unconvincing “yes” just to cut the call short, not meaning a single word of it. I tried to act as if nothing were wrong throughout the morning, but it was impossible. I was searching for the best way to run away so I wouldn’t have to see him again. My wolf paced inside me, nervously clawing at the walls of my mind, as if anxiety were choking her too. She felt what was coming long before my eyes could see it.
At noon, when I stepped out to eat—without an appetite, driven simply by the need to escape the suffocating classroom—they were already there. Standing in the middle of the hallway, massive and motionless like stone statues. My father hadn’t done things by halves. He had sent his elite. His finest Alphas. Four men, four absolute tanks who inspired terror whether in human form or shifted.
Their colossal figures blocked the way, forcing the other students to brush past the walls with eyes downturned to bypass them. They all wore heavy black leather jackets, thick, weathered by the road, and emblazoned with our pack emblem embroidered large across the back: an angry wolf’s head, fangs bared, encircled by roaring flames, topped with the words “THE ASPHALT FANGS” and underlined by “MATEUS CLAN.” A symbol that, to those who knew how to read between the lines, meant death or submission. The symbol of Mateus. The symbol of fear.
Their heavy leather boots pounded the hallway floor in a military rhythm. Around us, the air had suddenly grown charged with an electrifying pressure—that aura of pure domination unique to Alphas, heavy as an impending storm. My wolf cowered inside me, ears pinned back, whimpering beneath the weight of their authority. I felt my heart hammering frantically against my ribs and my throat going bone-dry. I didn’t stand a chance. Against four of Mateus’s enforcers, running was an illusion.
That was when the imposing bulk of the twins parted. From between them emerged Nick. “Uncle Nick.” The one who used to carry me on his shoulders when I was a kid, whose pockets smelled of rolling tobacco and the mint candies he gave me in secret during pack runs. Today, his scent of motor oil and wet leather was saturated with a coiled ferocity. His smile held nothing comforting anymore: it stretched into a disturbing mix of resigned affection and implicit threat. His eyes flashed with a brief amber glow, betraying the beast lurking beneath his skin.
“So, kiddo... happy to see us again?”
I didn’t even have time to utter a word. Behind him, Caleb rolled his shoulders and lifted my suitcase with one arm, completely effortlessly. My suitcase. My own suitcase, dragged out from my dorm closet. Zipped shut. Ready.
A wave of nausea washed over me. They had violated my sanctuary. They had broken into my room, gone through my things, and packed up my entire life without even asking. My wolf bared her fangs, revolted by the intrusion, but cowered instantly under Caleb’s steel glare.
Nick nodded, satisfied by my silence. “Let’s go. The bike’s waiting for you.” “The... what?” I stammered, my voice raspy with panic. “You’re riding behind me, kiddo,” he cut in, leaving no room for argument. “And don’t even think about getting picky. We aren’t giving you an inch.”
They flanked me in a tight formation without another word, forcing me forward toward the exit. Their hands didn’t touch me, but the invisible wall of their physical presence and predator pheromones slammed my mind against a wall of terror. I was shaking from head to toe. I tried to inhale deeply to calm the wild galloping of my pulse, but the suffocating air of the hallway refused to reach my lungs.
Outside the university, four towering black motorcycles waited along the curb, their engines idling in a low growl. Their chrome gleamed under the Denver sun, my tormentors’ jackets proudly displaying the clan’s enraged wolf head. To an outsider, they looked like an army of outlaw bikers; to me, they were an escort of executioners.
Nick swung a leg over his bike, revved the V-twin, and turned back to me with a final look—half-gentle, half-threatening, jaw set tight. “You know how this works, Aube. When your father sends us, he isn’t joking around. The pack needs you. Get on, press up against me, and hold on tight with your thighs.”
I obeyed, a lump in my throat, forced to press my chest against his stiff leather jacket. Caleb strapped my suitcase to the back of his own bike. The scent of tobacco, gasoline, and wild wolf emanating from his jacket and body almost made me lightheaded.
No sooner had my arms wrapped around Nick’s waist than the three other Alphas made their bikes roar, producing a symphony of exhaust notes that shook the ground. They tore off in a deafening roar, encircling me like a pack cornering its prey in the middle of a hunting ground. The mechanical rumble and engine vibrations traveled up through my pelvis and echoed deep within my chest.
And in that moment, the truth hit me like a sledgehammer. He hadn’t simply called me back. He had ripped me away from my life. Something terrible was happening back home. I felt it in every fiber of my body, in the frantic pounding of my blood. My life had just shattered.
In Denver, where I had been studying veterinary medicine for a year, I had finally managed to breathe. Far from the filth, the blood, and the primitive violence of our clan, I could already see myself graduated, treating ordinary animals, severed forever from this world of thugs, backfiring bikes, and turf wars. But the supreme authority of the Alpha had just wiped all of that away with a single stroke.
Around us, the human students crossing campus barely stepped aside, annoyed by the sputtering exhaust noise, completely blind to the supernatural threat that had just seized me. To them, it was just a group of noisy bikers. To me, it was the deep, wild, inevitable thunder of a mechanical storm dragging me straight back into hell.
The hours on the road were a long ordeal of relentless vibrations, freezing wind, and mounting fatigue. Clinging to Nick’s jacket, muscles locked and fingers numb from my grip, I watched the urban landscapes of Denver dissolve into the wild, arid stretches of the Southern territory. My wolf paced wild deep inside me, driven mad by the scent of blood and familiar earth drawing near.
Then, the asphalt finally gave way to dirt trails. In a deafening roar of exhausts, the convoy kicked up a thick cloud of ochre dust that rushed into my lungs and clung to our skin. When the bikes finally ground to a halt in the center of the clan’s lair amid a crunch of brakes and gravel, the simultaneous cutting of the engines cast a heavy, almost suffocating silence. All that remained was the ticking of hot metal cooling down.
Barely had I planted a foot on the ground, my legs numb and trembling after climbing off Nick’s bike, when a frail figure rushed toward me. My mother. In tears, her face ruined by anguish and her lips trembling, she grabbed my arms. Without even daring to hug me for fear of delaying what was to come, she simply whispered frantically in my ear: “Your father wants to see you right away... Be good, Aube, I beg you...”
Members of the pack raised their heads. Some froze, others growled, but every one of them knew what it meant: they had brought me back.
My mother walked with me, but stayed behind. She was crying, and that was never a good sign. What had he come up with this time?
Escorted by the four Alphas flanking me like bodyguards, I crossed the underbrush to step over the threshold of the clan’s main bar. It was above this very bar that I had grown up. The smell of stale tobacco, hard liquor, and leather saturated the air.
At the far back of the dimly lit room, seated on his massive leather chair, the patriarch was waiting for me. The whisky glass spun slowly between his thick fingers. The dull clink of ice cubes against crystal was the only sound breaking the suffocating silence of the room. He didn’t even bother to stand. Not a gesture, not an ounce of affection. For Alpha Mateus, hierarchy came before blood, and family was merely another tool to rule the clan.
I stood rooted there, road dust still clinging to my skin, arms numb from hours spent holding onto Nick’s bike. Around me, the atmosphere was thick with his aura of domination—an invisible mass so heavy it nearly buckled my knees. My wolf curled up deep inside my mind, ears pinned back, torn between rage and the instinctual urge to submit to the supreme leader.
“Took you long enough,” he finally muttered in a deep, gravelly voice, without even looking up from the amber liquid.
He set his glass down on the solid wood table with a sharp clack, then finally raised his eyes to me. A gaze of cold steel, devoid of any paternal spark. To him, I had never been anything more than a weakness—a disappointing daughter who preferred running away to university lecture halls over bathing in blood and motor grease.
“Hello, Father,” I said, forcing my voice to stay steady despite the tremor threatening to buckle my legs. “Why rip me away from my classes? Why this escort?”
A thin, mirthless smile stretched his lips, exposing the tips of his fangs. “Because playtime is over, Aube. And the time has come for you to step into your role.” “To step into my role...” I repeated in a whisper, as if trying to grasp what he was talking about.
He chuckled. That laugh made my stomach turn. “Yes. Tomorrow, you’re getting married. No need to unpack your suitcase; you’re leaving directly with the Iron Howlers. Their leader, Alpha Kurt, is taking you as his wife.”
The news hit me full-force, like a head-on collision. The floor seemed to drop out from beneath my feet. “What?” I breathed, my heart stopping. “You heard me loud and clear. We have to put an end to these turf wars that lead to nothing but blood. You will be the guarantee of our truce. Thanks to you, we will seal the alliance between our clans.” “The... President Alpha Kurt?” I repeated, my throat as dry as ash.
My father burst into a harsh, boisterous laugh that rattled the bottles lined up on the bar. He rose heavily from his stool, towering over me with his massive frame, and placed a heavy, alcohol-sticky hand on my shoulder. “Yes, exactly. And I advise you to spread your legs wide to satisfy him... and to satisfy your father. Because once you’re in his bed, you’re going to become my eyes and ears. You’ll bring back every single piece of intelligence you can steal from him. The Blood Riders, who are at war with him, are ready to pay me a fortune for the slightest detail on his forces.” “What? But... no! I don’t want to get married! I want to finish my studies. Where is the peace if you’re marrying me to a man I have to spy on? And no, I don’t want to! You promised me that...”
Before I could finish my sentence, he lunged. His heavy hand cracked across my cheek in a sharp, violent smack that made me see stars. Before I could stumble, his filthy fingers yanked my hair, pulling my head back with vicious force to lock his eyes onto mine.
Around us, raucous laughter and deep wolfish growls rose from the poker tables where the men of the clan were crowded. In my mind, my wolf curled into a ball, whimpering in distress under the crushing weight of the Alpha’s voice.
“I told you you’re getting married, so you’re getting married!” he spat, his breath reeking of tobacco and whisky, burning my face. “And you will do everything I told you to. Otherwise, Poly might just go in your place.”
Poly. My little sister. She was only fifteen. “No! Leave Poly alone... She’s still a child!” “She’s old enough to breed,” he cut in with a cruel smile that revealed teeth yellowed by tobacco and poor hygiene. “So either you marry that demon Kurt, or she’s the one I send. And believe me, I’ll handle your fate after that...”
A tear of rage and terror slid down my burning cheek. “You promised me...” I whispered in a broken voice. “You promised I could finish my degree and become a vet.”
I looked at my mother. “Mom... do something.” I begged her, but I knew she couldn’t do anything—he terrified her even more than he did me.
Mateus had sired me from his second union. As for his first wife... rumor had it he had devoured her during a fit of rage. Knowing the monster, I wouldn’t have been entirely surprised.
“Leave your mother out of this and start thinking about how to be a good, docile wife. And a damn good spy.”
He shoved me away with disdain. I collapsed heavily onto the cracked faux-leather of one of the club’s booths. The scent of my own blood, trickling from my split lip, stirred the senses of the surrounding males, but none dared make a move in front of Mateus.
“Come on, someone get my daughter a lemonade!” he shouted to the room, bursting into thunderous laughter. “She seems a bit overheated!”
He sat back down on his stool, snapped his fingers for another drink, then checked the heavy steel watch strapped to his wrist. “They shouldn’t be much longer... It’s almost three o’clock.” “Can I see my sister again before I leave? Please, Father...” “No. No useless whining.”
At that exact moment, a heavy, terrifying, metallic rumble rattled the bar’s windows. Outside, the high-powered engines of the Iron Howlers had just rolled into the yard, shaking the ground.
