The night she was claimed, the moon bled silver.
Lyra stood at the edge of the ceremonial clearing, the chilled wind teasing the hem of her midnight-blue gown. Her bare feet pressed into the damp earth, grounding her as her heart thundered in her chest like a war drum. Overhead, the full moon shimmered behind a veil of clouds, casting ethereal light over the gathered wolves. They stood in a circle around the stone altar, watching. Waiting.
Tonight, she would be chosen. Claimed. Bound to her mate.
Her wolf stirred restlessly inside her, anticipation rolling in waves beneath her skin. She could already feel the pull of the bond — a thread of heat and promise thrumming in her chest, growing tighter with each heartbeat. She knew who it led to. She had always known.
Alpha Kade Blackthorn.
Her fated mate. The one destined to stand beside her.
He was everything a legend should be: fierce, enigmatic, and powerful. Even now, she could feel his presence before she saw him. A force of nature cloaked in shadows. Her gaze found him as he stepped from between the trees, flanked by his elite guard. He was tall, all hard lines and raw energy, dressed in black from neck to boots. His golden eyes locked on hers, unreadable.
Her breath caught in her throat.
He was beautiful and terrifying, and he was hers.
The elders began to chant, their voices rising with the wind. "By blood, by moon, by fate—we bind what is written."
Kade stepped forward.
The crowd grew silent.
He reached the altar and looked at her — really looked at her — and for a single, fragile moment, Lyra saw it. A flicker of something behind those golden eyes. Fear? Regret?
But then his lips parted, and what he said shattered the world.
"I reject this bond."
Silence. Then gasps. Murmurs. A distant wail of disbelief.
Lyra's entire body went still.
"What?" The word fell from her lips like glass.
Kade's voice was cold, final. "I do not accept her."
The elders hesitated, shocked. The ceremonial magic sparked and sputtered in the air, then died. The bond between them — that invisible thread of soul-deep connection — snapped.
The pain hit her like lightning.
Lyra's knees buckled as a scream tore from her throat. Her wolf howled in agony inside her, clawing, begging, breaking. The severing wasn't just emotional—it was primal, cruel. She collapsed to the ground, clutching her chest, trying to breathe through the fire that filled her lungs.
Kade didn't move. Didn't flinch.
She looked up at him, tears streaming down her face, her vision blurred. "Why?" she rasped.
He turned his back on her.
And walked away.
---
They cast her out before sunrise.
Stripped of her title. Banished from her pack. Marked a forsaken.
No one looked her in the eye. Not even Mira, her best friend since childhood. Not even her mother. No one spoke. The elders declared it mercy that they didn't execute her for the instability her rejection caused. Mercy. As if being torn from her home, her wolf, her mate, was kindness.
She wandered through the forest for days, half-feral, hungry and hunted.
The wolves of the Obsidian Fang Pack didn't protect their broken.
They buried them.
---
Lyra didn't remember the attack—only the blur of claws and teeth, the crush of darkness, and the sensation of her body giving out. She thought she had died. She welcomed it.
But death didn't claim her.
Someone else did.
---
She woke in a strange cabin, wrapped in rough blankets and fever sweat, with the scent of ash and pine clinging to her skin. A stranger sat by the hearth, cloaked in shadows, golden firelight flickering across a jaw covered in stubble and lips set in a grim line.
He didn't speak for a long time. Just watched her. Observed her like she was something fragile, or dangerous. Or both.
When he did speak, his voice was low and rough like crushed velvet.
"You shouldn't be alive."
She blinked at him, throat too raw to ask why.
"I found you surrounded by three dead rogues. One of them had his spine burned straight through. Your hands were glowing."
Her stomach turned. "I don't remember."
He leaned back in the chair. "Then I suggest you figure it out. Because whatever's inside you? It's waking up."
---
Over the next few days, Lyra began to piece together fragments of memory — moonlight breaking through the trees, pain surging like wildfire through her veins, the air shimmering as if the moon itself had bled into her skin.
And the voice. A whisper beneath her skin. Old. Wild.
Daughter of the Moonborne.
She didn't understand what it meant.
But the stranger—Ronan—seemed to know more than he let on. He was a rogue, yes, but not like the others. His presence crackled with Alpha power, though he claimed no pack. He offered no explanations, no comfort, just survival.
And in that survival, she found something terrifying.
She was changing.
Her eyes glowed in the dark. Her senses were sharper. Her wolf — once weak and battered — had grown vicious and powerful.
And the dreams… they came every night. Of Kade's touch. Of his betrayal. Of fire and silver and a voice whispering her name across centuries.
She wasn't just a rejected mate.
She was something else entirely.
Something the Obsidian Fang Pack would never have accepted.
Something they would kill to control.
And when she was ready… she would return.
Not to beg for love.
But to make them pay.
---