FORTY SIX

FORTY SIX
Anna’s POV
2 YEARS AGO.
If someone had told me that a single night would shatter everything I believed in, I might’ve laughed. Back then, I was just a girl trying to survive with secrets that clawed at my chest and a bond that felt too perfect to last.
Kade had found me bleeding beneath the trees, cast out by the Fox Rebellion like. He didn’t ask questions or push me to speak. He simply lifted me into his arms, and for the first time in months, I felt… safe. He saved me, and then he did the unthinkable. He brought me home. Introduced me to his family, Alpha Andrew and Luna Fiona, as his mate. “This is Anna,” he had said, voice low, almost reverent. “She’s mine.”
I didn’t know how to breathe that day.
Everyone had warned me Kade was closed off, that he didn’t show emotion, not even to his brother Kael. But when he looked at me, something broke through. Something tender. That night, I sat at the dinner table and watched his mother tear up quietly as she smiled at me. She kept calling me “her daughter.” His father stood straighter, proud. They believed I was the one who healed their son. The Luna-to-be. And for a second, I believed it too.
Except I wasn’t bonded to Kael. And every time I stood near him, a strange and painful ache would twist deep in my chest. I flinched without meaning to, my body drawn to his presence, my wolf restless and confused. I ignored it but he noticed..
Then came the night before the ceremony.
I remember creeping into the hallway, still flushed with happiness. I had shifted for the first time days earlier. white fur like snow, unlike anyone else’s. Everyone whispered that I was special, a gift from the gods. But I knew better. My wolf shed fur after every shift, leaving trails I couldn’t explain. My mother once told me that shedding was a curse, evidence of a broken lineage.
The Kade who brought me back, who guarded me like I was the last sacred thing left in this world—he was something else. Quiet, yes. Guarded, yes. But with me, when the doors closed, he let pieces of himself slip free. Not all. But enough.
He never said it aloud, but I knew. I knew I was the only one he let close enough to hurt him.
He’d sit beside me at night, his hand resting over mine, sometimes on the small of my back like he needed to feel I was still there. He didn’t need to say “I love you.” I could feel it—raw, real, terrifying. And sometimes… I hated myself for feeling it back.
Because deep down, I knew it would never last.
I remember that week. The joy. The shift. The white fur. I’d never seen anything so blindingly bright, so unnatural, and it came from me.
At first, I thought it was a gift.
But then the shedding began.
Each time I returned to skin, my fur left traces behind. Delicate wisps of white, like snow on a battlefield. A mark. A warning. Or maybe a curse.
Children in the pack whispered that it meant I was special. That I was chosen. But I knew better.
White wolves didn’t belong. They were hunted. Silenced. Destroyed.
I remembered my mother’s stories of bloodlines erased, of betrayals stitched into royal bedsheets. Of the Fox Rebellion and what it meant to wear white fur.
And then came the night before the Luna ceremony.
They were celebrating. Andrew and Fiona had officially accepted me, not just as their son’s mate, but as family. Fiona gave me a necklace, silver, delicate, with a crescent moon charm—and Andrew had smiled for the first time in my presence.
“We’re blessed,” he said that night, clinking his glass against Kade’s. “You’ve done well.”
Kael wasn’t there. I hadn’t seen him all day.
I should’ve felt at peace. But something itched beneath my skin.
I remember sneaking down the corridor, barefoot, heading toward the garden to catch my breath. That’s when I heard it, voices from the study.
Andrew’s voice. Low. Controlled.
“She fits the markers. Age. Shift time. Blood patterns. She’s a direct descendant.”
My heart stuttered.
“You’re certain?” someone else asked, Fiona.
“We’re almost positive. The data lines up with the trait. The white fur. The bond timing. The exile. The girl is from the Fox Rebellion’s surviving bloodline.”
And then the final blow:
“She must be dealt with. Quietly. Before tomorrow.”
I remember the glass slipping from my hand, shattering on the floor just outside their door. Silence. Then footsteps. I ran before they could reach me.
I didn’t cry. Not then.
I just ran.
Because suddenly, everything made sense.
They weren’t my family.
They were part of the machine that tried to destroy mine.
The bond with Kade hadn’t protected me—it had marked me. Delivered me right into the hands of those who once carried out executions in the name of “peace.”
I returned to my room that night in silence.
I looked at the necklace on my neck. The promise. The lie.
Kade hadn’t known. I was sure of that. The way he looked at me—he couldn’t have known. But I also knew this:
He was still their son.
And one day, he would have to choose.
Maybe he already had.
So I did what I had to do. I vanished. Left before they could kill me, before I could be forced to kill them.
I told myself I was strong. I told myself I didn’t love him.
But that night, when I shifted beneath the full moon—fur shedding, body trembling, tears freezing on my cheeks, I mourned him. I mourned the bond. The boy who had saved me, and the man I could never trust again.
Because no matter how much Kade gave me, the truth had already taken everything.
And I… I had become the one thing he was never meant to love.
I ran until I couldn’t breathe. Until the pain in my chest was louder than the sound of Kade’s voice echoing in my head. My Luna, he’d said. He brought me into their home like I belonged there. Like I was safe. But I wasn’t.
I should’ve known.
The moment I heard his parents talking—plotting, whispering about exile—I didn’t wait. I shifted and bolted, paws pounding against earth, lungs burning, fur falling in clumps behind me. My body was failing. The bond was cracking.
I didn’t stop until the ground disappeared beneath me and I collapsed.
I remember seeing her—just before darkness claimed me. A girl crouched by the water. Fox sigil on her wrist. My eyes locked on it before everything went black.
When I woke up, my skin was bare. Bruised. Weak. But alive. I was wrapped in unfamiliar blankets in a dim, cavernous shelter, torches casting soft gold across the stone. The scent in the air was like mine and I saw a fox sigil in her arm.
I wasn’t dead. I wasn’t alone.
These were the ones who survived. The ones who had been hunted like me. I didn’t have to explain who I was. They saw it in my face. In my silence. In the grief I wore like skin.
For days, I just breathed. I healed. I remembered.
And then I stood.
Stronger. Sharper.
Not as Kade’s Luna. Not as the naive girl who believed a mate bond would protect her. I stood as fire wrapped in flesh. As vengeance in a body that still remembered how to burn.
He let them plan my death. He let them whisper behind closed doors.
He wasn’t mine to begin with. They
destroyed my family. So I’ll break them all.
Starting with him.