Chapter 1 The Moon Chose Me First
The blood moon rose the night I stepped onto pack land.
It wasn’t just the color—red as a fresh wound, heavy and watching. It was the way the forest went still, like every living thing had decided to hold its breath and listen for me.
Or for what I was.
I kept my hood up as I crossed the boundary line. My boots sank into damp earth, the scent of pine and cold moss rising around me, sharp enough to sting. Somewhere deep in the trees, something howled—low, warning, not distant enough to be comforting.
My pulse tried to answer it.
I forced it down.
I wasn’t here to be chosen.
I was here to survive long enough to finish what I’d been sent to do.
The path narrowed, funneling me toward the High Pack’s compound—timber and stone, fences reinforced with iron, guards posted like statues in the dark. Wolves. Men. Both. Neither.
Their eyes found me the moment I stepped into torchlight.
I felt it like fingers on my skin. Appraisal. Hunger. Suspicion.
One of them moved first. Broad shoulders, scar split across his mouth, the kind of face that had learned cruelty like a second language.
“You’re either lost,” he said, “or stupid.”
I kept my voice steady. “I’m looking for your Alpha.”
That earned a laugh from the shadows. Not warm. Not kind.
The guard’s nostrils flared as he scented the air between us. His gaze sharpened, sliding over me too slowly—my boots, my hands, my throat. Like he was trying to decide where he’d bite first.
“Human,” he said, and the word sounded like an insult.
I swallowed the urge to correct him.
Because if they knew what I really was, I wouldn’t even make it through the gate.
“Name?” he demanded.
For half a heartbeat, I considered lying.
But lies had weight. Wolves could smell fear, guilt, hesitation—could taste it in the air. So I gave him the truth, the safest piece of it.
“Mira Holloway.”
Something shifted at that.
Not in him—around us. A subtle tightening of the night, as if the forest itself had leaned closer.
The guard didn’t notice. Or he pretended not to.
He jerked his head toward the compound. “Move.”
I walked between two wolves with rifles slung low, their bodies radiating heat and threat. Every step forward made the pull in my chest worse—like an invisible thread tightening, drawing me toward the center of the pack lands where something waited.
Where someone waited.
I told myself it was nerves.
It was not.
The doors to the main hall opened before I reached them. No announcement. No warning.
Just a sudden, silent parting—like the building had been expecting me.
Warmth spilled out. Firelight. The thick scent of woodsmoke, leather, and male bodies crowded too close together. Conversations dulled as I entered, eyes tracking me the way predators track a stumble.
I lifted my chin and walked anyway.
My mother used to tell me bravery wasn’t the absence of fear.
It was deciding your fear didn’t get to steer.
I didn’t see him at first.
Then the room changed.
The wolves—dozens of them—shifted subtly, shoulders squaring, heads turning, spines straightening as if someone had just tightened a leash.
A presence cut through the hall.
Heavy. Commanding. Inescapable.
I followed it like a compulsion, my gaze sliding toward the raised platform at the far end where the Alpha’s chair sat like a throne.
And there he was.
Alaric Bloodhowl.
He wasn’t draped in jewels or dressed like a king. He didn’t need decorations to prove what he was. Power clung to him in the shape of silence—an unspoken violence that lived in the line of his shoulders and the stillness of his hands.
He was massive, not just tall but built like something carved for war. Dark hair fell back from a sharp, brutal face. His eyes caught the firelight and turned it into something colder.
Amber.
Not gold. Not honey.
Amber like trapped lightning.
When his gaze hit mine, the world narrowed to a single razor-thin point.
My breath snagged.
It wasn’t attraction. Not that simple.
It was… recognition.
A wrongness in my blood. A pull so deep it made my teeth ache.
Alaric’s nostrils flared once, slow and controlled, and his expression barely shifted—but I saw it.
The moment he caught my scent.
The moment something in him answered.
His jaw tightened.
He didn’t look away.
He stood.
The entire hall went silent, like the pack had been trained to fear the sound of his movement.
He descended from the platform with unhurried steps, each one deliberate, like he had all the time in the world to decide what to do with me.
I stayed still, because my body had forgotten how to do anything else.
He stopped an arm’s length away.
Close enough that I could feel the heat rolling off him. Close enough that my skin prickled, my magic stirring under my ribs like it had been sleeping and just heard its name.
Alaric looked at my throat.
Then my mouth.
Then my eyes again, and when he spoke, his voice was quiet enough that only I could hear it.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he said.
Something in me bristled. “I wasn’t asking permission.”
A flicker—almost amusement—ghosted across his face and vanished.
“Human,” he murmured, the same way the guard had said it, except when Alaric said it… it sounded like he didn’t believe it.
My spine chilled.
He lifted his hand.
I didn’t flinch. I refused to give him that.
His knuckles brushed my wrist.
The contact was barely there—an innocent touch.
My body reacted like it had been struck.
Heat snapped down my arm and into my chest, sharp as a bite. My vision shimmered, the room tilting. Somewhere deep inside, my magic surged awake, furious and bright—
—and then pain lanced across my palm.
I looked down.
A thin line of blood had appeared where his nail grazed my skin. Not a cut deep enough to matter.
But the smell—
The hall inhaled.
Every wolf in the room went rigid.
Alaric’s eyes darkened, his pupils widening until the amber became something feral and endless.
The blood moon outside seemed to press closer to the windows, hungry to witness.
Alaric’s hand closed around my wrist.
Not gentle. Not cruel.
Possessive.
His thumb smeared across the bead of blood.
And the instant his skin touched it, the bond struck.
I felt it like a chain slamming into place around my soul.
A shock of heat, primal and ancient, ripping through me so hard my knees almost buckled. Images flashed behind my eyes—snow and teeth, a wolf the size of nightmare, a crown of bone, a voice in the dark speaking my name like a vow—
Mira.
Not spoken aloud. Felt.
Alaric went utterly still.
His grip tightened.
His voice dropped to something that made the air vibrate.
“What are you?” he asked.
I should have lied.
I should have run.
Instead, the bond pulled again—tight, hot, terrible.
And before I could stop myself, a whisper slipped from my mouth.
“Trouble.”
His lips parted slightly, as if he could taste that answer.
Then, with the entire pack watching, Alaric Bloodhowl leaned in close enough that his breath warmed my ear.
And he said the words that turned my blood to fire.
“Mine.”