Novel-novel oleh Inksinglar@

Chapter 5CLARA The Moonlight Pack gates stood before me, exactly as I remembered them. My heart hammered with anticipation as I smoothed down my dress—emerald green to match my eyes, cut to perfection to showcase the body that had cost me everything.‘They won’t even recognize me,’ I thought, a smile playing at my lips. Clara Wren was dead and buried. In her place stood Liora Rivers, beautiful beyond measure, powerful beyond their comprehension.I could already picture their faces when they realized who I was. Damien’s shock. Sage’s jealousy. The pack’s guilt and terror as they understood what they’d unleashed.My hand touched the gate, and electricity shot through me. This was it. This was my moment.I stepped through.Pain exploded across the back of my skull. The world tilted, my vision blurring as I hit the ground hard. Through the haze, I saw boots, heard voices, felt rough hands grabbing me.“Got her,” someone said. “Perfect timing.”‘No,’ I tried to scream, tried to fight, bu

Chapter 4CLARA“Please,” I begged the shopkeeper, my voice breaking. “Just some bread. I can work for it.”The woman looked me up and down with disgust. “We don’t hire your kind here. Move along.”I stumbled out of the small village bakery, my stomach cramping with hunger. Three days I’d been wandering this human settlement, and every door had slammed in my face. Every person had looked at me like I was diseased.“Excuse me,” I called to a man loading supplies onto a wagon. “I’m looking for work—”“Get away from me.” He spat on the ground near my feet. “Filthy beggar.”My hands shook as I approached a group of women by the well. Maybe if I explained, if I told them I wasn’t really a beggar, just someone who’d lost everything…“What do you want?” one of them snapped.“I just need help,” I whispered. “Food, work, anything—”They looked at each other and burst into laughter.“Look at the size of her,” one giggled. “Like a cow escaped from the field.”“Probably ate herself out of house a

Chapter 3CLARAI’d been walking for hours. Or maybe days. Time meant nothing when you were waiting to die.My feet were bleeding inside my worn boots, my water was gone, and my stomach cramped with hunger. The forest stretched endlessly ahead, dark and indifferent to my suffering.‘Good,’ I thought as I stumbled over another fallen log. ‘Let it come.’The mate bond’s phantom pain had somehow gotten worse, like a wound that kept reopening.“I’m sorry,” I whispered to the empty forest. “I’m sorry for everything.”My legs gave out, and I collapsed against a massive oak tree. The bark bit into my back, but I didn’t care. I was so tired. So broken. Maybe if I just closed my eyes…“You’re far from home, little wolf.”I jerked upright, my heart hammering. A figure stepped from the shadows between the trees tall, lean, with dark hair and silver eyes that seemed to see straight through me. He moved without sound, like he was part of the darkness itself.“Please,” I whispered, pressing myself

Chapter 2CLARA“She’s cursed.”Sage’s voice carried across the pack meeting, sweet as honey but deadly as poison. I sat in the back corner where I always did, trying to make myself invisible, but every eye in the room turned to me.“The Moon Goddess is punishing us because of her,” Sage continued. “Think about it, when did the drought start? Right after she tried to claim Alpha Damien as her mate.”Three weeks. Three weeks since the rejection that had shattered my world, and not a single drop of rain had fallen. The wells were running dry. Crops were withering. Animals were dying.And now they wanted someone to blame.“That’s ridiculous,” my mother’s voice cracked from somewhere in the crowd. “Clara hasn’t done anything wrong!”Elder Morrison stood slowly, his weathered face grave. “The signs are clear, Margaret. Your daughter was rejected by her mate, a sign from the Moon Goddess herself that she is unworthy. And now we suffer.”“She angered the goddess by reaching above her statio

Chapter 1CLARA“I, Damien Storm, reject you, Clara Wren, as my mate.”The words hit me like a physical blow, stealing the air from my lungs. I staggered backward, my hand flying to my chest where the mate bond I’d felt for barely five minutes—snapped with a pain so excruciating I thought I might die.“No,” I whispered, the word barely audible. “Damien, please—”“Please what?” His lip curled in disgust, those grey eyes I’d gazed into with such adoration now looking at me like I was something he’d scraped off his shoe. “Please pretend this is anything other than the Moon Goddess’s sick joke?”I reached for him, desperate, my fingers brushing his arm. He jerked away like my touch burned him.“Don’t.” His voice was ice. “Don’t touch me. Don’t look at me like that. Like you actually thought this could be real.”He used to hold my hand. The memory crashed over me unbidden—just last week, when I’d been crying about another cruel comment from pack members. He’d taken my hand in his, rubbed h