LOGINOn the eve of her eighteenth birthday, Carolina expects one thing—her first shift. What she doesn’t expect is to be pulled into the forest by a force she can’t explain… or to come face-to-face with Xander Hale, the future Alpha. When they shift under the same moon, the truth ignites between them: they are mates. But fate couldn’t have chosen worse timing—or a more dangerous match. Xander is destined to lead, bound by duty, power, and the expectations of a ruthless Alpha father who refuses to accept Carolina as Luna. To make matters worse, Lyra—the girl raised to stand at Xander’s side—will do anything to take back the future she believes was stolen. As tension fractures the pack, Carolina must prove she’s more than the weak outsider they see… while resisting a bond that pulls her closer to Xander with every heartbeat. Because in a world ruled by dominance, loyalty, and ancient laws— Loving the Alpha might cost her everything.
View MoreThey barely made it from the kitchen to the couch—a miracle, considering Xander’s hands were everywhere, tugging her by the hips and then under her thighs, as if proximity might fuse them into one improbable entity. Glasses swept to the floor and rolled, sightless, across the concrete. Carolina collapsed onto Xander’s lap, her knees already parted to straddle him. The stretch sent a frisson down her legs; she tasted morning on his mouth, coffee and sweet fatigue.They didn’t have words for what they were—owners, lovers, sometimes almost enemies, often allies. For now, she wanted nothing except the addicting, unguarded hunger in his eyes. He peeled her shirt, slow and deliberate, paused at her collarbone to suck a bruise into the notch of her throat. She arched, hands cradling his skull, and guided him lower.When he bit her, she swore—soft, helpless, dizzy—and he laughed into her skin, licking the sting. She wondered if her heart had ever beat this loud, or if his did too, thundering
In the final flush of night, numbed from sleep and the afterburn of laughter, Carolina lay awake and stilled the silence with inhales. Xander slept beside her, half-draped in crumpled foil blankets. He ran cold in the dark, shivered sometimes, and she’d learned to tuck herself around the points of his skeleton, lock him in heat until morning.Their roof went on for meters, open to sky and the stray flies that zipped in off the gardens. Every city was a city of roofs, but Sanctuary’s were mythic—sprawl and patch, makeshift like everything else, but shot through with wild green. From here, she could see a neighbor’s hydro tank, the tangle of tubing glowing blue under its own chemical moon. Mira’s greenhouse, patched wobbly from last year’s hail, huddled on the other side like a glass-walled animal. And beyond it all, the Market, now sleeping off its excess beneath tarps stitched from old parade banners and city flags.Carolina padded, barefoot, to the ledge, careful not to wake Xander,
The next morning, Sanctuary’s core was still a stew of last night’s drone music and clove smoke. Carolina woke knotted around Xander’s thigh, pixels of late sunlight stippled on his ribs, and for a moment, she didn’t know if it was a Tuesday or the end of the world. They weren’t late for anything, because nothing here started on time. She watched his chest rise and fall, the stutter of his dreams smoothing under her palm, and she catalogued the bruise blooming under his jaw—a memory from the night before, her joy still mapped on him like a promise.She waited for regret to slip in, like water through an old roof, but it didn’t. Instead she disentangled herself, found her shirt, and padded barefoot down the prefab hallway toward the kitchen block. The passage was half-lit, smells of burnt soy and battery acid wafting from some distant scuffle. In the eating bay, Mira sat alone with a mug of something black and volatile, scrolling through diagnostics like she could will the city to stay
The day was humid enough to weep. Carolina lay flat on the foam roof of the nursery, fingers splayed to catch the vapor rising off Sanctuary, and the sky pressed down like a wet hand. Over months, she’d learned the rhythm of the city’s nerves—the way tension sailed in like a weather front, thickening the air hours before any real trouble broke. Today had that feel. Dam burst energy with nowhere to go but into everyone’s speech, their gait, the way even the Market’s squawk seemed pitched higher, like something was about to rupture and no one wanted to be the one to name it.From up here, Sanctuary sprawled into its patchwork: the huddle of solar panels, the tatter of green roofs, the artery of skywalks threading old office blocks hacked into communal housing. Xander was somewhere in the jumble, mid-shift at the property desk. Mira was probably still asleep or orchestrating some kind of noon coup in the food commons. Carolina eyed the curls of bluebells strangling the comms tower. Life,
For a while, there was only morning. The hard-won quiet of far fields, the distant shin of wind-turbines and the acrid memory of smoke carried by a gentler wind. The seed bundles were stashed against the threat of wet, the children asleep in a fort built of scavenged polycarbonate, and all around t
Carolina’s room was the smallest, a hutch above the covered porch where the dampness crept in through the carpet and the windows wouldn’t latch. She sat cross-legged on her duvet with the envelope, turning it by its corners, staring at the blunt, ceremonial print of her name and the snake-trail ret
The kiss never softened—if anything, it grew more intense. Carolina felt it surge through her entirely: not just on her lips, but in the tremor of her body and the fierce flare of their bond. Her back was pinned to the wooden post, grounding her—yet nothing about this felt steady any longer. X
The training field didn’t empty all at once. It thinned slowly—clusters of wolves peeling away, voices low, glances sharper than before. Carolina could feel them. The shift in how they looked at her. Not respect. Not yet. But something close. She sat on the low wooden fence at the edge of












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