Alex's POV“Fuck,” I groaned, stretching out my bones. Frank’s hit had taken me about ten minutes to recover from—though truthfully, I was fine long before the guards even reached the infirmary. It was easy enough to fake that my bones were still rearranging themselves while my brother handled the rest of the night.I simply enjoyed the ride.As I closed my eyes, Mia’s face flashed into my mind.She looked surprisingly good in my clothes. Too bad she was just on a contract. Axel hadn’t told me, but I knew the deal—once she gave an heir to either of us, we would…Kill her? Send her away? I wasn’t sure which.I quickly linked to my brother, who had been spewing nonsense about Lunar wolves lately. Sure, the Desori Claw pack specialized in intelligence, but that didn’t mean he could play with mine.Lunar wolves? What a joke. They don’t even exist… not since the last…Rebellion.My eyes snapped open. Fucking hell. How had that slipped my mind? And it hadn’t even happened that long ago.Any
Axel's POV I walked quickly toward my quarters, but Frank’s voice from earlier kept replaying in my head.“She’s not a wolf, Alpha. She’s a Lunar wolf.”He hadn’t stuttered when he said it. I reached for him again. “Frank, how do you know?”He answered immediately. “We found traces at her camp… hair, skin cells, blood. I didn’t think much of it until I realized the scent didn’t match the DNA markers of a regular wolf. So I had the scholars triple-check.”“And they’re sure?”“It was unanimous. She’s not from any known pack line such as the Veyners. She’s... something stranger.”Shit. What did we allow into the pack? I forced a breath into my lungs and tried to stay calm as the corridor narrowed near my door. The second I stepped into the room, I slowed… one step, two steps… then something thick and heated filled the air, sweet like ripe peaches. It wrapped around my throat and stopped me cold.My fangs dropped. My wolf slammed forward without warning, dragging claws inside my chest
Mia's POV Flash-back. Five Years Ago.“What is going on, Mia? Why can't you change like the rest of us?”I gasped at Daphne. Maybe it was the loud, sharp pitch she used that made everyone’s heads turn or maybe it was the silence that followed. Every eye suddenly turned to me like I’d grown a second head.I was tempted to tell my best friend to keep her voice down, but something told me not to. Daphne had changed. Ever since I told her that Tristan and I were mated, she had become more… sarcastic. What did I do to her? Looking at her now, I couldn’t ignore how her brows were raised and how her voice was filled with worry. I think I was overthinking it, because clearly, she was genuinely concerned about me.But wait. Her eyes… her eyes were the same cold ones I’d seen when she lied to the pack’s training gamma, Gemma, about whose fault it was that the training dummy got slashed open.I mean, it was supposed to be slashed open, so what was the point of lying about it? I hadn’t even do
Mia's POVI woke up sweating. My head was pounding, my throat dry, my eyes hot, and everything between my legs… damp. My thighs were already glued together. With a trembling finger, I reached for my buttocks… It wasn't just damp, it was just… disgusting.Sticky. Slick. My underwear was soaked. The sheets, too. And I could smell it ‘me’ all over everything.Something told me it was wrong. I blinked hard and sat up, and that was when I remembered this wasn’t even my bed.I was in Axel’s room for the second time.Holy hell. I had actually made it in. The moment I heard Samantha was already in the pack, I had snuck into Axel's quarters, curled under his covers like a lunatic and passed out to claim his bed.That was animalistic and nothing human, Mia. What was this now? This heat? I pressed my legs tighter together… shit, big mistake. It only made the pressure, the ache, and every damn thing worse. A low pulse that throbbed in my belly and made my nipples feel raw. Another burst of slick
Mia’s POVI stayed still so not even the wind could sense me. Most people don’t know how to disappear properly. They think hiding is crouching behind a tree or holding their breath. But hiding is a skill and a mindset.I’d trained for years, and I’d learned how to mask my scent, slow my breathing, and lower my heartbeat. It’s not magic… I’ve been hunted enough to know when to become the shadow in the leaves. It was one of the few things I was proud of.So I listened as Axel and the silver-haired woman, called Hansel, spoke on the edge of the arena. At first, the woman blamed me for Alex’s loss. I hadn’t done anything, but yeah, he drooled over me, and I wasn’t going to deny what I felt when he stared at me either.The tension was real, but I should’ve stayed in the shadows. Now everyone was putting the pieces together, and for the first time, they saw me as the reason things went off the rails. I didn’t know if Axel or Alex had been covering up the fact that I was a rogue, but after
Alex's POV My wolf panted with mad lust.She was wearing my fucking shirt, looking so damn calm. This rogue wasn’t even trying to be seductive, but she was. She was the devil, daring me to look away from the battlefield and straight at her. And I froze.Just fucking froze. I felt something warm slipping down the corner of my mouth.No.No way.Did I just…I swiped the back of my paw across my muzzle.Drool. “What the hell…” I muttered under my breath, staring at it in disbelief. Had I actually stood here like a drooling idiot in the middle of a fight?“Alex!” Axel’s voice thundered in my head.Before I could register his voice, a heavy force slammed into my ribs. My body left the ground before my back met the dirt on the other side of the arena.Pain exploded in my head.“Ohhh…”The crowd exploded around us, not because Frank had just won, but because I had lost for the first time in my life.“Shit,” I groaned, forcing one twitching eye open.Frank stood over me with blood dripping