Chapter 1: You're Mine Tonight

Aria's POV 

The oil lamp sputtered and filled my hut with the smell of burning herbs. The night outside was cold.  

Lycus Vane braced one hand beside my head, caging me against the door. His breath was warm on my cheek.

“Aria,” he murmured, voice rough, “you’re mine tonight.”

His eyes held that faint gold that meant his wolf was close to the surface. When he kissed me, the world went quiet. I rose into it without thinking. This was our fifth anniversary. The night I thought he would finally mark me.

His palm slid down my spine and drew me tight to him. My heart beat so hard it almost hurt. I had loved him long before I knew what love was supposed to be.

Then he stilled.

A thin hum threaded the air. The soft pull of a mindlink. His gaze unfocused. 

He let his mental shields slip to answer quickly. In his rush, a seam opened. The moment it did, something inside me stirred. My wolf, suddenly pressed against that seam and sound bled through.

“Lycus?” Karl Draven’s voice carried hard and clear inside the link, sharp enough that even I heard it through the crack. “Have you lost your mind?” Karl was his beta.

My stomach tightened.

“You went through with it?” Karl’s anger built like thunder. “You mated with Sandra?”

Sandra.

The name scraped down my spine.

Lycus’s reply came steady, controlled. “This isn’t the time, Karl.”

“You nearly died for her once,” Karl shot back. “And she ran to another territory and didn’t look back. She’s been with other males for years. And now you bond with her? What are you thinking?”

Heat drained from my body. I pressed my palms to the door to keep from sliding down.

Lycus’s tone stayed flat, almost gentle. “She’s dying. The healers say her wolf is fading. She wants peace, and she asked me for one last thing. A brief pause. I wouldn’t let her die with regret.”

Karl’s reply came like a blade. “And what about Aria? She nursed you when your body was broken and your wolf half-gone. She gave up everything for you. Are you going to let her find out she’s the other woman?”

I forgot how to breathe.

Silence pulsed in the link for a heartbeat.

When Lycus spoke again, his voice was colder. “She won’t find out. If everyone keeps quiet, Aria never has to know. When Sandra is gone, I’ll make Aria my mate.”

My fingers curled against the wood until they hurt. The seam of the link stung like ice.

Karl’s breath hissed. “Do you even believe Sandra is truly ill?”

That question struck deep. Lycus’s control spiked. “Enough. I know what I’m doing.”

He slammed his shields shut. The hum snapped away.

He turned back to me with a softened face, as if he could step out of one world and into another without leaving footprints. “Where were we?”

I took a small step back. “I… don’t feel well.”

A flicker of concern crossed his features. “You’re pale.” He reached for me. “I’ll call the healer.”

How could his care feel so real and cut so deep at the same time?

He didn’t know I’d heard. He didn’t know that, for months, I’d trained with the old wardens to read resonance in the link, the echo most wolves ignore. He didn’t know my wolf, had woken up and pressed its ear to that opening and heard every word.

“I just need to lie down,” I said, forcing steadiness. “It will pass.”

A faint rune on his wristband flickered. The moonstone crystal the border guards used for urgent summons. He glanced at it. “Patrol trouble,” he said. “I have to handle it.” He hesitated at the door. “If you still feel unwell, I’ll send the healer to you.”

I nodded, wishing him to go away.

He brushed my forehead with his lips, pulled his cloak close, and left. 

I stood still until the silence pressed too hard. Then I turned to the small table. His message crystal lay where he’d set it down. One rune still glowed, the last pulse not yet faded.

It read: “Lycus, I’m in pain. Please come.

Sandra.”

Something in my chest tore open.

Tears blurred the lamplight. I set the crystal down with careful hands and felt the past rear up like a wave.

I had been switched at birth.

Raised as a Sauders daughter in a house of velvet and marble until the day the true child was found and brought home, Sandra. From that day, I learned how fast love can vanish. Sandra said I had stolen eighteen years of her life. She ordered me to the cellar. No windows. Damp stone. Mold in the corners. That was my world.

She came down sometimes with a soft laugh and a lash in her hand, counting each strike like a prayer. For the sin of being loved, she said. For daring to exist in her place.

My adoptive parents watched me disappear without a word. A year later, a guard grew careless and I ran.

I made it to the courtyard before my legs failed. I collapsed at a stranger’s boots. Tall, dark hair, Alpha Lycus Vane.

He picked me up, wrapped me in his cloak, and carried me out of the Saunders’ house without asking anyone’s permission. He took me to the healers. He sat with me when the nightmares made my throat raw. “You have me now,” he said once when I couldn’t stop shaking. “You don’t go back there. Not while I breathe.”

I believed him.

When he later insisted on riding with a rogue-hunt beyond the border, no one could sway him. By the time the scouts brought him home, his body was broken and his wolf so faint the healers went quiet in the doorway.

They told me he might never wake.

The Luke line had other heirs. The pack would survive. I wouldn’t.

So I stayed. I bathed his face. I told him to keep his lungs clear. I searched half the territories for someone who could pull him back. In the end, I found a miracle-worker who asked for a price that was steep.

I paid it. Something precious. I will carry the space it left for the rest of my life.

Lycus woke.

Within a year, he stood at the head of the Luke pack. He promised me on the riverbank under a crescent moon, that on our fifth anniversary, he would claim me as his Luna.

I held that promise like breath. Tonight is our fifth anniversary. And tonight he has already mated Sandra.

I wiped my face with the back of my hand. The lamplight steadied, throwing small shadows of the herbs hanging from the rafters. I looked at the cot, at the cloak he’d left there last winter when the snows were high, at the shelf where I kept the few things that were mine. 

Salves, a chipped bowl, the little alliance stone I’d been given months ago when an envoy from the Grant Alliance passed through Lunaris and offered me field training in their wardens. I’d tucked the stone away then, unsure. I’d told myself I couldn’t leave Lycus. 

My hand found the stone now. It warmed at my touch, the rune inside stirring.

I cleared my throat. “Aria Thorn,” I said, voice hoarse but steady, “accepts the Grant Alliance training.”

The light within the stone flared, then dimmed to a sleep-glow. The message had gone.