The Night the Moon Betrayed Me

The basement was cold and smelly.

I pressed my back against the wall, my eyes on the moon outside my window.

I was waiting for midnight. In less than three hours, I would be 18.

 Three hours until everything changed, or three hours until I proved Marcus right. That I was worthless. Wolfless. The mistake that killed my mother.

My skin felt too tight. It felt like something was scratching to get out.

“Arabelle!” Glass shattered. “Get your ass up here!”

It was the voice of my drunkard father, Marcus, calling me from upstairs’.

I refused to call him father. I called him by his name, Marcus.

Because he was nothing like a father to me. All the bruises and broken bones I’d gotten from his beatings and abuse were backings to my decision.

“Arabelle!” He roared again, then I heard him add, “Where’s that little bitch?”

I quickly rushed upstairs to where he was. As soon as I got there, the foul stench of the room hit my nose. Bottles were scattered about. Cigarettes and whiskey filled the air.

He lay on the floor like some king, smiling, drunk as a bat.

“He’s really drunk. He must have been gambling again. And he must have lost it big this time. He probably wants to take the anger out on me.” I thought.

“What is it?” I asked him.

“Look at you.” He laughed, bitter and mean. “Eighteen tomorrow and still nothing. No wolf. No future. Your mother died screaming because of you, and you can’t even shift to make it worthwhile.”

I kept my eyes down, picking up bottles. Agreeing with him only made it last longer. Fighting back made it worse. So I did nothing. Said nothing. Became nothing.

Through the grimy window, I could see the pack grounds lit up like Christmas.

Alpha Zach Blackwood was coming home tonight after three months away. The whole Silver Ridge Pack had been buzzing for days, equal parts excited and terrified.

Everyone feared Zach. Hell, I’d only seen him twice in my life; just a tall shadow with dark hair and eyes like a winter sky before the storm hits. People said he was cursed. That whatever killed his parents had poisoned something in him.

He had had two previous Lunas. Both died less than a year after marriage to him. People gossiped. Said he killed them. But I didnt believe it. I even felt pity for him because I knew how it felt for false rumors to be spread about you. Everyone spread rumors about me being cursed too.

Marcus threw his bottle at me. It shattered on the wall right beside me. Small shards of glass pierced and injured my face.  

“I said clean, not stand there daydreaming!” He lurched to his feet. “Maybe I should’ve sold you years ago.”

He stormed out. I sighed in relief. At least he didn’t hit me today.

I returned to my basement, blood pouring down my injured cheek. The basement was my makeshift room. I didn’t have a room.

My hands shook as I pulled on the white dress. It had been my mother’s once. The only thing of hers Marcus hadn’t destroyed or sold. I’d hidden it for years, waiting for tonight.

The shift happened at midnight on your eighteenth birthday. Everyone knew that. It was supposed to be magical. Sacred. The moment you became whole.

I had always been the disgrace of the pack. Most of my mates had already shifted at ten twelve, latest fifteen. I was the only one who had not yet shifted at eighteen! My father hated me, blamed me for my mother’s death and threw himslef into drinking and gambling. He called me a curse and every other pack member called me that too.

The pack members  bullied me, mocked me. And they bullied and mocked anyone that tried to be friends with me too. But my spirit wasn’t broken just yet. I still tried to stand up for myself. I spoke back. I fought back. It earned me bruises and beatings but my pride was still intact.

I also had the hope that when I got mated to my mate, all my sufferings would end.

Oh how wrong I was.

…………..

Midnight reached.

I climbed out my window and ran.

One. Two. Three.

Pain ripped through me like wildfire.

I hit the ground hard, gasping. My bones were breaking…..no, reshaping. Every cell in my body was tearing apart and rebuilding itself into something new. But it wasn’t agony. It was awakening. Power flooded my veins, hot and fierce and mine.

I let out a scream. No, a howl.

A loud howl that was not human. Yes, I had shifted.

I opened my eyes. The world had transformed.

I could see colors and hear sounds I had never heard before.

I had shifted. After eighteen years of mockery and disgrace from the pack for being a late shifter, I had finally achieved it.

Something that made every instinct in my new body surge forward.

Mate.

I turned on four legs that felt both foreign and right. The pack had gathered, drawn by my howl. And standing at the front, fresh from his journey, was Zach Blackwood.

Our eyes locked.

The bond hit me like a truck. Golden threads spun out from my chest, reaching for him, tangling us together. I felt everything. His shock. His anger. And underneath it all, hunger. Raw and desperate.

He was mine. I was his. The moon had chosen us.

For one perfect second, I saw it in his face. Recognition. Like he felt it too. Like maybe this could be something real.

Then his expression went dead.

“Shift back.” His voice could’ve frozen the sun.

I didn’t know how, but my body did.

“Stand.”

I stood on shaking legs. The bond pulsed between us like a living thing. The whole pack watched in dead silence. This should’ve been a celebration. The Alpha found his mate. Happily ever after.

But Zach’s next words destroyed me.

“You’re weak.” His voice carried across the clearing, cold and final. “Wolfless until tonight. Beneath me in every way. Unworthy of being Luna. I, Alpha Zach Blackwood, reject you, Arabelle Gwyneth, as my mate.”

The bond screamed. I felt it tearing, shredding the golden threads. But I couldn’t speak. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t do anything but stare at him while my world collapsed.

His face never changed. No emotion. No regret. Nothing.

He turned and walked away.

The pack’s laughter started quiet, then grew. It surrounded me like a living thing, mocking and cruel. I stood there under the moonlight, humiliated and broken.