LOGINBetty pov:
I looked down, my left leg was splinted. There was a bandage wrapping my leg. I sat up cautiously wincing as multiple sources of pain sparked to life. "You shouldn't try to get up yet". He said. "May I ask who you are"? I asked pretending to not have heard when the healer mentioned his name,but I wanted to be sure. "I'd like to know who I have to thank for saving me". The corner of his mouth twitched slightly, "My name is Evander". I knew that name,I shifted in the couch moving away from him. "As in....Alpha Evander Solan?" I had heard Alpha Ray and other pack members talk about him several times. Alpha Evander had taken over the Nightshade pack after defeating the previous Alpha in combat. From what I heard,it was a hostile takeover. He is known for his brutality in combats and wars. More than once, they discussed how formidable he was. They even seemed weary of dealing with him. And now I was at his mercy. The most dangerous Alpha. Panic filled my chest. Everyone knew of the Shadow fang pack and their leader. It was impossible not to know him. He became the Alpha of the Shadow fang pack at a young age of sixteen and superseded everyone's expectations,growing up to become one of the most dangerous shifters known across the packs. He shifted forward in his chair and I leapt into action. Rolling from under the blankets. "Stay away," I threatened as he stood. "You can't keep me here. I won't let you. I'll die before I become a plaything for another damn wolf". His eyes darkened. My words sounded strong but the tears started to fall without my say. My hands were shaking. "No one is going to hurt you," Alpha Evander said softly but firmly,his hands raised in surrender. "I told you. You're safe here. I swear". He took a step towards me, then another. I moved towards the door. Putting one foot Infront of the other. Slowly picking up my pace. I wasn't really seeing where I was going anymore. I was still weak and days in bed hadn't helped. My knees started to shake and the edges of my vision blurred. I tried to force my feet to move but felt my legs giving out beneath me instead. Strong arms surrounded me before I hit the floor. I gasped as a tingling electricity shot through my body where he touched me. He lifted me up and set me on the edge of the bed,kneeling down Infront of me. "I told you not to get up," he scolded,taking my leg. He placed it on small chair beside the bed. Confusion washed through me at his attentiveness. He seemed upset. He wore no uniform,unlike his counterparts. He was dressed in black trousers,a long-sleeved grey shirt, and a pair of sturdy combat boots. From the collar of his shirts, I could spot a black ink in the form of thick lines that formed an indecipherable shape ending near the lobe of his right ear. "You are the future Luna of this pack and the love of my life. No one will hurt you" He takes his lips against mine and I can't help but moan into his mouth. I couldn't resist. His hands move down my neck as he deepens the kiss. I can feel him growing hard underneath me as his hands skims my breast. I'm about to turn my body to straddle him,I felt a sharp pain on my wounded leg as I try to move,when he pulls away. " "We have to stop, or I'm not going to be able to, My Love". You have to heal first,he said. He cups my cheek and looks into my eyes. I see nothing but love before he presses his lips to mine again. "I want our first time to be special. I want to announce you as my Luna in front of the whole pack while you are wearing an amazingly sexy dress. Then I want to bring you to our new wing and make love to you until we are both exhausted", he says. He runs his finger over my marking spot. "Then I'm going to place my mark right here,making you mine for the rest of our lives. You are my mate,my Luna and my love and nothing will change that,Betty." I reluctantly agree. ************ Evander "How is the practice and preparation going" Alpha Evander asked Larry We are all doing well. He answered. How is she now? Larry asked. She is getting better,she is the future Luna of this pack. She might need time,but I would be there for her. And I would wait for her,as long as I needed to. A fated mate was more than just a romantic notion. It was a gift from the universe. They were the one meant to be your perfect partner. They filled in your gaps and where the missing pieces of your life. They were a cosmic promise that you didn't have to go through the journey of life alone. "The pack Luna?! "Mia said'. Mia Rodolfo has been with Alpha Evander since childhood,they grew up together and have been having each other's back since their parents died at war. She had dreamt of being Alpha Evander's Luna someday. But when she heard Alpha mentioned another wolf to the his Luna,she couldn't control her anger. "A rogue girl as the mate of an Alpha? Our pack would never accept your union. The Alpha's mate needed to someone who understood pack politics and traditions. Someone like me,she added. But she was silenced by Alpha Evander. "Don't you ever refer to her as a rogue girl again. "I'm the Alpha and leader of this pack. After the war,I will announce to everyone and introduce her to the pack as my mate and Luna! He thundered and left. Her Hazel eyes,flecked with green,always seemed to brighten whenever they fell on him,though she masked it behind easy smiles and teasing words. She had grown up at his side,running through the forest as pups,sharing hunts,sparring long before he became Alpha. To the pack,she was simply his trusted friend,the one who could steady him when the weight of leadership pressed too heavy. But beneath that bond,her heart held more.To Every Reader Who Made It HereYou made it.Out of everything competing for your time and attention in this wide, loud, demanding world, every notification, every obligation, every other story waiting on every other screen, you chose this one. You followed Betty from the river where ancient wolves surfaced from deep water all the way to a Tuesday morning ten years later, where a nine-year-old girl sat in the grass with a creature older than pack law, and you stayed for all of it.That is not a small thing. That is an act of loyalty, and it deserves to be named as one.You were there when Betty stood at the High Council and dismantled Elena's conspiracy piece by careful piece, not with rage but with preparation and patience and the deep assurance of someone who knows exactly what ground she stands on. You watched her receive Arthur's public reckoning that painful, necessary reckoning and choose neither triumph nor bitterness, only the clean grace of a person who has already done the
The Root and the River Ten years passed the way deep time passes in places that are very old, not quickly, not slowly, but with the steady inevitability of water shaping stone. You do not notice the changing until you look back and see how far the river has traveled from where it began. Betty noticed on a Tuesday morning. She was at the river, as she often was, in the quiet hour before Thornfield fully woke. River, her daughter, nine years old and already frightening in her perceptiveness had followed her without permission, as she frequently did, and was now sitting cross-legged in the grass beside the largest of the ancient wolves with the complete unselfconsciousness of a child who had grown up understanding that certain extraordinary things were simply the ordinary furniture of her world. Cass was somewhere on the northern ridge with Evander. The boy had inherited his father's love of high ground and his mother's compulsion to understand every system he encountered. By a
THORNFIELD BREATHESThe cooperation between Thornfield and Shadow Fang was formalized in its permanent structure that summer.It did not happen in a single moment, nor did it arrive with the kind of spectacle outsiders often expected when two powerful packs aligned. There were no dramatic declarations, no symbolic gestures designed for show. Instead, it was built the way all lasting things in their world were built through repetition, through mutual recognition, and through the slow acceptance of boundaries that were not imposed but agreed upon.Betty ruled Thornfield.This was not a question, and it had not been a question for some time. The land had never resisted her. It had not needed persuasion or conquest. It had responded to her presence the way living systems respond to something they recognize as essential. Thornfield was hers in the deepest possible sense not owned, not controlled, but bonded. Mutual. Ancient. The kind of connection that predated language and would outlast i
TWO ALPHAS, TWO PACKS, ONE FUTUREThe twins were born on a morning in early spring.It did not arrive with drama or warning from the world outside. There were no storms breaking over Thornfield, no signs in the sky that something significant was happening. Instead, it came with the quiet certainty of natural cycles, like the land itself had decided the time had come and simply opened the way forward.A boy, first.He arrived loud and certain, as though he had no intention of asking permission to exist. His first breath filled the room with an undeniable presence, followed immediately by a grip so strong it made the healer laugh out loud in surprised delight. There was something almost amused in the sound like even she had not expected such insistence from someone so new.He had Evander’s coloring. Dark, grounded, unmistakable. But it was Betty’s eyes that settled the room when they finally opened clear, aware, already too observant for something that had just entered the world. There
WHAT THE PACKS SAIDThornfield’s reaction was immediate and warm. Not the fragile kind of warmth that flickers and fades under pressure, but the steady kind that comes from a pack who has watched their Alpha rebuild herself from nothing and then, piece by piece, construct something extraordinary out of the ruins. It was the warmth of people who had seen survival turn into strength and strength turn into leadership. And now, they received the news of new life not as a shock, but as a confirmation of everything they had already come to believe about her future.There was celebration, but it was not chaotic or loud in a careless way. It was grounded. Messages came in waves, some formal, some emotional, some so simple they carried more weight than long speeches ever could. Congratulations. Blessings. Pride. Relief. Even the quieter acknowledgements mattered, because they came from individuals who rarely spoke more than necessary. In Thornfield, silence had always meant discipline, not ind
TWO The healers confirmed it at twelve weeks. Two. Betty received the information with a stillness that made the room itself feel like it had been asked to quiet down. There were words spoken after the confirmation, careful, measured words about health, about balance, about what would need to be monitored but they passed through her like water through woven reed. She heard them, understood them, and set them aside without resistance. Then she left. No dramatic exit. No announcement. Just the soft closing of a door and the instinctive pull toward open ground, toward the river that cut through Thornfield’s lower valley like a silver scar remembering its own origin. She walked alone. By the time she reached the water, the wind had changed. It carried the scent of wet stone and crushed grass, and something older beneath it, something that belonged to the wolves who did not fully belong to time anymore. The ancient ones came first as shadows between trees, then as weight in the air,







