Mated To My Enemy's Rival

“Hurry, guys, it’s time!” I heard a voice shriek in excitement, followed by the happy murmurs of the other wolves, clamoring to get to the ritual ground first.The fire from the lit torches that spanned the full length of the ceremony grounds made my heart skip with each passing second.It was finally happening... After 21 long years of neglect and being called a bastard wolf, I stood near the back of the bustling crowd with my arms fidgeting against my worn gray cloak, watching wolf after wolf step forward to claim the one thing I had been waiting my entire life for.A fated mate.Every pair of eyes in the Bloodwyn pack was glued to the ancient ritual grounds where the wolf-shaman stood with his carved staff and his silver bowl of burning herbs. One by one, he called each wolf forward. One by one, he read the bond the Moon Goddess had written into their soul long before they were ever born. And one by one, the crowd erupted in cheers and congratulations.Wolf families pr

My eyes fought against the raging headache in my skull and slowly peeled open. The surface beneath me was soft, impossibly soft if I was being honest. And it was at that moment that I realized I was in a bed.That was the first thing that didn't make sense.The second thing that didn't make sense was the fact that, besides the headache, I couldn’t feel the piercing pain in my chest anymore. I sat up slowly, waiting for the wound in my chest to return and announce itself. But while I looked around the room, desperately trying to distract myself from the pain, it never came. Instead, all I felt was the warmth that the fireplace across the room was working so hard to produce.I pressed one hand against my chest and reached inward, the way every wolf instinctively does when they want to feel their bond.There was truly nothing there.‘Healing potion.’ I muttered inaudibly as my eyes widened. I stared at the far wall of this unfamiliar room and let the realization of what had

The ceremony grounds had gone very quiet.The torches were still burning, but most of the wolves had filtered back inside, and the flowers strewn across the aisle were already beginning to curl at their edges in the cool night air. All the chairs were empty, and somewhere behind me, the huge front doors of Blackthorne Manor had closed shut.I was still standing at the far edge of the grounds, my entire body as rigid as a pole.I hadn't moved a single muscle. Not because I couldn't, but because I genuinely didn't know where else to go, and I wasn't quite ready to follow a man I'd married barely thirty minutes ago into a house that wasn't mine. So I stood with my hands clasped in front of me, while flower petals drifted across the stone at my feet, and I stared up at the bright full moon, silently asking the goddess, ‘Why?’The mark on my neck pulsed quietly, and I carefully pressed two fingers to it without thinking. The skin around it was still faintly sore to the touch,

Three weeks into being Luna, I discovered something about myself I hadn't known before.I was good at this.Now I'm not talking about the council meetings or the ceremonies, those I still hated with every fiber of my being, I meant the rest of it. The mornings where Dominic's presence didn't suffocate the air because he'd already left for the eastern border way before sunrise, and the Manor settled into a peaceful ambiance.'You'd think a house this big would feel emptier with him gone,' I thought, tying my robe at the waist and stepping into the corridor.If anything, it felt even more alive.I made my way down to the kitchens the way I had every morning that week, and Delphine looked up from the bread she was kneading."You're early to rise again, my lady." she said."I'm always early." I leaned against the counter, thankful that she’d finally stopped flinching when I got close to her. "You’re just too stubborn to admit it for some reason."She huffed out something I ha

The Blackthorne Manor had always been the home of the Alpha and his family, but it was never home to me. My home was the second property I had had built for me and my beloved a few years back.It was roughly half an hour's ride from the Manor, tucked far enough into the western trees that the pack rarely had reason to come this way, which to be fair, was exactly the point of it.I let myself in without knocking, and found Alice curled into the corner of the chaise near the fire with a book open on her lap that I doubted she was actually reading. She looked up the second the door clicked shut, and her whole face softened almost immediately."You're late," she said, though there was no real accusation in it. She set the book aside and rose to meet me halfway across the room, her hands finding the collar of my jacket before I'd even fully crossed the threshold. "I was starting to think you'd forgotten where I lived.""I could never." I let her draw me down for a kiss, and for