Chapter 3

Lila’s pov

My head felt like someone had split it open with an axe.

I groaned, or tried to. What came out was more of a weak whine. My tongue was dry and thick in my mouth. Everything hurts. My flank where the arrow had hit me. My legs. My skull.

I forced my eyes open.

Stone walls. Damp floor. Iron bars.

A dungeon. I was in a dungeon.

I tried to move and heard the clank of chains. I looked down and saw my four legs bound with heavy iron shackles. The metal was cold against my fur. White fur. I was still in my wolf form. Good. At least I had not shifted while I was unconscious. That would have been a nightmare.

I lifted my head and looked around the small cell. Mara was on the floor to my left, her dark gray fur matted with dried blood. Nessa was on my right, her tan coat barely visible in the dim light. Both of them were still unconscious, their sides rising and falling in shallow breaths.

Finn and Sike were not here. I did not know where they were. Separate cells, maybe. Or worse.

I tried to stand, but my legs would not hold me. The poison was still in my system, making everything weak and slow. I collapsed back onto the cold stone floor with a grunt.

"Mara," I tried to say. It came out as a howl. Low and urgent. "Nessa. Wake up."

Neither of them moved.

I howled again, louder this time. The sound bounced off the stone walls and echoed down the corridor. Still nothing. They were either in a deep sleep or something worse. I could not tell which.

Fear crawled up my throat and turned into anger. Hot, burning anger.

I lunged at the iron bars that separated our cell from the corridor. My shackles yanked me back, but I did not care. I threw my head forward and slammed it against the metal. The clang echoed through the dungeon like a bell.

Again. I pulled back and slammed my head against the bars again.

Again.

Again.

Pain exploded through my skull, but I did not stop. The anger was too big. My friends were hurt. We had been captured. Everything had gone wrong. I needed to hit something, break something, do something besides just lying here like a helpless pup.

Footsteps. Heavy and fast.

Two guards appeared on the other side of the bars. Big wolves, both in their human forms, wearing the Moonshine Pack's colors. One of them carried a long metal stick.

"Stop that," the first guard said. "Right now."

I snarled at him and slammed my head against the bars again.

The guard with the stick reached through the bars and tried to push me back. I snapped at his hand. He yanked it away just in time.

"She is feral," the second guard said. "We need to force her to shift."

"Good luck with that."

The first guard unlocked the cell door and stepped inside. He was tall and broad, with the kind of face that probably looked mean even when he was happy. He circled around me carefully, staying just out of reach of my teeth.

"Shift," he commanded.

I bared my teeth at him.

"I said shift." His voice was harder now. Alpha tone. The kind of voice that was supposed to make wolves obey.

My wolf wanted to listen. Every instinct in my body wanted to submit and shift and do whatever this man said. But I was not some pack wolf who had been trained to obey since birth. I was a rogue. I had survived twenty years by not submitting to anyone.

And if I shifted now, I would be naked. In front of two strange men. In a dungeon.

No. Absolutely not.

I snarled again and lunged at his legs. He jumped back and raised his stick.

"That is it," he said. "I am putting you down."

He swung the stick at my head. I tried to dodge, but my body was too slow, too heavy. The stick connected with my shoulder and I yelped. Pain flared through my joint, sharp and hot.

He raised the stick again.

Then I heard footsteps.

Not the guards' footsteps. These were heavier. Slower. More deliberate. Each step echoed through the dungeon like a drumbeat, steady and powerful and completely unhurried.

The guards froze. The one with the stick lowered his arm. They both looked toward the corridor, their faces going pale.

I did not care about the footsteps at first. I was too focused on the pain in my shoulder and the anger in my chest. But then something hit my nose. A scent. Something I had never smelled before.

It was the most delicious thing I had ever experienced.

Warm like cedar and smoke. Sharp like winter air. Underneath it all, something sweet that made my mouth water. I could not help it. My tongue came out and I licked my lips. The scent was everywhere now, filling the dungeon, covering up the smell of blood and rust and old straw.

My body started moving before my brain caught up. I thrashed against my shackles, straining toward the corridor, toward that scent. The chains bit into my legs but I did not care. I needed to see where it was coming from. I needed to find it.

The guard with the stick panicked. He swung at my neck and hit me hard. I barely felt it. I kept thrashing, kept howling, and kept pulling against the chains.

And then he came into view.

The man who walked down the dungeon corridor was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.

He was tall. Very tall. Broad shoulders that filled out his dark shirt like he had been carved from stone. Dark hair that fell across his forehead, messy like he had been running his hands through it. His jaw was sharp, his cheekbones high, his lips full and pressed into a line that was not quite a smile.

But his eyes. His eyes were what stopped my heart.

Silver. Bright and clear and cold, like moonlight on a frozen lake. But there was something burning underneath them. Something hot. Something hungry.

He looked at me, and I felt like he could see straight through my fur and my skin and my bones, right down to the very center of who I was.

The guards straightened up immediately. "Alpha Allister," they said in unison, bowing their heads.

Alpha.

The word hit me like a bucket of ice water. Alpha Allister. The Alpha of the Moonshine Pack. The man whose weapons we had tried to steal. The man whose borders we had crossed.

There was no way he was going to let me live. I was a rogue. An attacker. A thief. And judging by the look in his eyes, he was not the forgiving type.

I cowered back against the wall of the cell. My tail tucked between my legs without my permission. My ears flattened against my head. Every instinct screamed at me to run, but there was nowhere to go. I was chained and trapped and completely at his mercy.

Alpha Allister walked past the guards and stopped in front of my cell. He looked at the bars. At the chains. At me.

Then he did something I did not expect.

He fell to his knees.

Right there on the dirty dungeon floor, in front of his guards, in front of me. He knelt down like he was the one who should be begging.

The guards exchanged confused looks. One of them opened his mouth to say something, but Alpha Allister held up his hand and they both went silent.

He reached through the bars. His hand was huge, with long fingers and scars across the knuckles. I flinched, expecting him to hit me or grab me or worse. But he just rested his palm on the back of my neck, gentle and warm.

His touch sent a shock through my entire body.

He pulled me closer, not roughly, just firmly. Enough that I could not pull away. He lowered his head and breathed in deeply, right next to my fur. I felt his nose brush against my neck, and my whole body started shaking. Not from fear. From something else. Something I did not want to name.

Then I heard it. A whisper, so soft I almost missed it.

"Mate."

My heart stopped. Then it started again, faster than before, pounding so hard I thought it might break through my ribs.

Mate. He had said mate.

This man. This Alpha. He was my mate.

The mate I had spent a year searching for. The mate I had given up on. The mate I had convinced myself did not exist.

He was here. And he was looking at me like I was the only thing in the world that mattered.

My body shook. A delicious, terrible, wonderful shake that started in my chest and spread all the way to my paws. Every part of me wanted to lean into him, to press my fur against his skin, to breathe in his scent and never breathe anything else again.

But I could not.

I would not.

I was a rogue. He was an Alpha. I had attacked his pack. He had thrown me in a dungeon. This was not some fairy tale where the prisoner fell in love with her captor. This was real life, and real life had taught me that trusting people got you hurt.

So I bit him.

I sank my teeth into his forearm as hard as I could. I tasted blood. He grunted but did not pull away. I bit harder, and then I yanked myself free from his grip and scrambled to the farthest corner of the cell.

I turned around and snarled at him. A real snarl. Feral and loud and full of every wall I had ever built around my heart.

The guards moved toward me, hands raised, ready to attack. But Alpha Allister held up his arm, blocking them.

"Stop," he said. His voice was calm. Too calm.

He looked at me. Blood dripped from the bite mark on his arm, but he did not even glance at it. He just stared at me with those silver eyes, and then his lips curved into a slow, dangerous smirk.

"Seems like I got myself a violent mate."

I snarled louder. But underneath the anger, underneath the fear, my traitorous heart was still pounding. And my wolf was howling, a name I refused to acknowledge.

Mate. Mate. Mate.