Chapter 2

Chloe's POV

“She is seventeen!” Mum yelled at David.

“And that was the Alpha she was refusing so boldly,” he countered, pinching the bridge of his nose.

The consequences of my two-day-old refusal were instant and brutal.

Alpha Paulo removed every Omega servant from our household and beefed up pack patrols alongside border security.

It was his typical management tactic, left David’s Beta rank intact, yet sent us a tangible warning through daily life to hammer home that our standing and standard of living were entirely granted by the pack’s Alpha.

David shot me a look full of rage.

I shrugged in reply to him. “I couldn’t accept Axel right there at the party. Everyone could tell Axel and I barely knew each other. Agreeing straight away would’ve been lying to the Alpha.”

He resented how I’d spoken to Alpha Paulo at the party two days prior and was convinced my attitude was the reason their household had lost all its staff, leaving him to handle every chore alone.

While my stepsister Hannah was the only one thrilled by the whole mess in this house. She stayed overjoyed the whole day, as if she would officially become the new Luna the very next day.

The front door slammed open, and Hannah trundled inside, loaded with shopping bags.

“We’re struggling to get by, and you still splurge on all this junk!” David snapped at her, nothing like his usual gentle self. Yet his eyes kept darting toward me. It was clear the scolding was meant for my ears, a cheap attempt to make me feel guilty.

I paid him no mind. I had to figure out fast how to break off my engagement with Axel within the next four days.

Re-entering my room as quietly as possible, I climbed out of the window, using the dark of night to escape into the forest.

The path to the lake was burned into my mind. Since the moment I discovered it when I was ten, it had became my thinking spot.

As my legs slipped into the water, a chill crawled over my body.

Unable to help it, my mind started to slowly revisit my past life, from the mistresses Jason kept and the abuse I endured.

I spent ten years wed to Jax, yet my marriage was nothing like the glamorous life everyone pictured.

The first two years of our marriage went smoothly. But after I miscarried our first child unexpectedly in the third year, Jax’s true nature slowly came to light.

He started fooling around with other women, hiding his affairs discreetly. Overwhelmed by shame, I never publicly accused my wolf mate of betrayal once I learned the truth. I covered for him instead.

“Ten years. Twelve different women,” I muttered, laughing at how foolish I was to still keep giving him chances to repent. As at the third one who I found in our master bedroom with him, I should have realized that he was too far gone.

To spare my mother worry, I only shared joyful stories about my life every time I visited home, burying all the ugly realities deep down inside me.

I supposed that was exactly why Hannah always believed I had a perfect marriage.

Every single time, my wolf would go through the heart wrenching pain of mourning the purity of the mate bond. Just when she would finally heal, he would do it again.

Until my wolf was reduced to a muted state and I was left unable to shift or use my wolf senses for years.

As my hands wrapped into fists, they cut on the rockery on the ground beside me but I did not care.

How had I sacrificed my wolf, the one being that would always be in my corner, on the altar of love?

A familiar presence stirred in my chest.

My hand flew above my heart. There was…she was here. I was sure of it.

Before I could celebrate for long, an intense pain swept through my body. I keeled over, nearly falling into the pool but caught myself at the last minute.

I curled up in the fetal position as the pain intensified.

What was happening to me? Was I shifting?

No, I was seventeen…well, twenty-seven. So my mental age was forcing the shift?

My ears started to pick up the tiniest sounds in the forest, my eyes adjusting to the dark like it was bright as day.

The burst of sensation was disorienting. I closed my eyes and covered my ears, counting the seconds until this passed.

That was when I heard them.

Growls. Multiple of them. And they smelled or sounded nothing like pack members.

Shit. I needed to get out of here before those rogues found me.

Before I could struggle to my feet, two of them burst into the clearing. One of their bodies had knocked me over and I fell back on the ground.

The dislocating of one of my shoulders was accompanied by a sickening crack that echoed around us.

I stifled my cry of pain, rolling over to my other side. My eyes surveyed my surroundings.

Water on my left. Forest with the rogues on my right. Rogues in front of me. Cliff up ahead behind me.

Was there truly no way out?

“See what I find,” one of the rogues said, squatting to my height. He held my chin between his fingers, lifting my head up. “She is a lot prettier than I imagined.”

“Looks like she is just a kid.” Another one emerged from the forest.

The one who held me scanned me from top to bottom and licked his lips. “She does not look like a kid to me.”

The implication of his words filled me with horror.

My wolf thrashed inside me, trying to help but it was futile. My underage body was still too weak to handle her.

“This doesn’t look right,” the rogue said and set me down on the ground. His hand grabbed my dislocated shoulder and popped it back into place.

My cry slipped out that time.

He grinned. “That is how loud you should scream. It makes me…”

Suddenly, the air shifted.

A surge of overwhelming Alpha power thickened the air to a standstill. Right after that, I caught the sharp scent of rage and fear rolling off those rogues.

The rogues growled, pulling out knives, some of them shifting into their wolves.

A majestic black wolf walked into the arena, its eyes glowing a beautiful amber. He wasted no time and pounced, ripping into the nearest rogue to him.

Seeing their friend being treated like a rag doll, the rest of the rogues jumped towards him at the same time. Slashing and cutting in a way that would kill any wolf.

My wolf side hadn’t faded yet. Every bone in my body burned hot, leaving me in agony yet wrapped in a strange sense of release.

Moonlight once glinted off the lake’s surface. Now it blazed harsh and blinding.

I felt my bones reshaping themselves entirely, a strange sensation I had never known during my very first shift in my past life.

Surge after surge of raw power flooded into my body beneath the moon’s rays.

The rogues closed in on the black wolf that’d rushed to help me, and a sharp, metallic stench of blood flooded my nostrils.

The thought of someone actually dying because of me caused white hot anger to burn in my chest.

My vision turned red as fur burst over my skin.

I pounced.