Chapter 1: Fate, Mate

Ophilia's POV

I stood at the edge of the gathering, tray balanced against my hip, serving drinks to wolves who wouldn't look at me twice unless it was to laugh. What else was the most hated maidservant in the Makasi Moon Pack supposed to do on a night like this?

"Welcome, all of you, to the wolf ceremony." The Luna Mother's voice rang out over the crowd of nearly four hundred wolves, warm and commanding in a way mine had never once been allowed to be.

"Would you like a drink, sir?" I asked, offering a glass to a broad-shouldered man near the front.

"Uhm, yeah..." He took it, eyes dragging over me slow and deliberate. "But I'd rather have it from an actual wolf."

A grin spread across his face the moment the words landed, and I felt every eye around us swing toward me like I was the punchline he'd been building to.

"Is she even a wolf?" a woman called out, loud enough to carry. "Looks more like she ate the last three wolves who tried to tell her no."

Laughter rippled through the crowd, ugly and delighted, mouths curling around my body like they had every right to it.

I was big. Undeniably, unapologetically big. My frame took up space in a world that had spent my whole life trying to make me smaller — wide hips, soft arms, a body built solid and real, and every pack member here had memorized it as something to mock. I'd spent my entire life hearing it — that I took up too much room, that I wasn't even a proper wolf.

I gave them nothing. No tears, no flinch. I turned and walked away with my chin lifted and my spine straight, refusing to let a single one of them see what their words cost me.

"Two minutes until the blue moon rises," someone called out behind me, giddy. "Then every unmated wolf gets the chance to catch their fated mate's scent."

The blue moon. It rose once a year, and I could feel the anticipation crackling through the crowd like static — young wolves who'd spent years dreaming of this exact moment since the day they came of age.

I wasn't one of them. I didn't let myself hope. Girls built like me weren't allowed to.

The crowd split without warning, parting down the middle like the sea recognizing something greater than itself.

The Alphas.

Jace walked first, tall and commanding, the kind of presence that pulled every eye in the room toward him without effort. Behind him came his twin, Chase, moving with the same easy arrogance, like the ground itself owed him something.

They crossed toward the raised platform where the Luna Mother waited to preside over the ceremony, the blue moon's light pouring down over both of them as the great bell rang out, signaling the start.

I was already turning away, tray in hand, heading back toward the packhouse, when something seized inside my chest. A pull. Sharp, foreign, unlike anything I'd ever felt in my life.

I tried to keep walking. I told myself to keep walking. But the farther I moved, the heavier my heart grew, like something invisible had looped a rope around it and was drawing it taut.

This can't be the mate bond. It can't be.

Then the scent hit me — sweet, unfamiliar, impossible to ignore — and before I could stop myself, my feet were carrying me back through the crowd, straight toward the platform, straight into the center of everyone's stares.

Gasps broke out around me, spreading faster than the moonlight itself.

I turned to my left, barely aware of the hundreds of eyes locked on me, barely aware of anything except the pull dragging me forward.

It led me to him.

It shouldn't have.

I stood frozen as Alpha Jace's eyes found mine — and the fury in them hit me like a physical blow. The Luna Mother stepped between us and drew in a slow breath, testing the air, and whatever she found there settled over her face in an expression I couldn't read at all.

I looked past her, toward Chase. He was already staring at me — the same look he gave me every time he wanted me to understand exactly how badly I'd be punished. Nine years I'd lived under this roof, abandoned by my own blood for the crime of being too much, too visible, too wrong, and in nine years, no one here had ever looked at me like that meant anything.

Tonight, it apparently did.

"It can't be," a woman near the front breathed, awe curdling fast into disgust. "She's mated to the Alpha?"

"This is a disgrace to the entire Makasi Moon Pack," another voice snapped, and the air between Jace and me went thick and cold, heavy enough to choke on.

The Luna Mother's composure cracked at last, her voice trembling with something close to rage as she stared at me like I was a plague she'd have to burn out of her pack.

"Mate," she said, and the word hit the crowd like a struck match.

Chase's jaw locked so hard I heard his teeth grind from three feet away, fury rolling off him in waves, as if I had personally reached into the moon goddess's design and rewritten his brother's fate out of spite.

Then Jace laughed.

It wasn't warm. It wasn't disbelief. It was low, slow, and cruel, curling through the silence like smoke.

"Well," he said, dragging his gaze over me the way you'd inspect something you were about to throw away, "I suppose even the righteous moon goddess makes mistakes. Look at you — a mate built like a burden instead of a wolf."

He started toward me, and every step closed the distance between us while the bond in my chest pulled tighter, sweeter now instead of painful — my body betraying me even as my mind screamed to run.

"How exactly could you be my Luna?" His voice carried, deliberately, for the whole crowd to hear. "A Luna is someone strong enough to carry the weight of this pack. Not someone who'd slow it down."

The words hit harder than anything the crowd had thrown at me all night. He wasn't finished.

"A Luna wins wars." He leaned in slightly, and I felt my pulse stutter. "You look like something that couldn't outrun a war, let alone win one. And children—" a cold, humorless laugh escaped him, "—you'd need to survive one night with all of me first. I doubt you could, You are too fat."

He said the last part low, right against my ear, meant only for me — but I felt every witness in that crowd lean in anyway, hungry for my humiliation.

I looked past him, toward the Luna Mother, and found her practically glowing with satisfaction, like this was the outcome she'd been praying for.

Chase stepped closer, claws sliding free with a soft, deliberate hiss, close enough that I felt the threat in it before he ever spoke a word. His eyes promised me exactly what would happen the moment his brother finished with me.

Jace straightened, and when he spoke again, his voice rang out over the entire gathering — louder than the bell, colder than the moonlight, and final.

"I, Alpha Jace of the Makasi Moon Pack, refuse to let this fat thing be my Luna."