LOGINAria POVI heard the sound of a vehicle slowing down… then stopping.My eyes snapped open immediately.For a second, my head felt light, like I was floating between sleep and reality. My body was heavy from exhaustion, my limbs sore, but instinct forced me awake. I slowly lifted my head and turned toward the window.What I saw made me freeze.A garden.Not just any garden.Rows and rows of flowers were neatly arranged, stretching far into the distance like something out of a dream. Roses, lilies, moonblooms, flowers I didn’t even know the names of. Every single one of them looked freshly nurtured, as if they were planted just to welcome visitors. The air outside looked clean, calm, peaceful. Nothing like the forest of blood and fear we escaped from.The flowers sparkled under the morning light, soft drops of dew resting on their petals. It felt unreal.I slowly extended my gaze further.And then I saw it.A massive structure rose behind the garden.Tall stone walls. High towers. Wide
The weather was so cold last night that I honestly thought I would freeze right there on the forest floor. The kind of cold that bites your skin and crawls all the way into your bones. Even with the fire Daniel created, the wind still cut through us like tiny knives, reminding us that we were not safe, not comfortable, not home.I forced myself up before anyone else. My body felt heavy, like someone had tied stones to my legs and arms. My eyes burned from lack of sleep. My shoulders ached from carrying too much responsibility. Every part of my body begged me to lie back down, even if the ground was hard and the air was cold. But I couldn’t. Not when these people were depending on me. Not when they looked at me the night before with fear and hope mixed in their tired eyes.I swallowed the pain, breathed out slowly, and raised my voice.“Good morning everyone, wake up… we still have a long way to go!” I shouted weakly. My voice cracked a little. I didn’t even have strength to sound like
Aria POV“I’m Daniel, and you?” the wolf guy who broke the cage stretched his hand toward me.“Aria,” I said, still trying to wake up properly from the shock earlier. My heartbeat was only just slowing down.The growl we heard earlier wasn’t from a monster or a rogue beast like we first feared. It was just a deer. But the sound was too huge to ignore, the type that could make someone faint if they were already scared. Daniel, yes, the same Daniel who tore out of that cage like a dragon, was the one that killed it with one clean move.“Nice to meet you,” Daniel replied. His voice was firm, steady, and calm. Not too friendly, not too cold, just balanced, like someone who had been fighting for a long time and didn’t know how to act normal again.“What about you guys?” he asked, turning to Mira and the two guys who joined the fight earlier.“I’m Ryder Knox,” the other tall guy said.“Mira.”“Vicka.”They all mentioned their names one by one and shook hands like people who just met at a bu
All we could hear at first was the sharp, cracking sound of a cage breaking open.It wasn’t a normal sound. It wasn’t small. It wasn’t something you hear and ignore.It was loud. It was deep.It was the kind of sound that reaches your bones and warns you that something terrible is coming.The moment it echoed across the desert camp, everybody, except me, Mira, the rogues, and two guys I didn’t know, jumped backward like scared chickens. Captives screamed, fell, pushed one another, and scattered so fast that the whole training ground became scattered like a disturbed anthill.Dust rose everywhere, blinding us for a moment.And then, out of that dust, the wolf rushed out from the broken cage.He didn’t walk. He didn’t stumble. He charged out like the cage had never even tried to stop him.Like he had been waiting for this moment. Like he had been born just to break free today.He was running straight toward us.His paws dug into the sand so hard that sand splashed backward with every st
Aria’s POVMy heart twists with anger and pain as I look around again, seeing how people are being treated here. Every time I blink, it gets worse. Every breath reminds me that this place is not a camp… it’s a graveyard waiting to collect bodies one by one.My only sleepless night since I came here has been filled with just one thought, how do I get everybody out?Just one day in this place is already breaking me. I can literally feel parts of myself dying slowly. My body, my strength, my wolf… even my sanity. Everything here feels wrong. Everything smells like fear, dried blood, and hopelessness.And honestly, I don’t know how Mira survived four whole months here.Four months.I am only here for just twenty-seven hours and it feels like I’ve seen enough horror to last me ten lifetimes.We are finally training this evening. Normally, according to Mira, training is done every single day. And ever since the day I was abducted, I’ve been preparing and waiting for the chance to observe ho
Damon POVThe walls of my office felt tighter than they had ever been. I paced from the shelf to the table, from the table to the window, like a caged wolf barely holding his sanity. My mind wasn’t even here, it was running circles around one name.Aria.The audacity she had… the boldness… the guts to stand in front of me and reject me. Reject me, her Alpha, her mate. The pride should have angered me enough to forget her entirely, but instead it sat in my chest like a burning coal. Not just anger, something deeper, something I didn’t want to admit.“She thinks she can survive without me,” I muttered to myself, clenching my fists.The thought alone made my chest twist. Not out of love, I never loved her. I always told myself that. I repeated it so often that it became a chant in my head. But still… she was perfect for the pack. A proper Luna. Disciplined, calm, intelligent, organized, everything a pack needed in its Luna.Not like Selene.My jaw tightened.Where Aria carried responsibi







