Stolen by the Psyco Alpha; Ghost Luna

POV Felisha

Ash tasted like copper and dead grass.

I was fifteen, and my lungs felt like they were lined with hot shards of glass as I tore through the northern border woods of the Walker estate. Behind me, the manor was a roaring pillar of orange and black against a heavy, bruised blood-moon sky. The screams had stopped a few minutes ago. They stopped right after my mothers voice had cut off, choked out by the thick smoke and the brutal authority of my fathers enforcers.

My boots slipped on the frost-hardened mud. I scrambled up a steep embankment, my fingers shredding against the sharp bark of pine trees, tearing my nails until warm blood slicked my palms. I didn't care. Nothing mattered except putting distance between myself and Mauris Walker. To my father, I wasn't a daughter; I was a tradable commodity, a royal bloodline pawn to be sold to the highest-bidding pack. And tonight, after my mother tried to shield me with a forged blood-testament, he had decided it was time to cash her out.

Branches whipped across my face, drawing thin, stinging lines of fire. My breath came in ragged, wheezing gasps that sounded entirely too loud in the dead silence of the deep forest.

Then, the shadows ahead shifted.

A low, vibrating growl echoed through the trees, heavy enough to rattle my teeth. Three massive, grey-furred hounds of the Walker inner guard dropped from the shadowed canopy, blocking the narrow goat track that led to the territory wall. Their yellow eyes burned with malicious hunger, slathering jaws dripping in the ash-choked air.

I scrambled backward, tripping over a gnarled root and crashing hard onto the frozen dirt. I squeezed my eyes shut, raising my small, shaking hands. It was over. Seven years of running, of hiding, of watching my mother fight a losing war, it all ended here in the dirt.

A heavy, suffocating weight dropped out of the night sky, landing right between me and the hounds with a dull, bone-crushing thud.

The air instantly died. The scent of burning pine was violently overwritten by something dark, ancient, and terrifyingly cold, dark cedar, bitter frost, and old, spilled blood.

I forced my eyes open.

Standing over the writhing, dying form of the nearest guard hound was a man. He was towering, broad-shouldered, and dressed in torn black layers that clung to a physique carved from jagged stone. He moved with a terrifying, liquid speed, a blur of motion that snapped necks and tore throats before the hounds could even howl.

When the slaughter finished in less than five brutal seconds, the stranger turned around slowly.

He was twenty-one, but he possessed the dead, calculating eyes of an apex predator that had ruled the dark for centuries. His hair was black as a pitch night, swept back from a sharp, ruthless face. But it was his eyes that stole the last ragged breath from my chest. They weren't human. They weren't even normal wolf-amber. They were molten silver, glowing with an internal, hungry fire that made my skin crawl.

He didn't speak. He simply stalked toward me, the crushed pine needles crunching beneath his heavy boots. I pressed myself flat against the cold earth, shivering uncontrollably, waiting for the fatal snap of my own neck.

Instead, massive, scarred hands gripped me roughly by the waist. He hauled me off the ground effortlessly, lifting me as if I weighed nothing at all, and carried me straight to the top of the seven-foot iron-spiked territory wall. His fingers dug so fiercely into my ribs that I knew purple bruises would bloom there by morning. His chest pressed against mine, radiating a terrifying, unnatural heat.

Before dropping me over the other side into the freezing safety of the outside world, he leaned down. His lips brushed the damp hair at my ear, his breath hot and sending a violent shiver straight down my spine.

“Run, little wolf,” he murmured, his voice a low, dark promise that sounded less like a rescue and more like a hunter giving his favorite prey a head start. “Remember me. Even if you hide in the darkest corners of the earth, I will always find you.”

Then he let me fall.

Seven years later.

Seven years of sleeping in rat-infested hostels across Europe, of dyeing my hair, of slouching until my spine ached just to hide my height. Seven years of swallowing bitter, chalky black-market silver-bark suppressants every single morning to burn my royal scent into dead ash.

Now, I was Felisha. Just another faceless ghost blending into the miserable, rain-slicked concrete of Geneva.

Water dripped steadily from the brim of my oversized black hoodie, pooling on the cold laminate floor of the Smith Blood-Security lobby. I dug my hands deep into the pockets of my baggy, frayed jeans, clutching my forged resume like a lifeline. My knuckles were white. My stomach was a churning knot of acid and exhaustion. I needed this underground archive job. If I didn't secure a steady pay check by tonight, Id be sleeping on a subway bench with nothing to keep out the Swiss alpine chill.

The lobby was a sterile cavern of obsidian glass and polished chrome, humming with the quiet, expensive murmur of corporate power. Dozens of applicants sat on sleek leather benches, all of us desperate cogs waiting for our numbers to be called. I kept my head down, letting the shadow of my hood hide the sharp angles of my face, breathing shallowly through my mouth to avoid drawing any attention.

Then, the ambient hum of the room simply stopped.

It wasn't a gradual quiet. It was an abrupt, suffocating silence, as if someone had reached out and strangled the life out of the building.

The air temperature dropped ten degrees in a single heartbeat. Goosebumps erupted violently across my arms beneath my hoodie.

A heavy, overwhelmingly dense scent rolled over the crowd like a physical wave. Dark cedar. Bitter cold. The unmistakable, suffocating signature of an Apex Alpha who commanded absolute terror.

My breath caught in my throat. My instincts, dormant and chemically suppressed for seven years suddenly screamed a primal warning inside my head. Run.

A low chime pinged from the private, gold-trimmed executive elevator at the far end of the hall. The heavy glass doors slid open with a whisper.

A towering man in an impeccably tailored black bespoke suit stepped out into the lobby. Broad shoulders, razor-sharp jawline, and an aura of lethal, unyielding dominance that made every single person in the room instantly lower their gaze.

My boots were glued to the floor. My heart slammed against my ribs like a trapped bird.

Before I could force my trembling legs to turn around and bolt toward the rain, those striking, molten silver eyes swept across the crowded room and locked directly onto mine.

The sea of applicants parted around me as if I were standing in the middle of a vacuum. He didn't blink. He didn't hesitate. He started walking straight toward me, his heavy footsteps echoing like a countdown in the dead silence.

A deep, dark, impossibly familiar voice cut through the empty air, shattering my seven-year illusion of safety into a million pieces:

"Natalia."