Chapter 1

SONG OF THE CHAPTER: Animal I have become- Three Days Grace.

IVARA'S POV:

The neon sign flickers above the rusted roadhouse, buzzing like a dying insect. Its pale red light cuts through the darkness of the desert highway, painting jagged shadows across cracked asphalt.

The engines roar, and the air smells of gasoline, sweat, and wet asphalt. I pull my leather jacket tighter around me, not that it will hide the way my hands are shaking. It's not from fear but from anger and the heat of anticipation coiling in my chest like a live wire.

“Stay put,” my father, Kael, growls behind me, his hand pressing against my shoulder. His dark eyes gleam with that same cold pride that always makes my skin crawl. “Watch and learn. This is what strength looks like.”

I bite back a retort, though the words burn my tongue. I’ve learned over the years that arguing with him is like swinging at a wall which is basically pointless, and sometimes painful.

But my blood boils anyway. Watching men fight isn’t new. But this… this is different. These are wolves. Real wolves and they’re tearing each other apart.

I step closer to the edge of the gravel lot, boots crunching against stones. Across the roadhouse’s parking lot, a line of black motorcycles gleams under the neon. Engines rev, vibrations rattling my bones.

The Dravens. Ronan Draven. The Alpha. The man whose brother was murdered by my father three years ago. My pulse jumps despite my best efforts to keep it steady.

They come forward, slow at first, like predators sizing up prey and then it’s chaos.

Metal clashes with metal. Fists crash into flesh. The smell of blood hits me in the stomach, sharp and coppery. Wolves shift; men twisting, bones snapping and teeth glinting in the pale light.

I can hear the low growls, the snarl of wolf throats and the snap of claws against leather. I grit my teeth. A part of me wants to look away and part of me… I can’t.

Ronan Draven steps forward, taller and broader than anyone else. Even in human form, his presence is magnetic, dangerous.

I watch as his fist swings, connecting with a man’s jaw with a sickening crack. The man goes down, groaning, and Ronan doesn’t stop. He moves like water... precise, unstoppable and his every strike calculated. His wolf is barely restrained, something dark coiling behind his eyes, ready to spring.

I feel it in my chest, that ancient pull I’ve only ever heard about in whispers. Stories of mates, of bonds, of wolves who find the one soul that completes them. I scoff, even as a strange warmth pricks the base of my skull. I scoff, but it terrifies me. Because I don’t want this. I don’t want him. I want… nothing.

My father’s hand tightens on my shoulder. “Eyes open,” he hisses. “Remember who we are.”

I swallow my anger, swallow the bile that rises in my throat. But I can’t ignore the precision of Ronan’s movements. The way he shifts his weight with ease, how he doesn’t just fight... he dominates. He’s a predator in every sense, and every instinct in my body screams that he’s unlike anyone I’ve ever seen.

Another man lunges at him, knife in hand. Ronan’s teeth snap, not biting, just a warning growl that makes the man hesitate for half a second too long. That half-second is all Ronan needs.

His fist collides with the man’s chest, then jaw, then stomach in a brutal rhythm that makes the air shiver. The man crumples to the ground, wheezing. I can see the blood seeping through his leather jacket, pooling in the gravel.

And I feel something I shouldn’t. Something dangerous and... magnetic.

I push myself back, trying to focus. Hate him. Hate him. Hate him! I tell myself over and over, even as my pulse accelerates and my wolf stirs, restless and keen. Because he’s everything my father has warned me about. Everything I should despise but every muscle in my body wants to… notice him, watch him and feel the pull of something ancient, unrelenting.

Then it happens.

Ronan lands the final blow. The man goes down with a sickening crack, jaw twisted, blood spilling like ink over asphalt. Ronan stands, chest heaving, blood smeared across knuckles and cheeks, but he’s still upright. Victorious.

He raises his chin, surveying the battlefield, and his eyes which are piercing ice-blue, scan over the remaining Dravens. They roar their approval, rallying behind him, howls and engine revs colliding into a deafening symphony.

And then his gaze catches mine.

Across all the chaos, through smoke and flashing lights, our eyes lock and something inside me snaps. Something primal. Heat scorches my veins, my skin tingles, and my chest tightens as if something inside me is being pulled taut. Recognition. Fury. Desire. All tangled in one impossible knot.

I jerk back instinctively, hating the way my body reacts. The pull is unbearable. Every nerve in me hums with it, my wolf whining, desperate. I want to scream, run, even ignore it, but I can’t. Because my soul is shouting his name, and I don’t even know it yet.

My father’s hand is still on my shoulder, but he doesn’t notice. He’s shouting something at the remaining Voss bikers, pointing, commanding, oblivious to the bond that’s ignited between us. I feel my wolf stir violently, claws itching under my skin, ready to fight or run... or cling to him.

Ronan tilts his head slightly, that wolfish grin teasing at his lips even as blood streaks his face. And I know... I know in a way that terrifies me, that he feels it too. That pull, that heat, that recognition.

“No…” His voice breaks through the din, ragged, urgent. He staggers slightly, chest heaving, and the growl in his throat deepens, more wolf than man. I can see the moment the realization hits him, the blood in his eyes mixes with something else, something dark and intense. His mate… his mate is here and she is the daughter of the man who killed his brother.

The world tilts for me. My stomach twists, anger and fear warring in every beat of my heart. I hate him. I should hate him. He’s the enemy. He’s everything wrong, everything dangerous, everything forbidden. And yet… my wolf trembles. My breath catches. My pulse is betraying me, drumming in a rhythm I can’t control.

I throw a glare across the lot, leather-clad fists clenching. “You-” I hiss under my breath, but the words die before I can spit them. I want to scream at him, tell him he can never have me, that I am loyal to my father, to my blood, to everything but this impossible pull.

Ronan straightens, jaw tight, his wolf growling low in his chest. The Dravens rally behind him, oblivious to the silent storm brewing between us. He doesn’t move toward me, doesn’t speak, and yet I can feel him. Every fiber of him calling to me, challenging me, daring me and I hate it. I hate him.

But even as I turn to pull myself back behind the barricade of bikers and gravels, my body betrays me. Heat pulses through my veins, a wildfire threatening to consume every rational thought. My wolf whines softly, a sound only I can hear, desperate and trembling, and it claws at my mind. He is mine. And I am his.

I whirl to face him again, green eyes blazing, my chest heaving with suppressed fury. “I will never... never, belong to you,” I shout across the lot, my voice cutting like a whip through the chaos. “Do you hear me, Draven? Never!”

He doesn’t respond with words. His blue eyes are locked on mine, unreadable and sharp, yet filled with something that makes my pulse thrum like a drum. Something dark. Something dangerous. Something terrifyingly… irresistible.

Engines roar, tires spin, wolves shift. Blood and sweat and fire fill the air. And still, across the chaos, we are drawn together, bound by something older and fiercer than either of us. A bond neither of us wanted.

And then the world tilts once more. I see the hesitation in his stance, the way his chest heaves, the almost imperceptible tremor in his hands. He whispers, barely audible over the roaring engines and shouting men “No…”

I freeze. My breath hitches and I know. I know in my bones, deep in the marrow of my soul, that the Alpha of the Dravens, the man whose pack destroyed my family, has just realized the truth.

The mate bond is alive. The bond we cannot fight. The bond that will change everything and I want to fucking scream.

But instead, I grit my teeth, fists still clenched, wolf trembling beneath my skin, and whisper back into the chaos, “Then stay the hell away from me.”

The wind carries the echo of his growl, low and dangerous, through the neon-streaked darkness. And I know that this war has only just begun.