1: Mate🌙

Luna Valerius

“Come on, Luna. Cheer up a little. If you were really a wolf from those old legends, today would be the day you find your soulmate. You’re turning eighteen. Eighteen.”

Fiona’s excited voice cut through the café’s noise. A bitter, fake smile appeared on my lips. “Good thing we’re not wolves, Fiona. And those monsters only live in fairy tales.” The flatness in my voice was my biggest shield, hiding the storm inside me.

“Ugh, Luna. You can be so boring sometimes,” she whined.

I ignored her. There was a truth Fiona didn’t know. Could never know. Wolves were real. I was one of them. The blood in my veins carried that dark, cursed lineage, the very blood that made my own family turn and run without looking back. I’d been abandoned. Branded as cursed and tossed aside. Now I worked as a waitress in a café, fighting just to survive.

The prophecy said today was the day. The moment I was supposed to bond with my mate. But I felt nothing stirring. No famous scent of fate in the air. Not until Fiona pointed to that table.

“Go on, serve the mysterious guys in the corner. They haven’t taken their eyes off you all morning,” she whispered, her voice both nervous and curious.

When I looked over, a cold chill ran down my spine. Three men, sitting silently in the darkest corner like shadows. Their eyes were on me, but it wasn’t simple interest. It was the way a hunter analyzes its prey. Weighing every move, every breath I took. Was one of them a wolf? Maybe my soulmate, searching for me. Or maybe one of the ones who wanted me dead for being cursed.

I grabbed the tray with shaking hands and walked toward the table. The closer I got, the heavier the atmosphere became. Just as I was about to set the plates down, the most built one rested his arm on the table, and his sleeve rode up slightly.

My eyes locked onto the shimmer carved into his skin. A silver brand.

My blood went cold. This wasn’t an ordinary tattoo. It was the ancient mark of the subjugators, the hunters of cursed bloodlines. These were wolf hunters. I’d run from them so many times, hidden myself here. How had they found me? The porcelain plate slipped from my fingers, lost to the fear exploding in my mind.

Porcelain shattered across the floor. Three pairs of sharp eyes snapped to my face at the same time. None of them was my mate. They’d come to hunt the very darkness my own family had fled from.

Fear pushed me a step back. My heart slammed against my ribs like it wanted to break free, and for the first time, the wolf sleeping deep inside me growled. The hunt had begun. And in this story, I was the prey. I spun around. When my eyes met Fiona’s, her face held nothing but terror. I couldn’t even whisper an apology. I just ran.

**

My lungs burned like needles stabbing with every breath. The wet ground beneath my feet refused to help me escape the death closing in behind me. Dog barks echoed at my back. The sharp sound of silver bullets hitting tree trunks whipped my mind into a single thought: Don’t stop. Stop and you die. I’d run without saying a word to Fiona. It was always like this. Every time I started to settle somewhere, hunters showed up again. And I found myself running. Only this time, I’d been caught off guard. I didn’t know where to go. I was running into the unknown. When I looked back, they were right behind me.

I could smell the silver. If it touched my skin, it would burn like nothing else. Poison me. And right now, that would be a disaster. If those hunters’ silver bullets touched my skin, I knew the power still sleeping inside me would turn to ash. I’d die without ever becoming a wolf. I’d run from this moment my whole life, but now the dark was about to swallow me. My vision blurred. My heart tried to tear out of my chest.

Then the forest went dead silent. The birds stopped. The wind died. Even the earth seemed to hold its breath. I’d crossed the border. I was in Blackwood Falls. The territory of that merciless pack from the legends. This wasn’t salvation. Just surrendering to a bigger predator.

“Found you, little runaway.”

When I saw that man’s grinning face emerge from the bushes behind me, my blood froze. The silver rifle was aimed right between my eyes. “Our master wants you alive, but he won’t mind if I break your knees first,” he said, his voice icy. I closed my eyes. Dying this close to escape felt like the worst kind of injustice.

But the blast I expected never came. Instead, a feral snarl ripped through the air. A sound so savage it seemed like every tree in the forest shrank back in fear.

I opened my eyes. The man who’d been standing in front of me was now suspended in the air like a rag doll. What held him wasn’t a monster. It was a man. But no, he couldn’t just be a man. He was huge. Shoulders as wide as a boulder, muscles like forged steel. His half-naked body was covered in intricate tattoos, visible even in the dark of night.

He threw the hunter aside in one motion. I heard bones break. Then his gaze found me. And my heart stopped. Amber eyes burned like torches in the darkness, staring straight into the deepest parts of me, into every secret I’d ever buried.

This was Silas Vane. The darkest Alpha of the North.

He walked toward me slowly. I wanted to run, but my legs were rooted to the ground. When he stopped in front of me, the heat radiating from his body burned my cold skin. His scent. It was overwhelming. Fresh leather. Earth before a storm. Pure male power. It clouded my mind, short-circuited my reason. I was shocked by what rose up inside me. My brain was thinking without permission. That must have been my wolf’s voice.

He leaned in. Brought his nose close to my neck, right over my jugular. When he took a deep breath, I felt that wild piece of myself I hadn’t even been sure existed ache to answer him. The strange, burning tingle spreading in my stomach began to drown out my fear. My soul knew this monster.

“Mate.”

He didn’t say the word. He carved it into my mind like a whisper. His eyes suddenly turned red. The color of a wolf about to lose control. His hand closed around my throat.

“Stop,” I whispered, terrified, but I wasn’t even sure he heard me.

His rough, callused fingertips felt the frantic pulse in my vein. Or maybe I just imagined it. His touch didn’t hurt. Instead, it sent electric current through my body.

“Tell me who you are, little stranger,” he said, his voice a thunderclap that shook my ribcage. “Why are you sneaking through my territory like a thief, and why do you carry the stench of that cursed bloodline on you?”

I wanted to speak, but my lips were sealed. He was so close. The heat of his mouth burned the skin of my neck. I should have been afraid. He was a killer. A monster. But his dark energy pulled me like a magnet. Instead of pulling back, I unconsciously leaned toward him.

“I’m... I’m not one of them,” I finally whispered. My voice trembled pathetically. “I’m just trying to survive.”

Silas pressed his face deeper into my neck. I flinched when I felt the hardness of his teeth against my skin. This wasn’t an attack. This was a claiming. His thumb stroked the sensitive spot on my neck while that wild voice inside me whispered, submit.

“From this moment on, it doesn’t matter what you are, little wolf,” he said, his voice darker now, hungrier. “Because the second you crossed this border, you left your past in the forest. There’s only one way to survive in this territory now. You belong to me. Even if you are from that cursed bloodline.”