Chapter 1 – The Curse and the Miracle

Elira

When I woke, I already knew he was dead.

The air told me before I even opened my eyes—heavy, sour with blood and the sharp bite of fear that never seemed to leave a corpse. I rolled onto my side and looked at him, sprawled half across the furs, skin gray beneath the morning light that crept through the slats in the shutters.

My sixth mate.

His chest was still. His eyes open. His mouth parted like he’d died mid‑plea.

I wasn’t surprised.

I’d known it was coming.

“They’ll say I killed him,” I whispered to no one.

“And maybe I did. Or the curse did, rather.”

Either way, another Alpha was dead because of me.

It had been apparent from the moment I was born that I was different.

My mother used to say I was moon‑kissed. My skin lighter than anyone’s in the pack, my hair white as fresh snow, my eyes such a pale blue they looked like shards of glass. No one had ever seen a wolf pup like me. Not then, not now.

My parents called me their miracle child—a blessing from the Moon Goddess herself. They named me Elira, which means hope in the old tongue.

Five miscarriages and three stillborn pups before me, and then somehow, impossibly, I lived.

They said the Goddess had answered their prayers.

For a while, I believed it.

My childhood was a good one.

I ran wild through the woods. I learned to track, to fight, to laugh.

The pack adored me, the miracle who had broken my mother’s curse of barrenness. Everyone said the Moon Goddess must have plans for me.

And perhaps She did.

Because everything changed the night of my first shift.

I remember the way the pack gathered to watch.

The air was crisp, the moon full and silver. My mother’s hands trembled with joy as the change began, my bones reshaping, my skin stretching into fur the color of snow. When I turned toward the gathered wolves, the clearing went silent.

They stared.

All white, every strand gleaming like ice, eyes glowing pale instead of gold. A living phantom.

Someone whispered, “Beautiful.”

Someone else whispered, “Wrong.”

And then they caught my scent.

That was the beginning of the end.

My scent—sweet, wild, addictive. The unmated males were the first to react. They circled closer, pupils blown wide, wolves restless under their skin. Fights broke out during hunts. Scuffles in the training yard. The Alphas came next—stronger, older, completely undone by something none of them could control.

I learned quickly that my “blessing” came with teeth.

The first to claim me was Alpha Orion.

He said his wolf howled for me from the moment I shifted.

He was older—steady, respected—and my parents were proud. I was only seventeen, barely a month into adulthood, but I felt the pull too. The bond buzzed beneath my skin, tempting, inevitable.

He marked me under the full moon, and the pack cheered.

A week later, he was dead.

The healers said his heart had simply stopped. No warning. No pain. Just silence.

The second was Alpha Kole.

He came to offer condolences. Told me it was fate that I should find another mate so soon—that the Moon Goddess must truly favor me. I wanted to believe him. I wanted to believe I wasn’t cursed.

He marked me.

Three days later, they found him dead in the forest, eyes rolled white, mouth full of blood.

They called it coincidence.

Then came Alpha Emmitt.

By then my naivety had worn thin. I didn’t believe him when he said we were fated. He insisted anyway, dragging me from my home when I refused. “You’ll know it when I mark you,” he said. “You’ll feel what I feel.”

He was wrong.

The only thing I felt was dread.

He marked me, and two days later, he was gone—heart ruptured in his chest, the mark on my neck burning until it bled.

That was when the whispers began.

That was when they stopped calling me blessed and started calling me cursed.

They sent me back to my own pack, thinking my presence was poison.

But my Alpha met me at the border with his warriors and said he wouldn’t have a cursed wolf among his ranks. He wouldn’t even let me cross the line.

“Take your sickness elsewhere,” he’d said.

“Before it spreads.”

And that was the first time I heard the name that would follow me forever.

The Wolf’s Bane.

The Bane.

Then there was Alpha Garrick—the fourth.

He didn’t pretend to be kind.

Didn’t whisper about fate.

He told me straight: “If I can’t have you, no one will.”

And when I refused his claim, he locked me in a cellar and waited for my heat to rise.

He marked me in my sleep.

He died screaming.

And there was also the one who lived.

Alpha Thorne.

The only one who survived my bond.

But he didn’t survive it whole.

They keep him in a mountain asylum now.

He raves through the walls.

Claws at the stone.

Screams my name through the bars like a wolf in heat.

There are whispers that his wolf refuses to shift anymore. That Thorne hasn’t slept since me.

The bond didn’t kill him.

It just broke him.

Each time, it was the same.

The moment an Alpha marked me, he started to unravel. Headaches. Nightmares. A restless hunger that turned to obsession. Then the seizures. The madness. The blood.

Each time, I thought maybe the next one would be different. That if I was careful, if I waited, if I prayed—

But the Moon never answered.

And now here I was again, lying beside another dead man, Alpha Auren. The fifth alpha dead because of me. His scent already fading into the cold morning air.

I pulled the furs from his body and wrapped them around myself. My skin was sticky with his blood, my throat raw from his last kiss. The mark at my neck burned like it always did when the bond snapped.

I should have felt grief.

Instead, I felt only resignation.

Five Alphas dead.

One mad.

And me—the common denominator in every tragedy.

I wasn’t a blessing.

I wasn’t a miracle.

I was a punishment disguised in a pretty package.

There’s always a reason for curses—

but I still don’t know why I was chosen to bear this one.