The Luna Who Couldn't Shift

CHAPTER 1

Sera’s POV

The ceremonial platform feels like a stage built for my execution. Torches blaze in a perfect circle around the clearing, their flames casting dancing shadows across hundreds of watching faces.

Two packs stand witness tonight—mine and theirs—separated by ancient stones that mark the boundary between Nightshade and Shadowcrest territories.

The autumn air bites cold against my skin, carrying the scent of pine smoke and wolf musk so thick it coats the back of my throat.

I don't belong here. I shouldn't be standing in the center of this sacred space, but here I am anyway, caught in the middle of something I still don't fully understand.

Alpha Kade Blackthorn stands three feet away from me. He's exactly what an alpha should be—tall, broad-shouldered, with that aura that makes lesser wolves nervous.

Dark hair falls across his forehead, and his eyes are the color of steel in moonlight. Everything about him screams danger, from the casual way he holds himself to the knife strapped at his hip.

He's younger than I expected, maybe twenty-seven or twenty-eight, but he carries authority like a second skin. His hand is extended toward me.

Around us, wolves whisper and shift, their excitement a living thing. They came for a spectacle tonight, and they're getting one.

The Claim of Shame—an ancient rite no one's invoked in over a century. A way for one pack to settle debts with another by claiming their most worthless member as a mate.

That worthless member would be me. Sera Nightshade. Twenty-two-year-old daughter of the Nightshade Beta.

Descended from alpha bloodlines on both sides but completely and utterly wolfless. I've failed to shift three times now.

Three ceremonies under three full moons, and each time my body remained stubbornly, humiliatingly human.

The pack has been patient, more patient than I deserved, but patience has limits. Tonight was supposed to be my exile. A quiet removal of a shameful daughter disappearing into the night.

Instead, Kade Blackthorn appeared with twelve of his warriors and invoked a rite that bound me to him before my father could refuse. The Claim of Shame lets him take me as his mate to settle the blood debt between our packs—a debt I still don't understand.

"Sera Nightshade." Kade's voice carries across the clearing, rich and commanding. "Do you accept this claim?"

Before I can answer, movement explodes to my left. Marcus—Kade's Beta, a mountain of a man with shoulders so toned and well defined and a scar cutting through his left eyebrow—surges forward.

He moves between us with a snarl that makes wolves in the crowd flinch.

"No." His voice is gravel and fury. "She doesn't touch him."

The crowd erupts. Some cheer. Others gasp. My former pack—the Nightshade wolves clustered on the eastern side of the clearing—watch with barely concealed glee. This is better than they hoped for. Not just exile, but rejection from the enemy pack too.

My father stands among them, arms crossed over his chest, his face squeezed as though it were carved from stone.

He's already disowned me once, his voice ringing through the clearing: "Sera Nightshade is no daughter of mine. She brings shame to our bloodline and dishonor to our name."

The words still burn like brands across my skin. Now he gets to watch me humiliated again.

Kade's expression doesn't change, but something dangerous flickers in his eyes. "Move, Marcus."

"No." Marcus plants his feet wider, his massive frame blocking me from Kade's view. "I don't care what ancient rite you're invoking. This wolfless thing isn't worthy of standing beside an alpha."

The word 'thing' hits like a physical blow. I've been called worse—defect, broken, cursed—but somehow this one lands harder. Maybe because Marcus doesn't know me.

He's not a pack member, so he has no history with me and no reason to hate me personally.

Which means this is what I am to strangers: a thing. Not even wolf enough to deserve a species.

"You claimed her to shame them, fine." Marcus gestures toward my father and the Nightshade wolves. "Message sent. They're humiliated, but you don't have to complete the bond. Use her some other way. Prisoner. Servant. Whatever. But not this, not as a mate."

My heart hammers against my ribs so hard I'm sure everyone can hear it. The ceremonial dress they forced me into—white silk that marks me as unclaimed—feels like a burial shroud.

My hands are shaking, so I clench them into fists at my sides. If Marcus successfully stops this ritual, Kade will lose face in front of both packs. He'll have no reason to keep me.

The claim will be void. I'll be exiled tonight—thrown into the wilderness without a wolf to protect me, without the ability to hunt or defend myself or survive the first cold night.

I'll be dead by morning if I'm lucky. Rogues or rival packs if I'm not, but if I argue this claim—if I fight to be mated to a man who sees me as a weapon of humiliation—I prove Marcus right that I'm desperate, pathetic, and willing to accept any scraps of belonging, even ones poisoned with contempt.

There's no good choice here. There never has been. Kade steps around Marcus with that confidence that makes alphas so terrifying to watch.

One moment he's behind his Beta, the next he's in front of me, close enough that I can see the silver flecks in his gray eyes.

"Sera Nightshade," he says again, his voice dropping lower, meant for me alone, but it reached every wolf-sharp ear in the clearing. "Do you accept this claim?"

I open my mouth, but no sound comes out. His jaw tightens. "Say it. Yes or no. Choose."

I laugh inward as if I have a choice. As if this is anything but picking which way I'd prefer to die.

There's something in his eyes—not kindness, never that, but a strange intensity. Like this matters to him in a way I don't understand, and he needs me to say yes for reasons beyond revenge.

I take a deep breath. "I—"

Marcus runs towards me, and his hand shoots out and closes around my wrist, yanking me backward.

"I won't let you do this," he growls at Kade. "You'll regret this tomorrow. You'll—"

Something moves inside of me. It's the thing that lives beneath my skin, the presence I've felt since my first failed shift. The emptiness where my wolf should be, except it's not empty at all.

It's something that moves and writhes and reaches when other wolves get too close. That's why they avoid touching me and flinch away. Why even my father keep his distance.

They feel it, some primal instinct warning them that I'm not normal, but Marcus doesn't know.

Marcus just grabbed me his skin touching mine and now that thing inside me surges.

"Don't—touch me—" I gasp, trying to jerk my wrist free, but it was already too late.

Marcus's eyes go wide, his amber irises flash, then flicker, then dim to human brown. His grip on my wrist spasms, fingers digging in hard enough to bruise, then releases all at once like his muscles forgot how to work.

He stumbles backward, hand flying to his chest.

"Marcus?" Kade called out, his voice sharp with concern, the first hint of real emotion I've heard from him.

The Beta opens his mouth, but no words come out. Instead, he makes a sound I've never heard before—a sound that shouldn't be possible.

He drops to his knees, his whole body shaking violently. The clearing explodes into chaos.

"What's happening?" Whispers of concern were flying about.

"Marcus!" Kade called out again. "Shift! Let your wolf heal you!"

Wolves surge forward from all sides. Kade drops to his knees beside his Beta, hands on Marcus's shoulders, shaking him. "Come on, brother. Shift. Your wolf will fix it."

Marcus squeezes his eyes shut. His body trembles with effort, muscles bunching under his skin.

I know what he's doing—reaching for his wolf, calling it forward, demanding the shift that should come as naturally as breathing, but nothing happens.

He tries again and again. Each failed attempt was more desperate than the last, his face contorting with strain and something worse than pain.

The pack physician—a grizzled older wolf with gray streaking his temples—pushes through the crowd.

He presses both hands to Marcus's chest, then his temples, then his neck, searching for the wolf that should be there.

The presence that should be rising to protect its human half. The bond that defines what they are.

I watch the physician's face change as he realizes what I already know.

“I haven't seen this in all my years Alpha." He gasped as Marcus's body started to shake even more violently than before.