The Moon Witch Who Chose the Cursed Alpha Chapter 2

**Chapter Two**

He didn't mean to come this close.

Ronan had told himself he was just walking the border, clearing his head, letting the cold do what meditation couldn't anymore. But somewhere in the last mile the wolf had taken more of the wheel than he'd meant to give it, and now he was standing at the edge of a clearing he didn't recognize, breathing hard, staring at a cottage with candlelight leaking gold through its shutters.

*Turn around,* the last clear-headed part of him said.

The wolf didn't want to turn around. The wolf wanted the light.

He took one step into the clearing and the world went sideways — not in space but in *feeling*, like a hand closing around something inside his chest that had been clenched too long and finally, violently, let go. He staggered. Caught himself against a tree. His vision swam gold at the edges, wolf-gold, the change cresting up through him faster than it had any right to, moon or no moon—

And then it stopped.

Not faded. *Stopped.* Like a hand had reached into him and simply closed the door the curse had been forcing open.

Ronan sank to one knee in the wet grass, breathing like he'd run for miles, and looked up to find the source.

She was standing in the cottage doorway with an iron poker held like she knew exactly how to use it, dark hair loose around her shoulders, and an expression that was more furious than afraid.

"You," she said, "are on my land."

"I didn't—" He had to stop, swallow, find words that weren't a snarl. "I didn't mean to come this far."

"That's not an apology." She didn't lower the poker. Her eyes — he could see now, even in the dark, that they weren't quite an ordinary color, silver-touched, moon-touched — swept over him with a wariness that had clearly been earned the hard way. "What are you?"

"Alpha of the Blackthorn pack." It came out rougher than he intended, some old instinct insisting on the title even flat on one knee in a stranger's yard. "Ronan."

Something flickered across her face at the name — recognition, maybe, or just the particular caution that came with knowing exactly which local warlord's territory you were standing near the edge of. "And you make a habit of collapsing on witches' doorsteps, or is tonight special?"

"Tonight's special," he admitted.

She didn't smile, but the poker dropped an inch. "You're cursed."

It wasn't a question. He looked up at her sharply. "How do you—"

"Because whatever's wrong with you just went quiet the second you stepped onto my wardline." She said it like it troubled her more than it satisfied her — like she'd have preferred not to know. "My land doesn't do that. My magic doesn't reach out and *touch* things on its own. It hasn't in six years."

"Until now."

"Until you." She looked at him like he was a problem she hadn't asked for and couldn't currently afford. Then, grudgingly, she stepped back from the doorway, poker lowering the rest of the way. "You'd better come in before you fall over. I'm not carrying an Alpha wolf through my garden. I only just replanted it."

Ronan almost laughed — the first unclenched thing in his chest in weeks. He got to his feet, unsteady, and followed her into the candlelight, some old animal part of him settling for the first time in longer than he could remember.

Neither of them said what they were both thinking: that whatever had just happened between his curse and her wardline wasn't an accident, and it wasn't going to be the last time.