01 The Pack’s Dirty Secret

Nyra’s POV

“Watch where you’re going, freak!”

The word hit before his shoulder did.

My books jolted. My yearbook slipped from my grip and slapped the floor, pages flaring open like it was trying to escape me. The hallway swam with noise, laughter, footsteps, the shriek of a locker door, yet somehow that one word still found the centre of me, like it had a map to every bruise I’d ever swallowed.

Freak.

That was me. The pack’s wolfless unknown-origin mistake.

Robert Wilson brushed past as if I’d deliberately thrown myself in his path. He didn’t even pause. He didn’t have to. Wolves like him, clean-blooded, wolf-strong, certain of their place, never had to stop for girls like me.

I bent down slowly, swallowing the sting in my throat, and gathered my things with careful hands. The floor felt colder than it should have. So did the air. This was the usual treatment. I’d learned the hard way not to hope for anything better from the pack.

“Can’t you smell where you’re going?” someone muttered nearby, and a few voices chuckled like my humiliation was a snack they could share.

I kept my head down.

There was no point arguing. I’d learnt that the hard way.

Arguing got you shoved. Shoving got you hit. And getting beaten up when you were wolfless wasn’t like getting beaten up for everyone else. Wolves healed fast, bones knitting, bruises fading, pain turning into a memory in hours, not days. Me? Sometimes it took weeks. Sometimes it took longer. I carried old bruises like other girls carried jewellery.

At twenty, I still hadn’t shifted.

No wolf. No heightened reflexes. No healing. No strength.

Just a body that broke the way humans did.

Some people said my father had been a cursed rogue. Others liked the witch story better, said he must have been something disgraceful from the Outlands, something unnatural that explained why I was… like this. Why I could smell the Moon and still be untouched by her.

I didn’t believe any of it.

I didn’t care.

The only thing I cared about, truly, desperately, was the one truth the pack didn’t know.

I had a mate.

Not a mate.

The mate.

And fate, in its cruel sense of humour, had tied me to the very person who was least allowed to want me.

Kieran Whitewolf.

The Alpha’s son. The future Alpha. Vandwood’s golden heir.

The boy the pack loved.

The boy I loved in secret.

The boy who loved me… only where no one could see.

I pulled my yearbook to my chest and walked on, trying to ignore the way my ribs ached from the shove. Today was supposed to be light. Today was supposed to be an ending I could survive.

It was graduation day.

The last day I would have a legitimate reason to set foot inside the academy without being chased away like a stray.

Part of me was relieved.

No more daily bullying. No more corridor traps. No more laughter that followed me like a shadow.

But another part of me… the softer part I hated for existing… mourned it.

Because after today, my world would shrink to the outskirts again. The outcast cabins. The narrow paths between trees. My mother’s tired silence. My own loneliness.

A life with no friends and nowhere to go was still a hard life, even when you were used to it.

I passed a group of girls huddled by the windows, their hair glossy, their uniforms crisp. They were already signing each other’s books, squealing over memories, planning parties. When my eyes drifted their way, one of them tilted her chin and smirked.

“Who’s going to sign yours, Moonchild?” she asked, loud enough for the hall to hear.

My stomach tightened.

Moonchild.

My surname.

A name that sounded like a blessing until the pack put it in their mouths and twisted it into mockery.

I didn’t answer. I didn’t stop. I just hugged the yearbook tighter, more as a shield than a keepsake, and kept walking.

There was no point joining the others.

No one was going to sign my book anyway.

I was halfway down the hall when a movement caught my eye.

A tall figure near the far end.

Broad shoulders. Dark hair. A familiar stride that my body recognised before my mind could catch up.

My breath hitched.

Kieran.

He shouldn’t have been here. He’d graduated two years ago. He had patrols, training, council meetings, a future that was already being carved into stone by the pack’s expectations.

Yet there he was, cutting through the corridor like he owned it.

My chest filled with something dangerous.

Hope.

And because I was looking, because I was stupid with hope, I didn’t see the person stepping into my path until it was too late.

I collided with her.

My shoulder slammed into a hard body. My yearbook jolted against my chest. The scent hit me a second later, sweet, expensive perfume layered over wolf power.

Beverly.

The belle of the academy. The girl everyone whispered would be the future Luna, because she had everything a Luna was supposed to have: pedigree, beauty, a formidable wolf, and a smile polished sharp enough to cut.

Fate hadn’t chosen her.

Fate had chosen me.

“Are you blind?” Beverly’s voice cracked like a whip.

“I’m sorry,” I blurted immediately, stepping back. Apologies were reflex now, automatic, like breathing. “I didn’t mean, ”

Her eyes narrowed, scanning me like I was something stuck to her shoe. Then her gaze dropped to the book clutched in my arms.

“Oh.” Her lips curled. “Your yearbook.”

My throat tightened. I wanted to keep walking. I wanted to reach the exit and never come back. I wanted to survive the last day without bleeding.

But Beverly stepped closer.

“I’m glad,” she said, loud and clear, “that we won’t have to deal with seeing your face around here anymore.”

A few students turned. A few slowed, sensing entertainment.

My cheeks burned.

Beverly leaned in, voice dripping sweetness. “Clutching that thing around like it matters. No one’s going to sign it, you know.”

I stared at the floor.

“You’re destined to be alone,” she continued, “like your slut of a mother.”

Something flared in me, heat and fury and humiliation, so sharp it made my vision blur.

I could have hit her.

I could have.

But I’d promised myself I would survive today. Just survive.

So I swallowed it.

I lifted my head just enough to speak evenly. “Please move.”

Beverly smiled as if I’d entertained her.

“Are you dumb?” she asked. “Can’t speak properly? Or did you finally realise everything we’ve been saying is true?”

Her friends snickered behind her. The hallway had formed a loose circle now, bodies angled in, hungry.

I tried to step around her.

She didn’t let me.

Her hand shot out and slammed me back against the lockers.

Metal bit into my spine with a brutal thud. Pain exploded through my back. I gasped, the air leaving my lungs in a harsh rush.

And that was it.

The moment turned.

I saw it in her eyes, she wasn’t going to let me walk away. Not today. Not on my last day. She needed to mark it. Needed to send me out with a bruise the pack could remember.

I pushed off the locker, my hands shaking, my heart pounding so hard it made my ears ring.

I threw a punch.

Too slow.

Damned human reflexes.

Beverly dodged easily and slammed her fist into my stomach.

White-hot pain tore through me. I folded with a strangled sound, bile rising fast. I coughed, choking, tasting something sour and metallic.

She grabbed my shoulder and shoved me down.

My knees hit the floor. The hallway tilted. Laughter surged like a wave.

“Stay down, Moonchild!” someone called, as if they were giving me helpful advice.

I should have stayed down.

That would have been smart.

But something in me, something stubborn and foolish, refused.

I pushed up, shaking, my breath ragged.

Beverly’s boot cracked into my ribs.

Pain flashed so bright it stole my sight for a second. I collapsed again, breath wheezing out of me.

Laughter.

Another kick.

I tried to rise.

Another kick.

My body screamed. My lungs burned. My mouth filled with blood.

Still, I forced myself up, tears stinging my eyes, not from weakness, I told myself, but from pain. From sheer bodily betrayal.

No one helped.

Instructors passed the end of the hall and looked away. Students watched like it was normal, like it was tradition, like it was what outcast blood deserved.

And then I heard his voice.

“Stop, Beverly.”

Kieran.

The sound of him went through me like an arrow, sharp, straight to the heart.

Beverly froze mid-motion, her foot hovering as if she was deciding whether she could get one more kick in before she obeyed.

I lifted my head, vision blurred, and saw him stepping into the circle.

Tall. Commanding. Beautiful in the way wolves were beautiful, dangerous and worshipped.

Relief flooded me so hard it almost made me dizzy.

He’s here.

He saw.

He’ll, ,

“Are you trying to kill her?” Kieran asked, voice edged with anger.

For a moment, I thought the pack would shift. That the air would change. That someone would finally remember I was a person.

Beverly scoffed. “She doesn’t know her place.”

Kieran walked closer. I could see only his legs clearly from where I lay, but I could feel him, his scent, his presence, the way my entire body reacted like he was the only real thing in the room.

He bent.

His hand closed around my arm.

Gentle.

So gentle it hurt more than the kicks.

He helped me up, and my body leaned toward him automatically, desperate for support, desperate for the one safe place I’d ever known.

I reached for him.

And he pulled away.

Not violently.

Not with disgust.

Just… quickly. Precisely. Like a man remembering where he was.

Beverly laughed, sharp and bright. “You shouldn’t touch that, Kieran. You’ll catch something.”

More laughter followed, cruel and delighted.

I looked at him through tears I couldn’t stop now, pain tears, humiliation tears, hope dying in real time.

Kieran didn’t look at me the way he looked at me at night.

He didn’t touch my face.

He didn’t say, She’s mine.

He didn’t say, Stop.

He didn’t say anything that would expose what we were.

Instead, he said, flat and controlled, “Go home.”

Two words.

Not Nyra.

Not Are you alright?

Not I’m sorry.

Just: Go home.

Then he turned and walked away as if I were a stranger.

As if he’d only stepped in to stop a disturbance.

As if he hadn’t kissed me in the dark and promised me forever.

The laughter followed him like approval.

I stood there swaying, blood on my tongue, my yearbook crushed against my chest, my body throbbing, my heart splintering quietly where no one could see.

And I wondered, truly wondered, for the first time in four years…

How long would he keep pretending?

How long would he keep loving me in shadows and abandoning me in daylight?

Because he hadn’t rejected me.

He’d held on.

He’d kept me.

He’d taken pieces of me for four years and tucked them into his secret places.

So I didn’t understand.

I didn’t understand anything anymore.

I staggered out of the hall on shaking legs, and the only thought I could cling to, the only thing that kept me from collapsing completely, was the bond itself.

The Moon doesn’t make mistakes, I told myself.

Fate doesn’t tie souls for nothing.