Semua Bab Twice Fated: The Alpha's Wrong Mate: Bab 11 - Bab 15

Asher’s territory was beautiful, and I hated it.Not because of anything wrong with it — the forest was dense and old, the pack house sprawling and warm, the people who lived there genuinely welcoming. Everyone I met smiled at me like I was exactly what they’d been waiting for. The Beta’s wife pressed a key into my hand and said, your home now. One of the younger pack members left wildflowers outside the bedroom door.They were kind. They had no idea.I lasted three hours inside before I needed to breathe.I told Asher I wanted to explore the grounds — getting a feel for the territory, the kind of thing a new mate was supposed to do. He offered to come with me. I said I needed the space to find my wolf’s footing, and he understood that, because he was a shifter too and because he was, in all the ways that didn’t matter anymore, a good man.The forest swallowed me inside ten minutes. Birch and black pine, the ground soft with last season’s needles. My wolf lifted her nose and catalogue

Two weeks into Asher’s territory, my reflection started to worry people.It was subtle at first. A second glance in the mirror before I went down to breakfast. A slight adjustment of my collar before I joined anyone in the common rooms. The mark on my neck had deepened from black to something that looked almost bruised, the edges of the crescent bleeding into my skin like ink pressed too hard into paper.I’d started wearing my hair down.It wasn’t enough. I could see it in the way Asher’s Beta’s wife, Mara, would glance at my neck when she thought I wasn’t watching. In the way the younger pack members who’d left me wildflowers in the first week now offered them with something careful in their eyes. New bonds were supposed to glow. They were supposed to brighten in the first weeks as they settled, mark the skin with