Tous les chapitres de : Chapitre 1 - Chapitre 10

My father did not come to collect me from the airport. Neither did my sister. After seven years away from Black Moon Ridge, I should have expected that. Still, as the taxi pulled away and left me standing alone outside the black iron gates with one suitcase and a heart full of stupid hope, something inside me cracked. Just a little. Just enough to remind me why I had stopped hoping in the first place. The gates loomed above me, twisted metal shaped into wolves and crescent moons. Beyond them, the pack road curved through thick pine forest toward the house I had once called home. Black Moon Ridge. The place where I was born. The place I was sent away from. The place that never asked me to come back. I stepped through the open gates. The air smelled of rain, pine, damp earth and wolf. My wolf stirred faintly beneath my skin, weak and restless, like she had been asleep for too long. I was three weeks from my eighteenth birthday and still had not shifted. Victor Vale called i

My old room had not changed.That was almost worse.The narrow bed still sat beneath the window. The pale curtains were tied back with faded ribbons. The dresser still had the tiny scratch near the handle from the day I dropped one of Vivian’s music boxes and she cried for an hour, even though it had not broken.My shelves were empty.That was the only difference.The books were gone.I stood in the doorway longer than I should have, my hand still wrapped around the knob, my heart sinking in a way that felt childish.Of course they had packed my books away.Of course no one had thought I would want them when I came home.Maybe no one had thought I would come home at all.Behind me, Luca’s footsteps faded down the hall, leaving me alone with the room and his words.Black Moon Ridge has a way of making people feel smaller than they are. Don’t let it.I wanted to believe him.I really did.But this room remembered the girl I had been when Victor sent me away. Small. Quiet. Apologetic. Al

Something inside me growled.Not out loud.Not exactly.But I felt it.Deep in my chest. Low in my bones. A warning from a wolf who had spent years sleeping and had apparently chosen the worst possible dinner to wake.Victor’s command pressed harder.Sit.Be still.Obey.My knees shook.For one horrible second, I thought I would collapse in front of everyone. In front of Vivian. In front of Bianca. In front of Ezra.Then my wolf pushed back.The pressure cracked.Not loudly.Not visibly.But I felt the break like a snapped thread.Victor felt it too.His eyes widened just enough for me to see.The hall went quiet.Too quiet.I was still standing.That was the problem.I was standing in front of the Alpha, the Luna, the Beta, my sister, her almost-Alpha boyfriend, and half the important wolves in Black Moon Ridge.And I had not obeyed.Victor rose slowly from his chair.“Aurora.”My name came out soft.Dangerous.My hands curled at my sides.“I’m sorry,” I whispered, though I did not k

I did not sleep.How could I?Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Victor’s face.Not the cold mask he wore for the pack. Not the disappointment he had dressed me in since childhood.Fear.One flash of it.One crack in the stone.And somehow that frightened me more than his anger ever had.Victor Vale was afraid of me.The thought should have been impossible. I was the daughter he barely tolerated. The late bloomer. The unshifted girl. The family disappointment wrapped in Vivian’s hand-me-down kindness.But he had looked at me like I was dangerous.I lay in my narrow bed with the moonlight spilling across my old room and listened to Black Moon Ridge breathe around me.The house creaked softly.Wolves moved somewhere below.Wind dragged tree branches against the window like fingernails.And under all of it, my wolf paced.Not sleeping.Not hiding.Awake.I pressed a hand to my ribs.What are you?No answer came.Of course it didn’t.My wolf had waited almost eighteen years to wake. Appar

The growl rolled across the training field.Low.Raw.Mine.For one frozen heartbeat, no one moved.Not Mara.Not Vivian.Not Bianca.Not even Victor.I stood in the centre of the training mat with my knees shaking and my breath caught in my throat, trying to understand how a sound like that had come from me.My wolf pressed against my skin.Close.Too close.Every instinct screamed at me to run.Another instinct, older and stranger, told me to stand my ground.Victor’s face had gone pale.Only slightly.Only enough that I knew I had not imagined it.“Interesting,” Bianca whispered.Vivian said nothing.That scared me more.Ezra stepped onto the field.His movement broke whatever spell had held the pack silent.Whispers erupted.“She growled at the Beta.”“She hasn’t even shifted.”“Did you feel that?”“That wasn’t normal.”Normal.I almost laughed.Nothing about me had ever been normal enough for Black Moon Ridge.Victor turned his head slowly toward Ezra. “This does not concern you.