Chapter 1: Eighteen and Wolfless

The training ring smelled like blood and frost, which was exactly how I liked my mornings."Again," I said, and did not wait for Torren to catch his breath before I came at him.He was bigger than me by half a foot and probably sixty pounds of muscle, and he still hit the packed dirt with a grunt that echoed off the ring's stone walls. I planted a boot lightly against his sternum, more courtesy than threat, and offered him a hand up."You're pulling your hits low again," I told him. "You keep dropping your shoulder before you swing, so I know exactly where you're going before you get there.""Easy for you to say." He took my hand and let me haul him up, wincing. "Some of us actually feel it when we hit the ground."That got a laugh out of the row of trainees watching from the fence, and even out of Garrick, who almost never laughed during drills. I let myself smile. Small victories. It was the last day of formal training before my birthday, and if I was going to leave any lasting impr

Last Updated : 2026-09-09

Chapter 2: The Weight of the Title

I had not lost control of anything in eleven years, and I intended to keep it that way through this meeting too."The eastern road again," Voss said, dropping the report on the table like it disgusted him. He was my Beta, and Selene's father, and he had opinions about everything, most of them correct, which made him useful and exhausting in roughly equal measure."Silverwood is sending a unit. Word from our scouts says they mean to hold the crossing and escort their caravan through by force if they have to.""Let them try." That was Corin, my Head of Guard, cracking his knuckles like he was already looking forward to it."That's not strategy, that's appetite," I said, and he had the sense to look chastened.I stood at the head of the war table in a room that had been my father's, and his father's before him, and felt, as I always did in this room, the particular weight of a title I had taken eleven years too early. I was seventeen when my father died and the pack looked to me instead

Last Updated : 2026-09-09

Chapter 3: The Valley Road

We left Silverwood at first light, the way my father wanted, with the mist still sitting low over the fields and the whole pack too smart to come out and watch us go. Send-offs were for weddings and funerals, not border patrols. I preferred it that way. I did not need an audience for this one.Torren rode beside me, Garrick just behind, and six others strung out in a loose line that would tighten the moment we crossed into contested ground. The eastern road ran two days out from the pack house before it touched the disputed stretch, and I spent most of that first day going over the terrain in my head instead of talking, which Torren eventually noticed and decided to comment on."You're quiet.""I'm thinking.""About the mission, or about Kellan's face when you left without saying goodbye properly?""About the mission." That was mostly true. Kellan had come to see us off before dawn, standing at the stable door with his arms crossed and an expression he was trying very hard to make loo

Last Updated : 2026-09-09

Chapter 4: The Mark

I had not meant to go to the crossing myself.Corin had it handled, or should have. Twenty guards, a straightforward toll dispute, nothing that required the alpha's personal attention, and I had told myself as much three separate times that morning while I dressed and told Voss I was riding out anyway. He had not argued. He rarely did when my mind was made up, though the look he gave me said plainly enough that he thought I was wasting a morning on a fight beneath me.I told myself I wanted to see the eastern road with my own eyes before autumn made travel harder. That was true, as far as it went. It was not the whole truth. Some restless thread under my skin had been pulling toward that valley since the moment Corin's scouts reported Silverwood's unit was riding out, and I had learned a long time ago not to argue with Kade when he got like this, even when I could not explain why.We reached the tree line above the valley just as the fighting started below.I watched from the ridge fo

Last Updated : 2026-09-09

Chapter 5: North

The pain in my leg had gone strange and distant, drowned out by something louder that I did not have a name for yet.He was carrying me. The Blackthorn alpha, the man whose wolf had just torn out his own guard's throat over me, was carrying me north through the trees like I weighed nothing at all, and every part of my training was screaming at me to fight while some other part of my body, some part I did not recognize and did not trust, had gone quiet and strangely still against his chest."Put me down." My voice came out rougher than I wanted. "Put me down, or I swear to every god either of our packs believes in, I will make you regret it."He did not answer. He did not even slow down.I tried anyway. I got one arm free and drove my elbow back into his ribs as hard as the angle allowed, which was not very hard at all given the way he held me, but it was something, and he grunted like it had actually cost him effort to ignore it."Stop that," he said. His voice was low and rough, like

Last Updated : 2026-09-09

All Chapters of CLAIMED BY MY SWORN ENEMY ALPHA: Chapter 1 - Chapter 5

Chapter 1: Eighteen and Wolfless

Chapter 2: The Weight of the Title

Chapter 3: The Valley Road

Chapter 4: The Mark

Chapter 5: North