All Chapters of The Cursed Lone Wolf They All Despised: Chapter 11 - Chapter 16

The final scene of the Moonlight Trials was a cemetery.The temperature in the hall seemed to fall before the grave appeared.Moonlight spread across the stone floor and turned into long, wet grass. A row of headstones rose out of the white haze one by one.My grave stood at the far edge.No pack crest marked it.No record said that I had carried pups through fire or dragged the High Alpha's heir out of a burning building.Only my name and a date.Twelve years of rain had darkened the letters. Moss filled the cuts in the stone.Ryan had never visited once.He had believed a traitor was buried there.His wolf moved before he did.The black shadow crossed the cemetery and stopped at my grave. It sniffed the cold stone, then the grass, then the earth at the base as if some part of it still expected to find my scent beneath twelve years of dirt.A low whine came from its throat.Then it began to dig.Its claws tore through wet soil and roots. It kept digging until the ends of the shadowed

Three days later, Ryan went to the High Alpha's central territory on his own.By the time he returned, the entire border knew one thing.He wasn't a lone wolf with no past.He was the missing blood heir the Blackwood line had spent more than a decade searching for.When the news reached the sanctuary, I was changing a pup's bandage.Mara called me from the doorway."Erin, come outside."I stepped out and found Ryan standing in the center of the yard.Members of the Blackwood line stood behind him.He was still wearing his old coat.But everyone looked at him differently now.I walked over and had to ask."Is it true?""Yeah.""Why did you suddenly decide to investigate?"Ryan was quiet for a moment."I used to think it didn't matter.""And now?""Now I think some things are better confirmed early."I had no idea what he meant.The day after his identity was confirmed, succession qualifying registrations reopened for young wolves.I hadn't planned to enter.The sanctuary kept me busy, a

The enemy pack attacked the sanctuary's relocation convoy.The instant howls rose ahead of us and behind us, I knew this wasn't a chance clash.They knew our route.Mara rode in the middle vehicle with the pups.I had barely jumped down when Ryan rushed over from the other side."North!"He shouted at me.Three months earlier, he had inexplicably made his people walk every evacuation route again.Back then, I'd teased him for fussing over nothing.Now the backup route took us around the main ambush.Half the guards broke off to lead the pups to safety.The enemy pack charged from the trees.Chaos erupted.Someone set fire to the dry grass beside the road, and smoke rolled over the convoy.The instant I smelled it, the world doubled.For one heartbeat I was still standing beside the overturned vehicle.For the next, I was eighteen again inside a black corridor with fire crawling across the ceiling.A pup screamed somewhere to my left.There were no pups there.The cry belonged to anothe