PAWS OFF MY HEART

My mate, Nolan, is the Alpha heir. He promised to return before the Moon Goddess Festival. We were supposed to have our mating ceremony. I promised him the Heart of the Pack. My parents’ legacy. It's the key to controlling our elite warriors—the Dire Wolves. It was to be my mating gift to him. But he came back with a rogue bitch draped all over him. A she-wolf with wild, hungry eyes. I waited for him at the festival, ready for our prayer. Instead, I watched him with her. Skylar. They were by the bonfire, nipping and teasing each other like no one else existed. I told him his behavior was improper for an heir. He laughed in my face. “Old-blood nobles are so boring. Not raw and real like Skylar.” He thinks getting the Heart of the Pack gives him the Dire Wolves. He has no idea. The Dire Wolves answer to my bloodline. Without me, the Heart of the Pack is just a rock.

I don't expect to be reunited with Reyn Aldric, the heir of Frostfang Clan, at a banquet to celebrate his ascendance. I also don't expect him to throw me out heartlessly. As I walk along a deserted street, my mind replays Reyn's mocking words. "You abandoned me for money and status, Ms. Valtara. Do you regret your actions now that I've become an heir? Throw this materialistic gold digger out! I don't want to see her anywhere near me!" And so, I'm thrown out of the banquet hall just like that. I fall to the floor. It's been five years. I didn't think he would still hate me so. Then again, it makes sense. Who wouldn't hate someone who left them when they were on the brink of death? But my dear Reyn isn't dead. He's alive and well; he can even get mad at me without worrying about it affecting his health. I'm about to die, though. I don't even deserve to be emotional. Why? Because my Heart of the Wolfkin beats in Reyn's body.

At my lowest point that year, I took a job at a pet shop, where I was assigned to take care of a "gentle-tempered" silver-white Alaskan Malamute. Every time I went near him, he would lift his head and bury his nose against my chest, breathing in low, rough sounds that felt disturbingly like a grown man holding himself back. Especially when my hand brushed through his beautiful fur, his body would heat up, and his eyes would darken and burn with unmistakable possessiveness. Thinking he was sick, I rushed to find the shop owner. The owner gave me a long, meaningful glance. "He's not sick. But he only acts like this with you. "You need to bathe him, give him a full-body massage, and try giving him a little kiss. Otherwise, he might lose control." I had my doubts about the whole thing, but I didn't really have a choice. I went along with it anyway. Eventually, I told the friend who had gotten me this job everything that had been happening. After she heard me out, she went quiet for a second. Then, she looked at me strangely and said, "Have you ever thought that maybe you're not looking after a dog at all? What if he's actually a werewolf who can take human form, and he's in heat, using pheromones to mess with you because he wants to… You know, sleep with you?"

I was a rarity. A wolf born with two hearts. My parents paid a fortune to rogue healers to implant the second one when I was just an embryo. All because my sister, Cora, was born with a defective heart. They waited for me to grow up, just so I could give my second heart to her. Later, I met my mate, Alpha Rhys. He treated me so well. I really thought he was different from my parents. But the day Cora’s heart failed, my mate held my hand. His touch was terribly gentle. "Baby, just give Cora one heart. You have a spare, right?" He didn't know. I only had one heart left. I gave my spare to him years ago.

On the day my bond with Alpha Claus was finally severed, I walked out of the Mooncrest Packhouse wearing nothing but the simple linen tunic I had on the day we mated. The Luna mansion, the sports cars, the infinite pack wealth, and our three pups—I left them all behind for Alpha Claus. He stared at me with a genuine shock before his usual mocking sneer returned. "Have you truly thought this through, Elise? You carried our three daughters in your womb, raised them with your own two hands, and now you’re abandoning them too?" "If you are truly walking away with nothing, I will even grant you a clean break from the pack treasury. No alimony, no pack protection. That way, it’s fair." Without a word, I picked up the silver pen, quickly signing my name on the scroll to sever our legal ties. "Yes," I said, my voice eerily calm. "It is incredibly fair." Claus hesitated for a fraction of a second, his claws lightly scraping against the desk before he slowly signed his own name. The moment his signature left the page, the faint, golden shimmer of our mate-bond began to fade, leaving only the deep, spiritual Pack Bond pulsing in our chests. "Elise, if you regret this, we don't have to—" I raised my hand, cutting him off mid-sentence, and walked out of the Alpha's office without a single glance backward. For seven long years, Claus had claimed that I only used my fated-mate status to steal his power and that I weaponized our three daughters just to tie him down to a weak, sick she-wolf. But none of his insults mattered anymore. By the time he finds the cold ashes of my dying wolf… He will finally understand the cost of his cruelty.

The day before my mating ceremony, my mother caught my soon-to-be mate Derek in a passionate embrace with my step-sister Scarlett. The anger triggered my mother's heart attack need a transplant surgery immediately Fortunately, I was compatible with my mother for a heart transplant. I decided to give her my heart and use an artificial one instead. Faced with the enormous cost of the surgery, Derek, my coward of a mate, vanished. I went to beg my step-sister Scarlett, who had married an elderly but wealthy Alpha Marcus, for help. She claimed she didn't have enough cash, yet the next day she was showing off her new enchanted moonstone necklace. In my darkest hour, Alexander Stone appeared. He was the most renowned healer and Marcus’s son，the future Alpha. He covered all the costs and offered to perform the surgery himself. When I woke up, Alexander's face was filled with regret. He told me my mother had suffered a sudden rejection reaction during surgery and passed away. He pulled my tear-stained face to his chest, declaring his love and begging me to let him care for me for eternity. Seven years into our mating bond, I accidentally overheard his conversation with his beta: "So you gave Sarah's heart to Scarlett instead, right in front of her mother? That was brutal, even for you." "What could I do? Her heart matched Scarlett's perfectly." "But we had already found a suitable donor heart! Scarlett only needed to wait half a day. Why were you so impatient?" Alexander sighed, his voice heavy with emotion: "I couldn't bear to see Scarlett suffer, not even for a second."