Pauline
Ronan, Alpha of the Blackthorn pack, has three moons left before an ancient bloodline curse finishes what it started — and turns him into a wolf with nothing human left inside it. He's hidden the truth from his pack for years. He's out of time, and out of options.
Lyra has spent six years rebuilding a life at the edge of his territory, after her own coven exiled her for magic too wild and unclaimed to control. She wants nothing to do with wolves, packs, or anyone else's crisis. Then a half-feral Alpha collapses in her garden — and her magic reaches out on its own and stops his curse cold.
What they uncover next changes everything: the curse isn't a punishment. It's an unfinished binding, two centuries old, between their bloodlines — interrupted before it could be completed, and still waiting. The first stage activates on its own, the night of the full moon, confirming a bond neither of them chose and neither can undo. But a second, final stage remains: the Choosing — a bond that must be given freely, by both of them, at a price the old texts won't fully reveal.
With the pack council branding Lyra a threat to sovereignty, and the clock running out on Ronan's humanity, the two of them are forced into an impossible position — trust a magic neither of them controls, or lose each other to the very forces that already tried to keep them apart once, two hundred years ago.
Some curses are meant to be broken. Some bonds are meant to be chosen. And some choices, once made, can never be undone.
484