Independence Werewolf の短編小説 & Countdown 小説

The Silvermoon Pack's white wolves must cross the Moon River to seal their bond. The female lies in the moon boat, and her future mate must hold the rope with his own hands and drag her across the river himself. Otherwise, the white wolf is sent to the Frozen Peaks to bond with the Alpha King, and never leave again. The one who was supposed to pull me across was Gabriel Hale. He's the Alpha of the Frostwood Pack, and my destined mate since we were pups. Our families have intermarried for generations, but he swore to me that marking me was about love. He said I was the Moon Goddess's most perfect blessing to him. On the day of the crossing ceremony, I waited in the pack grounds, giddy with joy. I waited three days and three nights. What I got was news that he'd given Selena, his Beta, a temporary mark. He came back to explain. Said Selena's wolf was weak, that the temporary mark was to save her. But the truth? His heart had already drifted to her without him even noticing. He didn't know I'd already made up my mind to bond with the Alpha King. The forever Gabriel promised, I'm not waiting for it anymore. In three days, I leave for the Frozen Peaks.

In my previous life, I stood by Robert's side as he grew from the Alpha of a weak, remote pack into the undisputed king of the werewolf world. We raised a child together, and I thought I'd finally found a home that could shelter me from all storms. But when I was bedridden with illness, he couldn't wait to take the child and go find his one true love: my little sister, Bellis. And then came the moment that shattered everything — the child I had treasured with my whole heart calling Bellis "Mom" without a second's hesitation. That was when I finally understood. All those years, I had been living inside a lie — a total, elaborate lie. When I opened my eyes again, I had been reborn, right back to my marking ceremony with Robert. This time, standing at that crossroads, under the gaze of all those guests with their warm, oblivious smiles, I would make a very different choice. What I didn't know yet was that the truth sometimes hides in the small, ordinary moments of life — not in what other people tell you.

The night Chloe, the adopted daughter, turned eighteen and completed her first shift, my mother, Grace, stripped me of my family identity right in front of the entire pack. My brother, Caleb, slapped me across the face so hard that my vision went blurry. “Listen to me loud and clear. From today on, this family only has one daughter, and I only have one sister.” I stared at Chloe standing in the very center of the crowd. Mom held her tightly in her arms while Chloe sobbed like a fragile porcelain doll, but her eyes landed on me with chilling precision. The wolf inside me went quiet. It wasn’t a whimper, but something much deeper. I felt the string—the pack bond—that once tied me to this family snap and vanish. I finally understood one thing: to this werewolf family, I had never been part of them. So, I left. Captain Vance had been inviting me to join the Vanguard Legion’s closed training camp for months anyway, and that very night, I signed my name on the agreement. Mom and Caleb thought I was just throwing a temper tantrum. They waited for me to come crawling back, tail between my legs, begging for forgiveness. However, a month later, when a thick layer of dust had settled in my bedroom, they finally went looking for me at the Werewolf Preparatory Academy. The academy told them that my file had been sealed and destroyed by the Werewolf Council. It was classified, and there was no way to access it. Sitting in the backseat of Captain Vance’s bulletproof car, I was in agonizing pain as I severed that final bond with my own hands. At that exact moment, panic finally set in for them.

By the time Kaelen canceled our marking ceremony for the seventh time, I no longer asked him to stay. I simply watched him fasten his cloak and prepare to leave for Elara. “Elara’s wolf had lost control. She needs my Alpha aura to stabilize her. We can do it after she recovers.” He promised we would finish the ceremony once she was safe. He also promised this would be the last time. But I had already heard that promise six times before. Each time he broke the ceremony halfway through, our unfinished mate bond tore through me like a rejection. I was always the one left shaking on the floor while he rushed to hold another woman through the night. This time, I did not beg. Kaelen mistook my silence for understanding. Before leaving, he kissed my forehead and said, “Wait for me.” I smiled and nodded. Then I called the only witch who knew how to destroy a fated bond. Kaelen believed he was postponing our future for some time. He could never have imagined that the mate he had neglected again and again would be the one to sever their bond with her own hands.

My mother, Margaret Harper, carries the blood of a Word Witch. Once every lunar cycle, she can speak one blessing that fate itself is forced to obey. But all my life, the only thing she ever gave me was half a sentence. When I was eighteen, I received early admission to the Northern Royal Healers' Academy. My mother looked at the letter and said, "If you go north..." Her instincts had never been wrong, so I thought she'd seen danger waiting for me there. I turned the academy down with my own hands. Months later, she used her recommendation and a binding blessing to send my younger sister, Chloe, to the best healing school near our pack, even though Chloe had nowhere near my talent. After that, I stopped asking about my future. I started at the bottom of Black Pine Pack's medical system and fought my way up until the Northern Royal Pack appointed me Chief Healer. One month before I was due to leave, my mother saw the appointment letter and still offered me nothing but another unfinished warning. "Climbing too high might..." That same night, I heard her give Chloe the only blessing she could use that month. "You'll pass the senior healer examination. Your wolf will remain calm, and every examiner will recognize your ability." So that's the truth. My mother wasn't unable to finish a sentence. She simply never thought I was worth one. If every blessing she had belonged to Chloe, then Margaret didn't need to know that in one month, I would leave her house and Black Pine Pack for good.

For my birthday, I got a gift box. Inside was a dead silver fox. Its fur was peeled away. Dark, profane runes were carved into its flesh. My wolf cried out in agony, then shattered. I desperately reached for my Alpha, Darian, through our mate bond. “Darian… help me… My wolf… my heart…” His response was ice cold. “Maeve, stop being so dramatic. It’s just a prank. A Luna should be stronger than this. Amara has a fever. I’m with her.” He just cut the bond. He chose his childhood friend over me. Her mate had recently died, and she only had a low-grade fever. I was left to collapse in agony. I didn't get help until a pack beta found me and rushed me to the medical center. It took me three whole days to recover. When Darian finally came back, reeking of Amara’s sweet perfume, he sneered at me. "I knew you were faking it. How could a dead fox hurt you? You just wanted to stop me from comforting her!" I didn’t cry. I didn’t scream. I just handed him a document to sign. Compensation, I said, for choosing Amara over me. He signed it without even looking. "Is this about money? Don't be another jealous she-wolf. Don't cause trouble for me. I can give you anything. Amara and I grew up together. She's important to me. You know that." I just nodded. I didn't say a word. The next day, he took Amara to an Alpha-only alliance dinner. Pictures were all over the werewolf social feeds. He had no idea what he’d signed. It wasn’t a compensation agreement. It was a rejection of our mate bond. I counted down the three days. I calmly packed my most precious things. Then, I pulled out my burner phone. “Uncle Marcus? I need a private jet to the South.”

In Mistbrook Valley, there's a custom. If a she-wolf still hasn't met her fated mate after her first shift, she can choose a mate herself. All she has to do is carve a little horn lantern and hang it on a hawthorn tree. Whoever wants her takes it down. Silas Rowan, the Moon Goddess's priest, and I grew up together. That lantern should have been his to take. But I waited all night, and the one who finally took it down was Gideon Ward, the young Alpha who had just returned from the North. "I fell for you the moment I saw you." His voice was low, and the tips of his ears were red. "Marry me, Evelyn." After we bonded, when I had a fever, he'd carry me on his back over three ridges through the night to find a healer. After full-moon hunts, he'd pick a pink hawthorn blossom and tuck it behind my ear. There was always such heat in his eyes when he looked at me. I thought we'd live like that forever. But after Silas and I survived a landslide together, I found out I was pregnant. No one around us believed the baby was Gideon's. Even Gideon looked at me with red-rimmed eyes and asked me a single question. "Evelyn, do we really have to keep this baby?" Something in my heart died for good.

The coming-of-age ceremony had barely ended when I received a prophecy crystal from my family. Inside it, I saw myself ten years from now. "Ella, stop trusting Noah." "He only applied for the Healing track to keep you tethered to him." "In the end, you became an ordinary wolf. You never got the chance to study the moon phases and prophecy again." I stared hard at the version of myself trapped in the crystal. "And Noah? His heart always leaned toward Mira. He said he loved you, but his love was the cage that trapped you." The crystal shattered. The vision ended. I ran back to the academy and found it. The contract Noah had submitted on my behalf. The one that would keep me on campus. I withdrew the application. Then I booked the earliest flight back to my family's pack. This time, I wasn't giving up my future for him.

To test whether he could resist temptation, my stepsister, Chloe Bennet, drugged my childhood friend, Ethan Vance, with an aphrodisiac. Then, she shoved me into his room in the Silverwood Pack. Unable to watch Ethan suffer, I willingly helped him through the night. In a fit of pique, Chloe ran off and married the cruel Alpha of a rival pack. I got pregnant, and Ethan was forced to marry me. At that point, he started to despise me. During the ten long years of marriage, he treated me and our daughter coldly. But during a Rogue attack on Oakhaven, he sacrificed his life to get me and our daughter back to safety. I failed to keep my grip on him. As he collapsed, mortally wounded by the Rogues, he looked at me and said, “If we could redo everything, make sure you don’t help me that night.” Those words stung me greatly, and I fainted right away. When I next opened my eyes, I found that I had gone back in time. I had traveled back to the night when Chloe had drugged Ethan and locked me in his room.

To become Marcus's Luna, I hid my identity as Crimson Ridge pack's Alpha heiress and married him. Since two Alphas have difficulty conceiving offspring, I even begged the pack witch to suppress my bloodline, downgrading my wolf from Alpha to Beta. After I finally got pregnant, Marcus was out shopping with his omega mistress while I was being attacked by rogue wolves and losing our child. I forced myself to like the social media post where his lover was showing off their relationship, fighting back nausea. His call came through immediately. "What are you trying to pull now! The pack successfully signed a cooperation treaty with the neighboring pack today. You didn't even show up to the celebration, so Ivy had to take over all your Luna duties and has been taking care of my daily needs. You should be thanking her for helping you out!" "You're supposed to be a strong warrior! How can one pregnancy make you this delicate?!" He finished his rant and hung up in anger. Right. I'd been away from home too long. I was starting to forget my own last name. I didn't hesitate anymore. I picked up my phone and dialed a number I hadn't called in ages. "Beta Hayes, book me a flight for tomorrow morning. I'm going back to Crimson Ridge pack."

I'm a Bond Breaker. I use magic to sever werewolves' mate bonds without pain, helping them get out of relationships that have gone bad. Three years into my practice, a young she-wolf walked into my consulting room and laid a signed check over my appointment form. "I need you to break a Luna's bond. She's been holding on to that position long enough." The signature on the check looked strangely familiar. I kept my expression polite. "Does she want to end her bond?" "She will once she sees what her Alpha gets up to in my bed." The girl swept her hair aside, revealing a bite on her neck that hadn't healed. "He told me I make him feel young again." She pushed a video across the desk. In it, Lucas Hale bent to kiss her, the sports watch I'd given him still strapped to his left wrist. Three hours earlier, he'd used that same hand to braid our daughter's hair, then pulled me into his arms and told me nothing in the whole Grayridge Pack mattered more than the two of us. The girl smiled. "Will seven days be enough?" I glanced at my own mating mark. "That'll do." Apparently, even a Bond Breaker could end up taking her own kind of order.

Three years ago, Alaric shattered all expectations. The proud Alpha heir of the Black Moon Pack, he defied the Elders and broke a thousand-year-old bloodline law. He chose to mate with me. A rogue Omega. When his childhood sweetheart, Rowena, humiliated me, he threw her entire family out of the pack. After we mated, Alaric’s love for me became an obsession. Everyone said he would tear the whole North apart if I even got a scratch. I thought I was special. The one rogue lucky enough to capture the future Alpha's heart. I thought our mate bond meant he'd be loyal forever. Until I discovered his betrayal. He had a pup with Rowena. And the mate mark he gave me? Our bond? It was all a lie. I turned to my best friend. "In three days, help me fake my death. I need to disappear from Alaric's world forever."

I have a secret. Whenever I touch someone, I can see the face of the person they love most. This is not an ability ordinary werewolves possess. I am a Moon Seer, a rarity that appears perhaps once in a century. I cannot read thoughts or memories, but I have never been wrong about a person’s heart. I had been the person Ronan Hartson loved most since he moved next door at seven. Our wolves recognized each other when we turned eighteen. When our Mate Bond awakened, I still saw only myself in his heart. Ronan officially claimed me at twenty two. He left his mark on my neck and announced before the entire Blackridge Pack that I was his only mate and the Luna of Blackridge. Our Mate Bond remained unshaken for three years. Then, at six weeks pregnant, I touched his collar before he left for work. I had known Ronan for twenty one years and touched him more than a hundred thousand times. This was the first time I discovered that I was no longer the only woman in his heart. That night, he lied about patrols. That night, I saw him feed her cake with his own hands. He thought our Mate Bond would keep me tethered to him forever. He thought I would never leave. But he forgot one thing: I don’t need a man to feel whole. And I will never raise my child in a house built on lies. He chose to protect her. I chose to protect myself.

After four miscarriages, I was finally pregnant again. To surprise my mate, Wyatt, I hid behind the curtains in his office. I never expected to see him tangled in a passionate embrace with my younger sister, Stella. They were kissing frantically, and Wyatt showed a fiery passion for her that he had never once shown me. What shattered my heart completely were Wyatt’s next words: "Since you're pregnant now, Harper is useless to me. I'll figure out a way to sever the mate bond with her." "She’s so incredibly clueless. She never even suspected that I caused those four miscarriages just to cure your infertility..." Hiding behind the curtain, I clamped my hand over my mouth to stifle my devastated sobs. My fated mate murdered my babies with his own hands, all for my sister. In that moment, a fire of pure vengeance ignited in my heart. I called Wyatt’s mortal enemy, Dominic, Alpha of the Sterling Pack: "Want to make Wyatt's life a living hell? Let's make a deal."

When I got a second chance at life, I wrote the name of Adrian's childhood sweetheart in the mate slot on our pack registration form. In my first life, she learned Adrian and I were getting married and fled Black River heartbroken. Two days later, she was found dead in the snowbound mountains. Adrian blamed me for her death. He marked me only because his family demanded it, then spent the rest of my life treating me like a ghost. Even when I lay dying, he never came to see me. This time, I wasn't going to fight for him. When Adrian decided to bring her home to recover, I prepared her room myself. When he slipped my moonstone ring onto her finger, I didn't stop him. He expected jealousy. What he didn't know was that I'd already accepted an offer from the North American Institute of Lycan Genetics. In ten days, I would leave the pack and join its most prestigious bloodline research program. He could spend the rest of his life taking care of her. And I could finally chase the dream I'd once given up for him.

Two years after Theron Vex claimed me as his Mate, he finally held his marking ceremony. But the woman was not me.. "The child Nora carries is of Pack blood. I have to give them a proper status," I heard Theron say to his friend. "I'm just helping her out. I love Elara. She just needs to wait a little longer." But he had been saying that for six months. Ever since his brother—Nora's mate—died, he had chosen Nora over me, again and again. The first time he postponed our ceremony, it was because Nora had just found out she was pregnant and the pregnancy was unstable. The healer said she needed bed rest and could not be left alone. The second time, because she had a checkup at the hospital. The third time, because she said she felt the baby move and she wanted him to feel it too. There was always a reason. There was always something more important than me. I thought about our first year together. The way he looked at me like I was the only person in the world. The way he told everyone I was his future Luna. The way he promised, “After the ceremony, you will be the Luna of the entire Pack.” I believed him. I waited. I kept waiting. Six months of waiting. Six months of “just a little longer.” I was tired. This time, I did not run to Theron and demand an explanation like I used to. I did not cry. I did not scream. I simply went home, packed my bags, and booked a plane ticket. Theron lost his mind later. He showed up at my research station in the Arctic, begging to make amends.

When I was twenty, my alpha mate's brother died protecting him from a rogue attack. To repay that debt, Adrian moved his widowed sister-in-law, Vanessa, into the pack estate. From that day on, everything I had—my home, my future, even my place beside my fated mate—came second to her. Vanessa swallowed a handful of pills and claimed I'd driven her to suicide. Adrian slapped me in front of the pack guards, stripped me of my Luna privileges, and threw me out of our home. "Get out. I don't need a vicious woman for a mate." Later, to make Vanessa feel "useful," he gave her the research position he'd promised me. This time, I didn't argue. I simply signed the waiver and let her have it. Adrian thought I'd finally grown up and stopped being jealous. He planned to make it up to me on the fifth anniversary of our mating bond by giving me the Luna ring I'd waited years for. What he didn't know was that our anniversary was also the day I was leaving for a classified research institute in Alaska. By the time he realized my room was empty, my number had been disconnected and my pack transfer was complete. The only thing I left behind was one final email. [Adrian, I don't want you anymore.]

My mate always put his childhood friend Brooke and her son first. Eventually, I taught Owen to call him something else. Alpha Ethan, instead of Dad. When Owen sprained his wrist at training, he clung to Ethan's shirt. One call from Brooke was all it took for Ethan to walk away. As I adjusted our son's wrist brace, I taught him to say, “Drive safely, Alpha.” On the day of my father's birthday dinner, Ethan chose to help Brooke pick out a gift for Mason instead. I had Owen explain to the family.“The Alpha's busy. He can't be here.” But afterward, he still asked me to save Dad a piece of cake. I'd stopped making excuses for Ethan. Owen hadn't. Then Owen's teacher told Ethan he was the only father who'd missed the school play. At last, looking ashamed, Ethan bought us passes to an amusement park. We'd barely reached the entrance when Brooke's text arrived. [Ethan, Mason can't breathe. His inhaler isn't helping. Please come. I don't know what to do.] For once, Ethan hesitated. He looked down at our son instead of walking away. I hadn't said a word when Owen let go of his hand. “Go ahead, Alpha Ethan. Mom can take me on the rides.”

A week before the marking ceremony, my fiance, Alpha Mason Wallace, suddenly switches the venue to Firefly Grove. His friends tease him. "You changed the venue just because Serena wants to see fireflies? And you didn't even tell Cora? What if she shows up at an empty site? "Besides, Cora's the one who picked Moonlight Bay. Do you really think she'll go along with this?" Mason says casually, "She burned her skin saving me. She won't fight me over a venue change. Besides, she planned every detail herself. She'll notice the update." I stand outside the doorway, listening in silence. Then, I slip away without a word. When the day finally comes, Mason calls from Firefly Grove, panic in his voice. "The ceremony's about to start. Where are you?" I stare at the shimmer on Moonlight Bay and answer calmly, "I'm already here. My ceremony is about to start too."

On the eve of my mating ceremony, I caught my parents and the entire pack holding a secret Luna ceremony for my Alpha fiance, Caden, and my adopted sister, Lydia. Lydia's biological parents had died saving mine. Now terminal wolfsbane poisoning had left her with three months to live, and her final wish was to be buried as the Luna of Blackridge Pack. Caden stood with his back to me, his voice soft and patient. "Lydia, don't worry. Before you leave this world, I'll give you everything a Luna deserves—the ceremony, the title, the place at my side. It's the least I can do for you." My father placed her hand in Caden's. My mother draped my Luna mantle over her shoulders, while my own brother struck my name from the Luna registry. Caden exchanged rings and vows with Lydia, then signed the record naming her Blackridge's first Luna. They all believed that because I was healthy, I had years ahead of me and should give this one chance to Lydia. I watched the ceremony to the end and deleted the message announcing my pregnancy. Later, I left with my unborn pup to become Frost River Pack's chief investigator, reclaiming the future I had surrendered for Caden. I left only my pregnancy report, mate-contract dissolution, and bloodline severance declaration. By the time Caden learned the truth, I had already crossed the northern border. His desperate call came too late.