I smelled her before I saw her.
The scent drifted through the trees like a whisper—blood, wolf, and something else beneath it. Something older. Something wrong, but yet something I needed.
It pulled at me drawing me toward its source. I tried ignoring the scent for weeks before I gave in to the power it seemed to have over me. It was getting stronger, so strong I was unable to think about anything else.
It was coming from that cave. I crept closer through the pine trees then up along the side of the hill it was located on. Before long, I crouched on the ridge above, cloaked in pine-shadow and silence, and peered down through the twilight as the moon rose above. Below, her body was crumpled on the stone floor like a discarded offering—bare skin smudged with ash, earth and blood while her dark hair tangled matted and caked with blood around her face.
Even from a distance, I could see she was barely breathing.
And yet… she was still alive. How was she still alive?
She shouldn't have been. Not with that much blood loss. I can only smell her blood, no one else's.
The cave reeked of old magic. Residual, but lingering. Something foul had happened here recently—something ritualistic, not inatural and definitely not pleasant. The dark energy clung to the air like rot, acidic and unnatural, as if the earth itself had rejected it.
And her scent was threaded through every inch of it.
But the strangest part?
It wasn't consistent. It smelled fractured. Altered. As if someone had taken a bond and stitched it together with blood and desperation, then tried to pass it off as fate.
I narrowed my eyes.
Wolves didn't just end up like this. Not in this part of the forest. Not unless someone put them here. Why her? I shouldn't have come.
He arrived not long after.
Kieran Draeven. I knew the bastard by scent before I saw him—pine smoke, dominance, the cloying bite of polished power. He walked like someone who'd never been told no in his life, like the world was just another rooIm in his packhouse.
I stayed hidden, high above, and watched him step into the cave. I should have been happy he had come to save her, but despair flared deep within me.
The moment he saw her, he stopped and in that moment, I saw it. Recognition. Then confusion. Then fury.
He spoke but I couldn't catch it from this distance but the tone was unmistakable. Cold. Cutthroat. Heartless. I watched as his posture shifted, his hands clench, and saw the venom spill from his mouth even before she tried to speak.
She was weak, trembling, bloodied—but even still, she reached for him.
He stepped back like she'd burned him. No, t was more like she disgusted him.
Then he spoke, "I, Kieran Draeven, Alpha of the Onyx Fang Pack, reject you."
I don't know how, but I felt it. The breaking of their bond. The tearing of something sacred.
Most wolves can't feel it when someone else's bond breaks—but I'm not most wolves. My bloodline's been tangled with fate since before I was born, and some wounds leave echoes that never fully fade.
She collapsed the second he ended the sentence. She dropped like someone had cut her strings. Without a scream, without a noise
She didn't scream. She just… folded. It was if the last piece holding her together had shattered.
I should've walked away then. I wanted to. I even tried to force myself to look away, but I couldn't.
That son of a bitch, Kieran looked down at her—this woman he'd just broken—and spoke one more time before he left. I couldn't hear the words. But the way he said them? I don't think they weren't meant for her.
I think they were meant for someone else entirely. What more could he say to an unconscious woman that should have been dead?
My eyes never left the woman as Kieran walked away. Nor did I move.
At least not right away.
I should've turned back. Should've let her die, like the forest and fate clearly intended.
Instead, I found myself descending the ridge like a fool who'd forgotten what his blood cost him. My movements were silent. Practiced. I didn't make a sound as I dropped from the ridge and stepped into the cave where she lay.
Up close, she looked even more fragile—thin scars laced her arms and ribs, fresh bruises bloomed across her collarbone, and her lips were peeled and cracked like she hadn't tasted water in days.
But it was her scent that stopped me.
It wasn't just wrong.
It was impossible.
No rogue. No bonded wolf. No pack-born alpha child should have a scent like this.
It was layered. Masked. And under it all was something ancient—something lunar. Something that called out to me.
I crouched beside her and reached fa hand forward before I could stop it.
I brushed dirt from her cheek, and the second my fingers touched her skin—
Everything changed.
A surge of heat shot through me, violent and immediate, like lightning down my spine. My wolf slammed forward in my chest, snarling awake for the first time in years. For one terrifying moment, I couldn't breathe.
Not because I was in pain.
Because something inside me recognized her.
That wasn't possible.
My bloodline was cursed. Mates were a myth I didn't get to believe in.
And yet—
She stirred.
Her eyes blinked open—violet, sharp, and utterly disoriented.
"Who are you?" she whispered.
Her voice was cracked, barely there, but it hit me in the chest, momentarily knocking the breath from my lungs.
I stared at back at her.
The answer was lodged in my throat like a thorn.
I wanted to lie. To say I was no one and tell her she was safer not knowing.
But I didn't speak.
Because in that moment, I wasn't sure who I was anymore either.
Not if I could feel her.
Not if she was real.
And not if fate, after all this time, had decided to play a cruel joke on me.