Chapter 1
ELARA
I was born broken.
That was what they said about me in the Bloodmoon Pack. Not behind my back, not in hushed whispers when I passed by them and they looked at me with disgust and disdain apparent on their faces — they said it to my face, loud and without shame, like it was simply the truth and I should be grateful they bothered to say it at all.
Wolfless.
That single word had become my whole identity in this pack. Not Elara. Not Elara Voss. Just the wolfless omega who somehow had the nerve to still be breathing the same air as the rest of them.
I was twenty years old and I had never shifted. Other wolves got their first shift at sixteen, sometimes earlier if they were strong. Some of the weaker omegas shifted at seventeen, maybe eighteen. But me? Nothing.
The pack doctors said there was no wolf in me. That I was a genetic failure. A mistake of birth.
I believed them because what else could I do?
My name was Elara Voss, and I lived at the very bottom of everything in the Bloodmoon Pack. This pack was once called the Silvercrest Pack — I had heard the old ones talk about those days sometimes, when they thought no one was listening. The Silvercrest Pack had been led by Alpha Caden, a man they spoke about with a kind of quiet reverence, like his name was holy. But that was before the war, before the takeover, before everything changed. Now we were the Bloodmoon Pack, ruled by Alpha Damon Blackthorn, and the only thing that mattered was power.
And I had none.
I woke up before dawn like I always did. Not because I wanted to. Because if I didn't, someone would come into the small storage room they let me sleep in and drag me out by my hair. It had happened twice. I learned quickly.
The storage room was not a bedroom. It had no window. The walls were bare concrete and the floor was cold even in summer and it was the one of the source of insomnia that I had. When I did manage to get some sleep, I slept on a thin mat with a single rough blanket that smelled like mildew no matter how many times I washed it.
I pulled on my work clothes — a faded grey shirt and worn trousers that had been handed down so many times they were barely usable anymore — and I began my day.
My job, if you could call it that, was to serve. I cleaned the pack house from the ground floor up. I cooked in the kitchen alongside two other low-ranking omegas. I did laundry, carried firewood, scrubbed floors, polished boots. Whatever was needed and whatever nobody else wanted to do, that was mine.
I was not paid wages, nor was I thanked. All I was given food — just enough to keep me functional — and a place to sleep, and that was supposed to be enough. That was supposed to be gratitude, for them looking after me, a worthless nobody with no family ties.
"You're late," Beta Rhys said when I reached the kitchen.
I was not late. It was five in the morning and the sun had not even started to come up. But I had learned not to argue with Beta Rhys, He liked finding reasons to punish the omegas and talking back to him, even to defend yourself was a guaranteed way of getting punished severely by him, and nobody came to the rescue. Rhys liked it even more. He liked it more than he probably should have.
"Sorry," I said, keeping my eyes on the floor instead.
He grabbed my arm before I could step past him. His grip was hard, fingers digging into my skin, and I went still the way prey goes still when a predator has it cornered.
"Sorry what?" he said.
"Sorry, Beta Rhys."
He held on for another moment — just to make sure I understood who had the power here — and then he shoved me forward. I caught myself on the counter edge.
"Start on the bread," he said. "Alpha wants breakfast early. The ceremony is today."
I already knew about the ceremony. Every wolf in the pack knew about it. The Moon Goddess Ceremony happened once a year at the sacred stone circle in the forest behind the pack lands. It was the night when the Moon Goddess herself was said to speak — when fated mates were revealed, when people got to claim their partners and live a fairytale life.
It was the most important night in our world. For most wolves, it was a night of joy. A night of hope. For me, it was just another night to survive. I started on the bread. My hands moved on their own — measuring, mixing, kneading, doing the same thing I had been doing for a very long time now — while my mind drifted the way it always did when I was trying not to think about how tired I was.
The kitchen door swung open hard and hit the wall. I flinched hard from the impact.
Selene walked in like she owned the place. She basically did. Selene was my best friend. Or the closest thing I had to one. She was tall and beautiful in the way wolves were supposed to be — strong shoulders, confident walk, dark hair that fell in perfect waves.
She had shifted at fifteen, earlier than almost anyone. Her wolf was pale silver and people said it was one of the most beautiful wolves they had ever seen. Selene was also everything I was not.
"Elara." She came straight to me, grabbed both my hands, and squeezed them. Her eyes were bright and flushed with excitement in a way that made my chest do something complicated. "Can you believe today is actually here?"
"The ceremony," I said.
"The ceremony!" She let go of my hands and spun once, laughing. "Tonight could change everything. Tonight could be — Elara, what if tonight the Moon Goddess names my fated mate? What if it's—" She stopped herself, but her eyes said the name she didn't finish saying.
Damon.
Alpha Damon Blackthorn.
Selene had been in love with him for two years. She believed with her whole heart that she was made for him. That her strength and her beauty and her powerful wolf made her the only right choice for his Luna.
"You don't know that it'll be him," I said carefully.
"I feel it," she said, pressing one hand to her chest. "I've always felt it, Elara. Tonight it becomes real."
I looked down at the dough in my hands and said nothing. The truth I could not say out loud was this: I was afraid of tonight. Not because anything good might happen to me — I had stopped expecting good things — but because something about today felt different. LIke something was going to change for me too, my last shot at getting out of this hellhole.
The ceremony began at midnight. The entire pack gathered at the stone circle. Torches lined the outer ring. The Alpha stood at the center, his aura and presence alone dominant enough to make all bow to him.
I had seen Damon Blackthorn many times. He was twenty-six years old. He was broad and dark-haired with eyes and he moved like everything around him was already his and he was simply deciding whether to acknowledge it. He had taken over this pack at twenty-two when his father died, and in four years he had made it the most feared pack in the region.
He was also, by every possible measure, the most dangerous person I had ever been near. Not because he was violent — though he was, when he chose to be. But crossing him meant a lifetime of hell and no response. Also he was calculating when needed and used people and dropped them like toys, he was bored of.
The High Priestess began the ceremony. She was an old woman who served the Moon Goddess, and when she spoke, the whole pack went quiet.
I stood at the very back of the gathered crowd, where the omegas and low-ranking wolves were expected to stand. Beside me, Selene was practically vibrating with nervous energy.
The ritual went through its stages. The High Priestess called the Moon Goddess. The sacred fire in the center of the stone circle burned brighter than it had any right to, lighting up the path and making everything brighter for a minute before reducing and staying at it's normal size.
And then something happened. The fire went white at once. Pure, blinding white — not gold, not orange, but white like moonlight — and it shot upward in a column that made the whole crowd step back and gasp.
The High Priestess raised her arms.
"The Moon Goddess speaks," she said. "She names her fated pairs."
Names began to be called. One by one, wolves found their mates. Cries of joy, of recognition, of tears — the sounds of people discovering the person they were made for.
Selene grabbed my hand so tight it hurt.
And then the white fire changed again. It bent. It came toward me. I froze. It reached me and wrapped around me like arms and something roared to life inside me. The High Priestess turned her eyes to me and then slowly, deliberately, turned them to Alpha Damon.
"The Moon Goddess names," she said, "Alpha Damon Blackthorn and Elara Voss as fated mates."
The silence that followed was the loudest thing I had ever heard.
Selene's hand went completely cold in mine. I could not breathe. And across the stone circle, I finally met Damon's eyes for the first time in my life, He was already looking at me. His expression was unreadable. But his eyes — his eyes burned with hatred directed at me.
