Chapter 1
Arielle Vale's POV:
The first thing I notice is the smell of iron.
Not the clean kind. Not fresh blood.
Old metal. Rust. Fear soaked into steel.
It fills my mouth when I scream—and the scream tears out of me anyway, sharp and raw, ripped straight from my chest as hands slam me face-first into the dirt.
"Don't fight," someone snarls near my ear.
I bite him.
Hard.
He swears. Someone else laughs. A boot drives into my ribs, knocking the air out of me in a brutal rush. Pain blooms white-hot, and I curl instinctively, sucking in breath that tastes like pine, mud, and panic.
So this is how it ends.
Not heroic. Not fast.
Stupid.
I should've known better than to cross Blackfang territory alone. Everyone knows you don't cut through Beast Alpha land unless you're desperate or dead already.
I was desperate.
Chains bite into my wrists as they haul me upright. Cold iron. Wolf-forged. Heavy. The kind meant to hurt. The kind meant to remind you exactly where you stand.
Property.
I spit blood onto the ground and lift my head anyway.
"Get your hands off me."
My voice shakes—but it's there. Still mine.
The wolves around me freeze for half a heartbeat. Not because I'm scary. I'm not. I'm human-raised, half-starved, and dressed in clothes torn from days of running.
They freeze because I didn't beg.
One of them steps closer. Broad shoulders. Scar splitting his lip. Eyes too bright in the dim forest light.
"You know where you are, girl?"
"I know exactly where I am," I say. "That's why I was leaving."
Another laugh. Darker this time.
"No one leaves once they cross our border."
The words settle like a verdict.
They drag me through the forest as dusk bleeds into night. Trees loom overhead, thick and ancient, their shadows stretching like claws across the ground. I trip more than once. They don't slow down. When I fall, they pull harder.
Pain becomes a rhythm.
Step. Drag. Stumble.
I count breaths to keep from breaking.
I don't cry. I refuse to give them that.
The fortress rises out of the darkness like a wound in the earth.
Black stone. Spiked towers. Torches burning with a low, red flame that casts everything in the colour of dried blood. Wolves line the outer gates, watching silently as I'm marched inside.
Their eyes follow me.
Curious. Hungry. Some were disgusted.
Some… amused.
The doors slam shut behind us.
That's when the air changes.
It hits me like a punch to the chest—pressure, heat, something heavy and alive that coils around my lungs and squeezes.
Power.
Every instinct I didn't know I had screams at once.
Run.
Hide.
Kneel.
I do none of those things.
They shove me forward, down a long hall lined with wolves in dark leathers and silver-threaded cloaks. At the far end, raised on a stone platform, stands a single chair carved from obsidian.
A throne.
And in front of it—
Him.
Lucien Blackfang.
I don't need to be told who he is.
I feel him.
The pull is sudden. Violent. Like something inside my chest has snapped awake and is clawing toward him, desperate and furious and terrified all at once.
My knees buckle.
I catch myself before I fall, breath coming fast. My heart slams so hard it hurts.
No. No, no, no—
Lucien steps forward.
He's taller than I expected. Dressed in black, no crown, no visible weapons—because he doesn't need them. His presence alone is enough to silence the room.
Cold grey eyes lock onto mine.
The moment stretches.
Then the world tilts.
Fire rips through my veins, searing and sudden, like lightning under my skin. I gasp, fingers curling as heat coils low in my stomach and up my spine, brutal and intimate and wrong.
The room erupts.
Gasps. Shouts. Growls.
Mate.
The word crashes into my mind with horrifying clarity.
"No," I whisper.
Lucien's jaw tightens.
I feel it—the bond snapping into place, invisible but suffocating, tugging at my chest, my breath, my pulse. Every part of me screams his name even as my mind rejects it.
This isn't fate.
This is a nightmare.
Lucien stares at me like I'm something vile dragged in on someone's boot.
Then he laughs.
It's sharp. Empty. Cruel.
"You have got to be joking."
The bond pulses painfully, like it's offended.
I force myself upright, shaking but standing. "I don't know what this is," I say hoarsely, "but I don't want it."
His gaze flicks to the chains. Back to my face.
"Oh, you don't get to want," he says calmly. "You crossed my land."
"And you just claimed me," someone mutters behind us.
Lucien turns.
Silence falls so hard it rings.
He lifts a hand, slow and deliberate—and presses it flat against his chest.
I feel it.
A burning, tearing sensation rips through me as he shoves against the bond.
Then—
"I reject her."
The words slam into me like a physical blow.
Before the entire pack.
"I don't want a mate," Lucien continues, voice carrying easily. "I don't need one. And I will not be bound to a half-blood stray who doesn't even know what she is."
The bond screams.
Pain explodes through my chest, so sharp I cry out despite myself. My vision blurs. I clutch at the chains, breath coming in broken sobs I hate myself for.
Around us, the pack murmurs.
Shock. Confusion. Something like awe.
Rejected.
Publicly. Violently.
Lucien steps closer, lowering his voice so only I can hear.
"You are nothing to me," he says. "And you will never be Luna in this territory."
I look up at him through tears I refuse to let fall.
"Good," I whisper. "Because I'd rather die than belong to a monster."
Something flashes in his eyes then.
Rage. Surprise.
Maybe… something else.
He straightens. Turns to his guards.
"Lock her in the east wing," he orders. "No visitors. No mercy. She stays until I decide what to do with her."
Chains yank me backward.
As they drag me away, pain and fury knot tight in my chest, and I realise something terrifying—
The bond isn't gone.
It's still there.
Tighter.
Angrier.
And Lucien Blackfang just made me his enemy.
Whether he wants it or not.
And as the fortress doors close behind me, one brutal truth settles in my bones:
I didn't cross his border by accident.
And I'm not leaving alive.
Not without breaking something first.