The snow of Sangue Negro Forest showed no mercy to the weak.

I felt every ice crystal beneath my bare feet, a constant reminder that I was the only one here who still needed clothes and fire to survive.

Around me, massive silhouettes of dark fur and gleaming eyes moved like shadows through the trees.

My packmates.

Creatures who, by eighteen, had already claimed their animal forms.

I was about to turn nineteen, and the silence inside me was absolute.

"Lyra!" The call came not through the mind-link but through her voice — soft and weary.

I turned to find Mara, the Omega she-wolf who'd taken me in when I was nothing more than an abandoned burden left at the border.

She stood in her human form, wrapped in a threadbare blanket, her eyes filled with a worry that cut through my chest.

She was the bottom of the pyramid — the one who cleaned and served — and for raising me, she carried twice the pack's contempt.

"Go back to the cabin, sweetheart. The Alpha is coming for the hunt tally. You know he doesn't like... imperfections in his path."

I knew. Alpha Vane. A tyrant who believed the Sangue Negro pack should be pure power. To him, a she-wolf who never awakened was a defect. One adopted by an Omega was a geological error.

"I'm not an imperfection, Mara. I'm just... slow," I lied, trying to hide the tremor in my hands. Deep down, I'd already accepted I would die without a wolf.

Before Mara could answer, the air turned heavy. The scent of oak and electrical storm slammed into my lungs like a fist. He was close.

A colossal wolf, with fur as dark as the abyss and shoulders as broad as an ancient oak, emerged from between the trees.

Vane.

His golden eyes swept the clearing with absolute authority and stopped on me.

The contempt in his gaze was physical — a pressure that made me want to buckle at the knees.

"Still here, little wolf?"* His voice invaded my mind, glacial and commanding. "Nineteen years and not a single growl? Mara should have left you for the crows when she found you. You're dirtying my ground."*

I held his stare, even as my heart hammered against my ribs.

I couldn't feel my wolf, but I felt a strange heat rising through my neck. A rage that didn't seem like mine.

"I belong to this pack as much as you do, Alpha," I challenged out loud.

The snarl that tore from him sent the birds scattering from the trees.

He advanced, stopping inches from my face, his hot predator's breath hitting my skin.

"You don't belong anywhere, Lyra. If by your next birthday your blood hasn't boiled... I'll drag you beyond my borders myself. Alive or not."

He turned away in a sharp, violent motion, leading the pack's run.

I stayed behind, trembling — but not just from the cold.

For the first time, I felt a deep pang at the base of my spine.

A sharp pain, as if something were trying to break a seal in my own DNA.

I didn't know it then, and no one there could have imagined, that my biological clock wasn't running late.

It was simply tuned to a bloodline they didn't dare speak aloud.

The Sangue Negro training ground was a circle of packed earth and dried blood.

At its center, chaos: dozens of wolves clashing, testing the strength of their jaws and the speed of their paws.

I was the only blemish in that landscape of beasts.

"What's wrong, little wolf?" snarled Thorin, a young, arrogant Beta who loved using me as a punching bag. "Forget how to run, or are you waiting for someone to lick your wounds?"

The other wolves stopped, forming a ring.

I caught the gleam of amusement in their eyes.

To the pack, I was the morning's entertainment.

I didn't answer.

I just adjusted my stance, feeling the cutting cold of the morning and the sting of my scraped knees.

Thorin charged.

He was fast — a gray blur that intended to flatten me with the impact of his shoulder alone.

But I'd been watching him for months.

I knew he always shifted his weight to his left paw before leaping.

At the last second, I didn't retreat.

I dropped low.

I used his own momentum against him, grabbing a fistful of dirt and flinging it into his eyes as I spun aside.

Thorin stumbled on his own force, tumbling through the filth in a pathetic roll.

The silence that followed was absolute.

A failure wasn't supposed to be able to bring down a Sangue Negro wolf.

I felt a crushing weight fall over my shoulders before I even heard the sound.

I looked up at the rocky ledge surrounding the field.

Vane was there.

His hybrid form seemed to absorb what little sunlight remained.

He didn't move, but his golden eyes were locked on me — narrow and dangerous.

"Survival tricks don't replace instinct, Lyra,"* his voice vibrated in my mind, cold as a razor. "You play at being a warrior, but deep down, you're still just prey waiting for the slaughter."*

"Prey don't take down Betas, Alpha," I shot back, wiping the sweat from my forehead. "Maybe your instinct is going blind from your own pride."

The growl that echoed from the ledge made the other wolves shrink back.

Vane leaped from the outcrop, landing with lethal grace a few yards from me.

He shifted back to his human form — bare-chested, his skin rising and falling with each breath, scarred from battles I could only imagine.

He closed the distance, and the scent of oak and storm wrapped around me like a trap.

Vane seized my chin with bruising force, making me meet his gaze.

"Pride is what keeps this pack alive," he hissed, his eyes still blazing with the wolf's gold. "And your defiance is what's going to get you killed."

He released my face with a sharp jerk and brushed past me, but not before I felt something strange.

A tingling where his fingers had touched my skin.

It wasn't fear.

It was as if an electric current were trying to link our blood.

In the distance, near the tree line, I saw Mara watching me.

She was pale.

She knew what I didn't yet understand: poking a wounded wolf was dangerous, but challenging a tyrant Alpha who was beginning to notice you was fatal.

That night, the pain in my spine wasn't just a pang.

It was a wildfire.

And in the middle of the flames, I heard a voice that wasn't mine, whispering from the depths of my soul: "Wait... I'm coming."

The dark-oak study felt too small for the energy pouring off Vane that night.

I paced from wall to wall, claws grazing the leather of the armchair, an irritation I couldn't name crawling up my throat.

"What's wrong with you?" I growled mentally at my wolf, but Fenris was in a disturbing silence, just watching the shadows.

I could still feel the trace of her scent on my fingertips.

Lyra.

That insolent girl who smelled of wild honeysuckle and... something else.

Something I couldn't decipher, but that made my blood boil in a way no she-wolf in the pack ever had.

I closed my eyes, remembering the touch on her chin.

Her skin had been soft, but her gaze was steel.

When our eyes met, for a fraction of a second, my wolf didn't want to snarl. He wanted to... bow?

"Impossible," I hissed at the empty walls.

I was the Alpha of Sangue Negro.

My legacy was built on bones and conquest.

I didn't need a girl adopted by an Omega — someone who didn't even have the spirit of the forest running in her veins.

I needed a Luna.

An alpha female. Strong. Capable of hunting at my side and bearing heirs that would make our enemies tremble.

A weak partner would be my ruin.

And Lyra was the definition of weakness under our law.

"She's just a mistake," I repeated, trying to convince myself as I stared at the moon through the window. "A distraction I'll eliminate once the deadline passes."

But even as I spoke, a stab of pain shot through my chest — a silent warning.

My wolf finally surfaced, a deep growl echoing through my mind:

"She's not weak, Vane. You're the one who's blind."

I punched the oak desk, feeling the wood crack beneath my knuckles.

"She's a weakness, Fenris!" I snarled mentally at my wolf.

Fenris only growled back — a deep, vibrating sound that rattled the base of my skull.

He'd been restless since the training session, ears pricked, scenting the air for that trail of wildflowers Lyra left behind.

The study door opened without a knock.

The scent of musk and expensive perfume flooded the room, trying to smother the forest's natural aroma.

Laila.

She walked in with the elegance of a predator, her Beta wolf gleaming through her sharp eyes.

Laila was everything the Sangue Negro pack demanded of a Luna: strong, lethal, and pureblooded.

"You're tense, my Alpha," she murmured, her voice a coy purr as she slid her hands across my shoulders, tracing the scars on my back.

I didn't move.

My senses were still trapped in that frozen clearing, in that pair of eyes that had dared to challenge me.

Laila leaned in, brushing her lips against my neck, right where my pulse was racing.

"You need someone who can hunt at your side under the blood moon to calm you down. Someone like me."

She spun me around abruptly, pressing her body against mine.

In an act of pure denial — to prove to Fenris and to myself that I was still in control — I grabbed her by the nape of the neck and kissed her.

It was a kiss loaded with possessiveness but empty of soul.

Laila moaned in satisfaction against my lips and pulled back just enough to fix me with a victorious smile.

"When are you going to make it official in front of the pack, darling?" she asked, her fingers playing with the buttons of my shirt. "The solstice is in two days. It's the perfect night to declare your Luna and banish that... thing that's dirtying our ground for good."

The word "Luna" echoed in my chest like a storm warning.

I looked at Laila — the "perfect" partner my logic demanded. But inside, Fenris unleashed a howl of agony that nearly buckled my knees.

"At the solstice, Laila," I answered, my voice coming out rougher than I intended. "At the solstice, everything will be put in its rightful place."

I didn't know that while I was promising the throne to a Beta, fate was already weaving a crown of silver for another wolf.