"You could at least try to look less pathetic, Irina. It's our birthday, not a funeral."

Astrid was leaning against the kitchen doorframe in a white dress that fit her like the fabric was in love with her, platinum hair spilling over her shoulders and that smile she wore when she wanted to remind the world that the moon goddess had handcrafted her.

Irina didn't look up from the plate she was scrubbing.

"If you want me to look less pathetic, tell Maren to stop assigning me last night's dishes. I've been scrubbing since five."

"Oh, little sister. If you had a wolf, you wouldn't be scrubbing dishes. You'd be out there with everyone else, getting ready for the ceremony. But, well." She examined a fingernail. "Everyone gets what they get."

"Yeah. You got to be the blessed one. I got to be your servant. Fair distribution by the goddess."

Astrid tilted her head. That was the thing about Irina: she talked back. Any other omega would've ducked their head and mumbled "yes, miss." But her twin sister, her defective copy, always had something to say. Astrid found it entertaining. Like a dog barking behind a fence.

"Six emissaries are coming today to present courtship offers for me," she said, walking into the kitchen and stealing a grape from the fruit bowl. "Six packs want to marry into the Volkovs. Dad says I can take my time until the moon reveals my mate. In the meantime, let them line up."

"Lucky you."

"Right?" Another grape. "Are you coming down to the party?"

"I wasn't invited."

"Of course you were. Someone has to serve the wine."

Irina kept scrubbing. The water was cold and the soap was cracking her hands. Eighteen years, she thought. Today I turn eighteen and I'm scrubbing the dishes from my sister's banquet. Happy birthday, Irina.

Sick of the kitchen and the sound of the guests' laughter, she escaped to the lake — the only place where she felt at peace. She took off her gray dress and stood naked before the water, the cold air biting her skin and the full moon above, enormous, so close it seemed like you could touch it if you stretched out your hand.

At least you don't judge me, she thought, looking up at it.

She stepped into the water.

The cold stole her breath for a second, like a punch to the chest. Then came the other thing: that feeling she only found here, at this lake, at this hour, when there was no one around to tell her that her body was in the way. She swam to the center in slow strokes.

There has to be more than this, she thought. On the other side of the barrier there are cities. Lights. People who live without packs or alphas or ranks. I've seen the photos on the guards' phones when they think I'm not looking. Streets that never end. Buildings that touch the sky. And I can't even peek.

She closed her eyes. Just her heartbeat and the water and the moon. For a moment, everything was fine.

Then something changed.

It wasn't a sound. It was as if the entire forest had held its breath. The crickets went silent. The frogs stopped croaking. The wind froze between the pines as if something had cut it off at the root.

Irina opened her eyes.

At first she didn't see it. She only felt it was there: a presence that weighed on the air like a storm about to break. Something large. Something that made every hair on her body stand on end.

She turned her head toward the shore.

And stopped breathing.

An enormous beast stood between the trees. Half hidden by shadows, so still it could have been a rock if not for the eyes. Two points of bright yellow light, watching her from the darkness with an intensity that Irina felt in her stomach like a blow.

It was huge. Bigger than any wolf she'd ever seen in the pack. The size of a horse, with fur black as oil and shoulders so broad the low pine branches curved around it. It wasn't a Volkov wolf. Not from any pack she knew. It was something older. Wilder. Something that didn't follow the rules.

A lycanthrope.

Irina's heart became a drum. She could feel it in her throat, in her temples, in her fingertips. She was naked. In the middle of the lake. No wolf, no claws, absolutely nothing between her and that thing that could cross the water in three strides and tear her apart before she had time to scream.

She didn't move.

Her legs wouldn't respond. Her arms floated at her sides as if they didn't belong to her. But it wasn't paralysis. It wasn't a body frozen by fear. It was something else. Something that came from a place deeper than instinct, deeper than anything Irina had felt in eighteen years of life.

A certainty.

Absurd, irrational, impossible to explain.

It's not going to hurt you.

The beast emerged from the trees. Each step was slow, deliberate, with a weight that sank the leaves and snapped the dry branches beneath its paws. It walked down to the lake's edge. Its front paws touched the water. It stopped.

It didn't enter.

It stayed there, at the edge, head lowered and yellow eyes fixed on her. Moonlight fell over it, drawing shadows across its fur that shifted with each breath.

Irina floated in the center of the lake, naked, vulnerable, staring at a creature that could kill her with one swipe. And the creature stared back at her. Without growling. Without baring its teeth. Without anything that resembled a threat.

It looked at her as if it were recognizing her.

She didn't know how much time passed. It could have been seconds or minutes or an entire hour compressed into a moment that had no name.

What are you? she thought.

And why do I feel like I know you?

"Irina!" Maren's voice shattered the silence like glass against the floor. "Irina, damn it, they need you in the kitchen!"

The beast turned its head toward the voices. Torches moving between the trees. Someone was coming.

It looked at Irina one last time. A long second, dense, charged with something she had no words to name. Then it turned and vanished between the pines without making a single sound. A creature the size of a horse moving like smoke. As if it had never been there.

But it had.

Irina swam to the shore with her heart racing and her hands shaking. She dressed in a stumble, clothes sticking to her wet skin. She stood staring at the exact spot between the trees where the beast had disappeared.

"What the hell was that?" she whispered.

The forest didn't answer. But something inside her chest, something new and small that had just woken up, beat once. Hard. As if answering for it.

The party was in full swing when she walked into the hall carrying a tray of wine.

Two hundred wolves celebrating. Astrid in the center, radiant, with her six suitors lining up. Music, howls, food. And Irina serving glasses with her hair still wet and the image of yellow eyes that wouldn't leave her head.

Viktor stood. The hall went silent.

"Tonight we celebrate Astrid. Eighteen years. Blessed by the moon goddess. Pride of this pack."

Applause. Howls.

"But I also bring an announcement. There is a blood debt between our house and the Blackmoor line. Three generations. King Theron Blackmoor has demanded a female of Volkov blood as compensation."

The silence thickened. King Blackmoor. The black castle. The Alpha no one spoke of without lowering their voice.

Viktor looked at her.

"Irina Volkov will depart at dawn tomorrow as an offering from the Volkov line to King Blackmoor."

A plate slipped from her tray and shattered against the floor.

"No!" She said it out loud. The hall turned toward her. "I'm not going."

"You're not being asked," Viktor said.

"I don't care. I'm not a package you can ship off to pay your debts."

Murmurs rippled through the tables. The omega was talking back to the Alpha.

"Irina—" Astrid cut in from her table. "Don't make a scene. It's an honor to represent the family."

"An honor? Sending me to a king they say is cursed?"

"The moon goddess will provide," Borya said with his knife-edge smile. "It's more than someone of your rank can expect."

"Would any of you go?" Irina looked around the hall. "Would any of you accept being packaged up and shipped to a castle that no one knows what goes on inside?"

Silence.

"That's what I thought."

"Enough." Viktor's Alpha voice pressed against her chest like an invisible hand. "You leave at dawn. There's no discussion."

Irina clenched her teeth. Her knees trembled under the weight of the Alpha command. Every omega in the hall ducked their head by instinct.

She didn't.

"If you force me to go," she said, her voice steadier than she expected, "I'll find a way out. You don't know me, Father."

Viktor looked at her. And for the first time in eighteen years, something crossed his eyes that wasn't indifference.

"Get her out."

Two guards took her by the arms. Irina didn't struggle. She walked out with her back straight, looking ahead.

The last thing she saw was Astrid raising her glass with a smile.

In her room, with the door closed, she sat on the bed. Everything was shaking. But not from fear.

From rage.

I'm getting out of this. I don't know how. But no one is going to decide my life for me. Never again.

And beneath the rage, the image of yellow eyes watching her from the lake's edge. Without attacking. Without judging.

As if they'd been waiting for her.

King Blackmoor's emissaries arrived at dawn looking like someone had ruined their weekend.

There were two of them. Gregor, a thick-necked wolf with a square jaw, and a young man with a scar on his eyebrow who didn't bother giving his name. They brought a black truck with tinted windows and the Blackmoor crest on the door: a wolf with open jaws over a broken moon.

"This is her?" Gregor asked, looking her up and down.

"This is her," Viktor said, like someone handing over a package at the door.

"I thought she'd be more..." Gregor searched for the word, eyeing her with contempt — she was a ninety-kilo omega with messy hair and a backpack over her shoulder.

"More what?" Irina said. "Finish the sentence. Thinner. Prettier. More submissive. Which of the three?"

Gregor closed his mouth. Viktor looked at the sky.

"Get in the truck, Irina."

Irina looked at her father. She looked at him expecting something. She didn't know what. A hug? An apology? Some tiny gesture that said you're my daughter and this hurts me? Anything.

Viktor held her gaze with the same expression as always: nothing.

Irina climbed into the truck without another word.

The truck pulled away and Viktor turned around and walked toward the house without looking back.

Not once, Irina thought. Not a single time in eighteen years.

Three hours on the road and no one had said a word to her.

Gregor drove like the road owed him money. The scarred one rode shotgun staring at his phone. Irina sat in the back, clutching the backpack to her chest, watching through the window as Volkov territory disappeared behind her.

"How much longer?" she asked.

"Shut up," said the scarred one without looking up.

"It's a simple question. A number. Three hours? Five? Will we get there before I die of boredom?"

Gregor looked at her in the rearview mirror.

"Four more hours. If you stay quiet, maybe three."

"If you drive better, maybe we'll arrive in one piece."

"The fat omega's got a sharp tongue," the scarred one muttered.

"The fat one has a name. Irina. In case you care what the package you're delivering is called."

Silence. Gregor accelerated as a response.

The forest closed in. The pines denser, the light scarcer, the dirt road narrower. No-man's land. Kilometers where no pack had jurisdiction and rules didn't apply.

Gregor slammed on the brakes.

Irina crashed into the seat in front of her.

"What the—"

"Shut up." Gregor was already out of the truck, nose raised and muscles tense. "Outlaws. Four of them. They've surrounded us."

The scarred one pulled out a knife and opened the door.

"Surrounded?" Irina leaned between the seats. "What do you mean surrounded? Aren't you supposed to be the king's warriors?"

"Stay inside!"

The forest exploded.

The first wolf slammed into Gregor before he finished shifting. They rolled through the mud, fangs against fangs. The second appeared from behind the truck. The scarred one spun with the knife, slashed its flank, but the wolf clamped its jaws on his arm and pulled.

The crack of bone.

The scream.

Irina threw open the door and fell into the mud.

"Shit!"

She got up slipping. She didn't know where to run. Just mud, trees, and the sound of bodies being torn apart.

The third appeared in front of her. Big, brown, with the bored-predator look of something that's found a toy.

"Get away from me, you mangy piece of shit!"

She threw the backpack at its face and the wolf dodged it, baring its fangs.

Irina ran. Ninety kilos on wet mud, her legs sinking, her lungs burning, every step a fight against gravity. Ten meters. Fifteen.

She stepped on a root she didn't see and her ankle cracked. She fell face-first into the mud.

The wolf put a paw on her back and pinned her to the ground.

"Let me go, you son of a bitch!" She spat dirt, clawed at the mud, kicked. "Let me go!"

The wolf growled in her ear. Teeth vibrating against her neck. Irina fought with everything she had, which wasn't much, which was nothing against a predator three times her strength.

A fourth wolf emerged from the trees. It approached slowly. The brown one snarled at it: mine. The fourth stopped.

Irina stopped struggling. She couldn't breathe right with the weight crushing her back.

I'm not going to die here. Not in a mud puddle. Not like this. She thought it, but she had no way to save herself.

The howl cut through the forest like a knife.

It didn't come from the outlaws. It came from farther away, deeper. A long, low howl that made the ground tremble and that Irina felt in her bones.

The brown wolf lifted its paw off her. It backed away. All four staring in the same direction with their ears flat and their tails between their legs.

Something was coming. Something that had been following them.

The beast emerged from the pines like a shadow with weight. Enormous. Yellow eyes. Black fur.

It charged the brown wolf before it could react. It clamped its jaws around it, lifted it, and hurled it against a tree that split in half. The second tried to run. Two strides. The third and fourth vanished howling.

Silence.

Irina was on the ground, covered in mud, staring at the same creature from the lake. The beast approached. It lowered its head until its yellow eyes were inches from hers.

"You again," she whispered.

The deep rumble. The same one from the lake. Then it raised its head and disappeared into the trees like smoke.

Irina lay in the mud for a full minute. Shaking. Processing. The emissaries were dead. The truck was still running.

She got up. She climbed into the driver's seat. She looked at the pedals.

"How hard can it be?"

Very hard. She started in lurches, zigzagged down the road, went off it twice, ripped a mirror off on a tree. But she moved forward. Cursing at every turn, hands white-knuckled on the wheel.

Three hours later, a patrol of Blackmoor perimeter guards blocked her path.

"Halt! Who are you?"

Irina rolled down the window. Covered in mud, dried blood on her forehead, the eyes of someone who'd had the worst day of her life.

"Irina Volkov. The offering."

Blackmoor Castle was exactly as horrible as it sounded.

Black stone, towers stabbing the sky like clenched fists, walls designed to tell you that you weren't welcome. Irina watched it appear between the mountains from the window of the perimeter guards' truck and thought that if someone had asked her to draw the most inhospitable place in the world, she'd have fallen short.

"Welcome to Blackmoor Castle," said the guard driving.

"Welcome? To this? Do you say that to everyone or just the offerings?"

The guard didn't respond. He probably wasn't paid enough to deal with sarcastic omegas covered in mud.

A thin man with prematurely gray hair was waiting on the entrance steps. He had the face of someone who hadn't slept well in years and the manners of someone who'd learned to be diplomatic with difficult people.

"I'm Ezra. The king's Beta. You must be..."

"The offering. Yes. Irina Volkov." She climbed out of the truck and felt every muscle in her body complain at the same time. "Where's your king?"

"The king doesn't receive visitors without—"

"Two of his emissaries are dead on a dirt road. Outlaws killed them. I drove the truck here without knowing how to drive and I've got mud in places I'd rather not mention. So protocol means very little to me right now. Where is he?"

Ezra looked at her. He looked her up and down: mud, dried blood, destroyed dress, and a pair of eyes that weren't asking permission — they were demanding answers.

"Follow me," he said.

The castle's interior was as welcoming as the outside. Stone corridors, high ceilings, electric lighting that fought against the building's natural darkness and lost. Irina walked behind Ezra leaving muddy footprints on the floor and feeling like a stain on a painting that didn't want her.

The throne room was enormous. At the far end, sitting in a carved stone chair as if the entire world owed him something, was Theron Blackmoor.

Irina stopped.

Tall. Broad-shouldered. Black hair, gray eyes, a jaw that looked designed for clenching. The kind of alpha who filled a room with his presence without needing to say a word.

But Irina had eight hours of hell behind her and wasn't in the mood to be impressed.

"You're Blackmoor?" she said from the doorway.

Theron looked up. He looked at her. Mud, blood, hair plastered to her face, torn dress. His expression didn't change.

"And you're the Volkov?"

"Irina. My name is Irina."

"I didn't ask your name."

"And I didn't ask for your opinion on my appearance, but you're screaming it with your face."

Ezra, behind her, suppressed a sigh.

"My emissaries are dead," Theron said.

"Yes. Four outlaws in no-man's land. Your men couldn't handle them."

"And you could?" He leaned forward. "An omega without a wolf against four wolves."

"I got lucky."

"Nobody gets that lucky."

"I do. It's the only thing I've got. Luck and a bad temper. Are you going to explain what I'm doing here, or are we going to keep playing twenty questions?"

Theron rose from the throne. When an alpha his size stood up, the space shrank. He walked toward her in slow, deliberate steps until he was less than two meters away. Irina had to tilt her head to look him in the eye.

"You're here because your father signed an agreement to settle a three-generation blood debt. You'll stay until the Red Moon ceremony, where we'll be joined before the moon goddess. It's a ritual that doesn't require us to get along. Only that we show up."

"And after?"

"After, you're my luna."

"What does that mean?"

"It means you live here. You carry my name. And you don't ask questions."

"Is that a threat?"

"It's advice."

Irina looked up at him. Ninety kilos of omega without a wolf facing the most powerful alpha in the eastern territory. Covered in mud, exhausted, alone. And still, she didn't lower her gaze.

"I've got some advice for you too," she said. "Don't treat me like furniture. I already had a father who did that for eighteen years. I'm here because I had no choice, not because I want to be. And the first chance I get to leave, I'm gone."

Something crossed Theron's eyes. Not anger. Something more like the surprise of someone who expected submission and found teeth.

"Ezra," he said, without taking his eyes off her. "Take her to her room. Clothes. Food. Bath."

"And the explanations?" Irina pressed.

"Explanations come when I decide to give them. Today isn't that day."

"Fantastic. A father who ignores me, a sister who hates me, and now a king who gives me orders. The moon goddess has a disgusting sense of humor."

Theron almost — almost — moved the corner of his mouth. But he caught himself. He turned and disappeared through a side door.

Ezra took her arm diplomatically.

"Are you always like this?" he asked as they walked down the corridor.

"Like what?"

"This direct with alphas who could rip your head off."

"Only the ones who deserve it."

"You're not going to last long here."

"Or I'm going to last a very long time and make everyone's life miserable. One or the other."

Ezra almost smiled. Almost.

"One thing," he said before leaving her at the room. "When night falls, lock your door. Don't come out. No matter what you hear."

"Why?"

"Because I'm asking you, Irina. And I'm the only person in this castle who's treating you like a human being. So trust me on this."

Something in his tone stopped her. It wasn't an order. It was a real warning, from someone who knew something he couldn't say but needed her to believe.

"All right," she said.

The room was large, cold, with an enormous bed and a window overlooking the cliff. There were new clothes folded on a chair, a food tray on the table, and clean towels in the bathroom.

Irina showered until the water ran clean. She put on the new clothes — the fabric was soft, dark, fit her as if someone had taken her measurements without asking — and sat on the bed to eat.

She devoured everything. She hadn't eaten in over twelve hours and her body demanded it with the urgency of an animal that doesn't know when it'll eat again.

Then she lay down. She was exhausted. Every muscle ached, her twisted ankle throbbed, and she had the kind of tiredness that doesn't heal with a nap but with a week of unconsciousness.

She closed her eyes.

Tomorrow I'll find a way out of here, she thought. Tomorrow I check the exits, the routes, the blind spots in the security.

She fell asleep in seconds.

She opened her eyes past midnight. The room was dark and the moon came through the window, drawing rectangles of silver light on the stone floor.

Something had changed.

The air was heavier. Hotter. Charged with an electricity that made her skin prickle and her heart race before her brain understood why.

She turned her head toward the door.

It was open.

Irina sat up in bed. She was sure she'd locked it. Ezra told her to lock it. But now it was open and in the gap, blocking the dim light from the hallway, stood something.

Something enormous.

The beast was in her doorway.

Black. Gigantic. Yellow eyes glowing in the darkness with an intensity that Irina recognized instantly. The same eyes from the lake. The same eyes from the forest when it saved her from the outlaws.

But now there was no lake between them. No distance. Just five meters of stone floor between the bed and the most terrifying creature she'd ever seen in her life.

Her heart hammered against her ribs so hard it hurt. Her hands shook. Every survival instinct she had screamed at her to run, to hide under the bed, to scream for help.

This is what Ezra didn't want me to see, she thought. This is what happens at night in the castle. This is what everyone knows and no one says.

The beast entered the room.

One step. Two. Each one made the floor tremble. It approached the bed with that deliberate slowness she already knew, as if it had all the time in the world and didn't want to scare her more than she already was.

It's in my room. The thing from the lake is in my room. At two in the morning. And I'm in a nightgown.

The beast stopped at the edge of the bed. It lowered its head. Its yellow eyes came level with Irina's.

It looked at her.

Irina stopped breathing.

It's not going to hurt you — that instinct born at the lake, speaking louder every time. It didn't hurt you in the water. It didn't hurt you in the forest. It's not going to hurt you now.

But Irina wasn't stupid. Instincts were all well and good, but the creature in front of her weighed ten times what she did and had fangs that could split a log.

"If you're going to eat me," she whispered, her voice trembling but her gaze steady, "I hope I at least give you indigestion. Ninety kilos aren't easy to digest."

The beast opened its mouth.

Irina closed her eyes.

Hot breath hit her face. Then something wet and enormous brushed her cheek.

She opened one eye.

The beast had licked her face.

"Did you just— Was that a lick?" Irina wiped her cheek with her sleeve. "The most terrifying creature I've ever seen just licked me like a dog?"

The beast let out that low rumble she already knew. It lay down on the floor beside the bed with a weight that made the furniture shake, rested its massive head on its front paws, and closed its eyes.

Like a dog. A horse-sized dog with nightmare fangs, lying beside her bed as if that were its rightful place.

Irina sat in bed with her heart still racing, watching the beast settle at her feet with the calm of something that had finally found what it was looking for.

What the hell is going on?

And beneath that question, another one — deeper, more dangerous — that pulsed in her chest with a force that scared her:

Those eyes. From the lake. From the forest. And now here. It's following me. Why is it following me?

The beast breathed slow, heavy. Its rumble vibrated through the floor and traveled up through her legs to her chest.

Irina didn't sleep all night.

But she didn't scream either.