The Runaway Mate

"Put it on," my stepbrother Brendan commanded, his eyes cold.

He was forcing me to wear the silver bracelet his fiancée, Chloie, had bought to mock me.

"It will burn me," I pleaded, clutching my wrist.

"Stop acting like a fragile human," he snapped, his Alpha tone vibrating through the room. "Do not be ungrateful to your future Luna. Build a tolerance."

Under the weight of his command, my trembling hands clasped the metal.

The smell of singed hair and cooking skin filled the air immediately as the silver seared a ring into my flesh.

Brendan watched my agony without a flicker of remorse, then turned to leave with Chloie, leaving me sobbing on the floor.

He was my fated Mate, the boy who once took a dagger for me, but now he called me a "defect" because I hadn't shifted.

He destroyed my childhood treasures in a trash compactor, paraded his lover in front of me, and told the pack I was a diluted bloodline who would break under pressure.

He thought I was trapped, a weak Omega with nowhere to go.

He thought I would stay and watch him marry another woman in three days.

But he didn't know I had a secret burner phone hidden under the floorboards.

Or that my biological father, the Alpha King of the rival Sunfire Pack, was sending a private jet for me.

On the night of the Blood Moon, right before he was crowned King, I didn't just run away.

I mentally grabbed the silver cord connecting our souls and snapped it.

When the crushing pain of the severed bond hit him in the middle of his speech, he finally looked for me.

But I was already gone, ready to awaken the legendary White Wolf he never deserved.

Chapter 1

Jayde POV:

The shears were heavy, the steel biting into my palm like ice. It matched the temperature of my bedroom, and the dead look in his eyes whenever we crossed paths.

I looked at my reflection. Waist-length hair. Brendan used to say it made me look like a "proper lady" of the Moonstone Pack, distinguishing me from the wild strays we hunted.

I inhaled sharply. My hands shook, but my gut was solid stone.

Snip.

The first lock hit the floor. A soft, dark casualty.

Snip. Snip.

With every cut, the scent of this house-pine, floor wax, and him-fell away. I was carving the Moonstone Pack out of my identity.

Eighteen days until the Alpha Succession. Eighteen days until Brendan Maynard became King. And eighteen days until I became a ghost.

I dropped the scissors. My hair barely brushed my shoulders now. I didn't look like a lady anymore. I looked like a survivor.

I dug out the burner phone-a cheap piece of plastic I'd snagged from a human gas station three towns over. I dialed the encrypted number.

"Speak." The voice on the other end sounded like granite grinding against a tombstone.

"It's me," I whispered. "Jayde."

The silence stretched, heavy and thick. Then, the voice softened, though the storm inside it remained. "Jayde. My daughter."

Farrell Conner. Alpha King of the Sunfire Pack. My biological father.

"Transfer approved," I said, gripping the phone until the plastic creaked. "The University in Sunfire territory took me."

"Good. You're a diamond in a pile of gravel over there, Jayde. They're too blind to see the shine."