The Alpha Who Was Never Meant to Love Me

eginning of my happiness. Instead, it became the

crushed pine needles and woodsmoke, of nervous sweat and the faint metallic tang that always seemed to hang over a Moon Bond Ceremony, as if the whole pack could smell the possib

to prove them wrong. Tonight, I t

mething caged that had just scented the door standing open. *Something is coming*, she kept saying, and I kept telling h

fied," Lila whi

m n

our hands a

nst the fabric of my borrowed dress. "I've waited

d. "Whatever happen

I didn't yet know what th

h, and every head turned toward the stone staircase at the edge of the

the pack still whispered about how he'd taken the title so early, powerful enough that the whispering had stopped mattering years ago. His dark hair moved in the

s found mine

at

rian Blackthorne since I was old enough to know what dreaming meant - quiet, guilty dreams I never told anyone about, becaus

ay water parts for something heavier than itself. He stopped in front of me, close enough that I could feel the heat coming off him, and for

hole world fall away - the drums, the fire,

lp

in that half-second, that I would remember the e

his eyes, the warmth that had been there half a breath earlier, gone like a do

epped

orne, reject Elena

own pulse breaking rhythm. My knees buckled; Lila's hand was the only thing that kept me upright. I looked down at my wrist, where the faint silver mark of the bond had begun forming the moment his eyes fo

ssing."* The whispers came from every direction,

was going to break, I refused t

t your r

jaw tightened - for one heartbeat I thought I saw regret, something raw flickering behind the composure - then he t

neath the collar of her gown. I knew that necklace. I had seen it once before, the night my mother died, twelve years ago, when I was six and too

hat was the only thin

ished, her hand rising to cover the pendant l

o go," Lila said,

eed

behind me and my tears finally came. I pressed a hand to my chest, to the place where the bond had torn loose, and it

olf, my voice crack

nothing more, curling in on herself lik

of trees. Then the smell of blood reached me, faint and old, and a man

shouldn't have co

ou? What d

ver pendant, tarnished with age, the chain broken as though it had been torn from someone's neck in a

id you g

death," he said, quieter now, almost gentle

now Ad

exactly wh

but the pendant lying in the dirt to prove he'd been real. I picked it up with shaking hands. On its back was a symbol I'd never seen - a cresc

nside that s

wered it, then another, until the forest seemed to be baying at

gue

stance behind me and I went down hard, palms scraping against roots and stone. Befo

ri

me," I said, s

e in d

e in front of t

e a choice. Someone t

if his hand hadn't been shaking - the gre

dant in my hand, and every

id you g

gave it

has returned, then everything you've

of the dark befor

ate, A

my mother's necklace glinting at her

have killed you when

against my palm, and somewhere deep inside me, a secon

I realized, might only be the