Chapter 3 The Alpha's Awakening

The air atop the Raventhorn Cliffs was frigid, biting through even the thick fur-lined cloak Alpha Kael wore. He welcomed the cold-it was one of the few things that could still reach him.

Below him stretched his domain. The Shadow Moon Pack lands were cloaked in darkness, dense with black pine and jagged rock, haunted by stories that made pups from other packs cry in their sleep. Kael ruled here not through kindness, but order, fear, and undeniable strength.

And yet tonight, his hands trembled.

The burn in his chest had begun two nights ago-just beneath the mark he'd had since birth. A crescent scar that had never faded.

Now it pulsed like it had its own heartbeat.

His wolf-restless and on edge-snarled under his skin, demanding something. No, someone.

A mate.

But not just any mate.

Her.

The one the Seers had warned of. The girl born of two packs. The one Kael's father had sworn to keep hidden to stop an ancient war. The one Kael had never believed was real.

Until now.

Behind him, heavy footsteps approached. "You're not going to like what I bring," Beta Maddox said grimly.

Kael didn't turn. "Go ahead. Ruin my night."

Maddox stepped beside him and handed over a folded piece of cloth.

Kael frowned.

It was white. Stained with blood. And smelling faintly of moonshade.

His eyes darkened. Moonshade was deadly unless harvested under a full moon. And it only grew on sacred Shadow Moon soil.

"She crossed the boundary," Kael murmured. "And lived."

"She shouldn't have been able to," Maddox replied. "Unless..."

Kael's throat tightened. "Unless she's bound to this land."

Maddox nodded. "The blood bond still lives."

Kael clenched his fists. The old prophecy-the one he'd ignored for years-came back to him in fragments.

Born of two moons.

Hidden in light to silence the dark.

The bond will rise again.

And the Alpha will fall... or ascend.

They returned to the fortress-a vast underground network of stone halls and glowing blue fire sconces. The pack moved in silence when Kael passed. No one dared meet his eyes. He liked it that way.

He needed control.

He had built it from pain.

He hadn't always been the monster they feared. Once, long ago, he had believed in fate. But fate had ripped his mother apart before his eyes during a treaty gone wrong.

The Silver Mist Pack had been blamed.

And now his heart dared to connect him to them?

To her?

Kael didn't sleep. Not when the dreams came.

She was always there.

Eyes violet like twilight. Skin lit by moonlight. And a voice whispering his name in a language only the old wolves remembered.

"Kael..."

Each time, he'd awaken with claw marks on his chest.

This wasn't just a bond.

It was pulling him apart.

Three hours before dawn, the ancient fire room called to him.

The Black Flame in the center of the room flared as he entered. No one else was allowed here. It was where the Alpha communed with the old magic.

He knelt.

And placed his hand over the crescent mark on his chest.

"Show me what I've denied."

The flame exploded upward, casting visions in the air.

A baby, wrapped in silver and black. A blood moon.

Two wolves fighting-one dark, one glowing.

Then... a girl standing on Shadow Moon soil, her eyes wild, her palm bleeding, her scent caught in the wind.

Kael gasped.

It was her. The trespasser.

The Silver Mist girl who didn't belong in his forest-but did.

She didn't know it yet.

But she was bound to this place.

To him.

Just as Kael rose to leave the chamber, a second vision struck him without warning.

The Silver Mist Alpha-Elandor-was speaking to someone in the shadows.

"The moment Kael finds out she's his," Elandor said coldly, "we lose everything."

Then the shadowed figure responded in a voice Kael hadn't heard in years:

His brother.

"I'll kill her before that happens."

Kael's heart stopped.

His dead brother... was alive?

And planning to kill Kael's mate?

Kael roared, the sound shaking the chamber walls.

The prophecy wasn't just rising.

The war had already begun.