SOLD TO THE RUTHLESS ALPHA:The White Wolf's Price

Chapter 6: First Shift

The pain started at midnight.

It wasn't like a stomach ache. It wasn't like being hit. It was like my bones were made of ice and fire at the same time.

I was in the bathtub. Elena had drawn a hot bath with white salts and left me alone because I asked her to. Fred was sitting outside the bathroom door talking to me through the wood, telling me stupid jokes about his school so I wouldn't be scared.

Then the moonlight hit the water.

Through the huge window, the full moon was directly above the mansion, silver and huge. The moonstone on my chest flared so bright it lit up the whole bathroom.

And my back snapped.

I screamed. It wasn't a human scream.

"Ashira!" Fred banged on the door. "Ashira, what's happening!"

"I— I don't know!" I choked out. My hands gripped the edge of the tub. My nails were turning silver. Longer. Sharper.

The mark on my wrist was no longer a small crescent. It was spreading, silver veins running up my arm, up my neck.

"GET KADE!" I screamed, because I remembered what he said. The silver in my blood will kill her if I don't let her out.

The bathroom door burst open. It wasn't Fred. It was Kade.

He was shirtless. Barefoot. Black sweatpants low on his hips. His whole chest was covered in black tattoos that moved — I swear they moved — like a wolf running under his skin. His eyes were pure gold, glowing.

Fred tried to come in behind him. Kade growled, "Stay out, human! You cannot see this! You will not survive the force!"

Fred froze in the doorway, terrified.

Kade knelt by the tub and didn't care that the water splashed his tattoos. He grabbed my face with both hands.

"Look at me! Only me! Not the pain! Look at my eyes!"

I looked. His gold eyes pulled me in.

"Your wolf has been caged for ten years in silver," he said, his voice steady even though his own body was shaking with his Alpha trying to come out. "She is angry. She is scared. You have to tell her it's safe. You have to give her permission. Say: I let you out."

My teeth were sharpening. I could feel them.

"I— I let—"

Another snap in my spine. I howled. My voice broke into two — mine and a higher, wilder one.

"Say it, Ashira!" Kade shouted, and his own canines were growing. His nails were claws now, digging into the porcelain.

"I LET YOU OUT!" I screamed, and this time it wasn't human at all.

The water exploded.

Light. White, silver, blinding light filled the bathroom. The bathtub cracked down the middle.

Fred screamed and fell back from the doorway, covering his eyes.

When the light faded, I wasn't in the tub anymore.

I was standing on four legs.

I looked down. White paws. Huge. Silver claws. White fur, thick and soft, glowing faintly silver in the moonlight. My tail — I had a tail — flicked and knocked over the shampoo bottles.

I was a wolf. A white wolf. The size of a small horse.

I panicked and tried to say Fred's name. What came out was a whine. A loud, confused puppy whine.

Kade stood up slowly. He was staring at me like he had seen a god.

He was breathing hard, his whole body tense, his own wolf fighting to shift because his mate had shifted in front of him.

"Anya..." he whispered, the name of his aunt, my mother. "You look just like her."

I whined again and tried to walk. My back legs tangled and I crashed into the towel rack. I was huge but I didn't know how to be huge.

Kade laughed. Actually laughed. A short, shocked, beautiful laugh.

"Easy, little Luna. Easy."

He shifted.

I had never seen an Alpha shift. It was fast and brutal. One second a man, the next — a monster.

A black wolf, twice my size, midnight black with golden eyes, stood in the destroyed bathroom. His head reached my shoulder even though he was bigger. His scent filled the whole room — pine, storm, Alpha, _mine_.

My white wolf didn't feel scared. She felt... excited. She wagged her tail and it broke the mirror.

The black wolf bowed his head to me. Then he nudged my white head with his.

_Come,_ his voice said inside my head. Not in my ears. Inside. _Mate link. You can hear me now?_

I could. I yipped yes, and my voice in his head was small and shocked. _Kade? Is that you?_

_Yes, little one. You are beautiful. The most beautiful white wolf in a hundred years._

He turned and walked out of the bathroom, through the bedroom, toward the balcony doors. He looked back at me. _Run with me._

_I can't! I'll break everything!_

_Then break it. This house is yours. Break what you want._

I stumbled after him, my giant white paws slipping on the marble floor. Fred was pressed against the hallway wall, eyes closed, hands over his mouth.

"It's okay, Fred!" I tried to say, but in the link, Kade translated for him.

"She says it's okay," Kade's human voice came from the black wolf's mouth, somehow. "She is okay."

Fred peeked with one eye and fainted.

The balcony doors burst open by themselves — wind from our wolves — and the cold mountain night air hit my white fur.

Below us, the entire Blackwood forest was full of wolves. Hundreds of them. Black, grey, brown. All looking up at the balcony where the black Alpha and the white Luna stood together under the full moon for the first time.

They howled.

And before I could think, before I could be shy, my white wolf threw her head back and howled with them.

My first howl. Pure, silver, powerful. It shook the trees.

Kade's black wolf howled with me, louder, possessive, telling every wolf in Silvercrest:

_She is found. She is mine. She is Luna. Anyone who touches her dies._

And in that moment, standing on the balcony in my first fur, with my mate beside me and my brother fainted in the hall and my mother's necklace glowing on my white neck, I finally understood.

I was never a maid. I was never a price.

I was the last white wolf. And I had just come home.