The Moon Witch Who Chose the Cursed Alpha

**Chapter One** The wolf was closer tonight. Ronan felt it before he saw the moon — a pressure behind his sternum, like claws testing the inside of a cage. He stood at the window of his study, both hands braced on the sill, and watched the last color bleed out of the sky over Blackthorn territory. *Not yet,* he told it. *Not yet.* The wolf didn't listen anymore. That was the problem. Three years ago it would have waited for the moon's permission. Now it pushed at him in broad daylight, in council meetings, in the middle of conversations with his own Beta — a low animal hunger that had nothing to do with the moon's cycle and everything to do with the curse eating through whatever used to separate the two of them. He caught his reflection in the dark glass. His eyes were still his own. Amber, not yet gone to wolf-gold. Still his. For now. A knock at the door — sharp, familiar. Corwin didn't wait for an answer before pushing it open, which told Ronan exactly how bad he must look. "You're not sleeping," Corwin said. Not a question. "I don't have time to sleep." "You have time to fall apart in front of the whole pack instead? Because that's where this is headed, Ronan." Corwin crossed the room, close enough that Ronan could smell the worry on him, sharp and metallic. "Three moons. That's what Old Maeve gave you before the change stops being something you fight off and starts being *permanent.*" "I'm aware of the timeline." "Then let me help you." "You can't." Ronan turned from the window. It came out harder than he meant it to, and he watched something in Corwin's face close off in response — hurt, quickly buried. "I'm sorry. I just mean — this isn't a fight you can stand next to me for. Whatever's coming for me, it's mine to lose." "That's the stupidest thing you've ever said, and you've said a lot of stupid things." Despite everything, the corner of Ronan's mouth twitched. "Get out of my study." "Fine. But you should know—" Corwin paused at the door, weighing something. "There's a woman at the edge of the northern territory. Lives alone, keeps to herself. My scouts say she's got magic that doesn't answer to any coven register we've got on file. Unregistered. Unclaimed. *Strange.*" Ronan's attention sharpened despite himself. "Strange how?" "The kind of strange that makes even witches nervous." Corwin's eyes flicked to him, careful. "I know what you're going to say. But you're out of options, Ronan, and you know it. Maybe it's time to stop looking for a cure in books nobody's opened in two hundred years and start looking at what's actually still breathing on your land." Ronan said nothing. But that night, when the ache behind his ribs sharpened into something closer to teeth, he didn't reach for the old grimoires stacked on his desk. He reached for his coat. --- *Miles north, at the edge of a wood that didn't officially belong to the Blackthorn pack — though everyone pretended it did — Lyra felt something shift in the air.* She'd been drying moonflower over the hearth, hands steady, mind somewhere else entirely, when the pull hit her — not pain exactly, more like a string drawn taut somewhere behind her ribs. She dropped the bundle of flowers. Her magic, usually a low and private hum under her skin, rose without permission, restless, *reaching.* "No," she said aloud, to no one. "Absolutely not." She'd spent six years teaching her power to stay quiet. To not announce her. The last time it had reached for something on its own, she'd lost her coven, her name, her home, in that order. Outside, an owl screamed once and went silent. Lyra stood very still in the dark of her cottage, one hand pressed flat over her sternum where the pull kept tugging, insistent, toward the tree line — toward whatever was coming. *Something's out there,* her magic told her, in the only language it had ever really spoken to her in. *Someone.* She reached for the iron poker by the hearth instead of a spell. Whatever this was, she intended to meet it with steel first and magic only if she had no other choice. The wind changed. And under it, faint but unmistakable, she caught the scent of something that wasn't quite man and wasn't quite wolf, moving toward her through the trees.