Darken Moon University

The truth: Aelira

I woke to the sensation of being cocooned in warmth. Heavy blankets were piled high over us, trapping the heat of Kaiden’s body against mine. For a few blissful moments, I floated in that haze between sleep and wakefulness, my mind blissfully blank. The burning ache that had consumed me was gone, reduced to a faint, manageable hum that I could easily ignore.

But as consciousness fully returned, the memories of what we’d done—and what I’d revealed—crashed down on me. I stiffened in his arms, my heart rate spiking.

Kaiden must have felt the change because he tightened his hold around my waist, burying his face in my hair. "You're awake," he rumbled, his voice sleep-rough and low. "How do you feel?"

"Better," I whispered, the truth of it settling in my bones. The fire was banked, leaving me feeling weak but clear-headed. "I don't feel like I'm burning alive anymore."

"Good," he said, pressing a kiss to the top of my head. "Rest, then. You need it."

I lay there for a moment longer, listening to the steady thrum of his heartbeat against my back. It should have been comforting, but the quiet allowed the demons from my past to creep in. I’d barely survived the last few days, but I’d survived years of hell before that. If I was going to survive this bond—if I was going to be his mate—he needed to know what he was really getting himself into. He needed to know why my trust was so fractured, why I was so broken.

"My father wasn't just a Beta," I started, my voice sounding small in the quiet room. "He was a sadist who used his rank as a shield for his cruelty."

I felt Kaiden go still behind me, the arm around my waist becoming a protective band of steel. He didn't interrupt, just waited for me to get the words out.

"Our pack... it was traditional. Old school. The Alpha ruled, and the Beta enforced. My father took that enforcement to the extreme. If a wolf stepped out of line, even slightly, he broke them. He liked the sound of bones snapping." I swallowed hard, staring at the wall where a sliver of light seeped through the curtains. "But he saved his worst for inside our home."

The silence stretched, heavy and suffocating, but Kaiden didn't pull away. If anything, his hold on me tightened, his chin resting on my shoulder as he silently urged me to continue.

"My mother was his favorite target," I whispered, the memories tasting like ash in my mouth. "She was gentle, too soft for our pack’s brutal ways. He hated her for it. He saw her weakness as a personal insult to his authority." I took a shuddering breath. "I learned early on that making a sound only made it worse for her. So I stayed quiet. I took the hits meant for her when I could, hid the bruises, then they would heal but..."

My voice cracked, and I had to stop to regain control. Kaiden’s hand began to rub slow, soothing circles against my arm, a silent anchor in the storm of my past.

"She died when I was fourteen," I whispered, the words scraping against my throat like broken glass. "And her death made it so much worse, because I have her eyes."

I could feel Kaiden shift slightly behind me, his breath hitching as he processed the weight of that statement. He knew what I looked like; he had stared into my face enough times. He knew about the mismatched gaze—the one deep, soulful blue and the other striking, unnatural silver. He knew they were rare, a strange quirk of genetics, but he hadn't known they were a mirror of the woman my father had loved to destroy.

"Whenever he looked at me after the funeral," I continued, staring into the darkness of the room, "he didn't see his daughter. He saw her ghost. He saw the eyes of the woman he'd driven into an early grave. And he hated me for it."

"He didn't hit me as much after she died," I confessed, my voice hollow. "Physical bruises were too easy to explain to the pack. He switched to other ways to break me. He’d make me stand in the center of the clearing for hours in the dead of winter, shifted and shivering, just because he could. Or he’d starve me for days, claiming I needed to learn 'discipline.'"

Kaiden’s muscles were rock hard against my back, a silent testament to the rage simmering just beneath the surface. But he didn't speak, and for that, I was grateful. I didn't need comfort; I needed to purge the poison.

"But the worst part was the Alpha," I said, the bitterness rising like bile. "Alpha Elias. He knew. He had to have known. He could smell the fresh bruises, the fear rolling off me whenever my father entered the room. But he did nothing."

"He turned a blind eye because my father was efficient," I continued, my voice gaining strength as the anger pushed past the shame. "A pack run by fear is obedient, and Elias valued obedience above all else. As long as the hierarchy was maintained and the taxes were collected, he didn't care what happened behind closed doors."

I felt Kaiden press his forehead against my shoulder blade, a ragged exhale warming my skin through the thin fabric of the t-shirt he must have put on me at some point while I slept. The realization that he had dressed me, cared for me while I was vulnerable, should have scared me, but instead, it just made the knot in my chest loosen.

"I ran away when I was sixteen," I said, staring at the wall. "I thought if I could just get to the neutral lands, the Council would help me. I was a child. I didn't understand that the Council doesn't care about justice; they care about stability."

"I didn't make it far before my father's trackers caught me," I said, my voice monotone, detached, as if I were reciting a grocery list instead of the destruction of my life. "Dragging me back was the easy part. The punishment... that was designed to make sure I never tried again."

Kaiden’s hand stilled on my arm, his grip tightening just enough to reassure me he was there.

"My father didn't just want to punish me; he wanted to erase the insult I represented. He went to Alpha Elias and demanded I be stripped of my rank, treated as an Omega. He wanted to see me grovel." I let out a bitter, dry laugh. "But Elias refused. Not out of the goodness of his heart, but because a 'defective' wolf like me—with the mismatched eyes and the rebellious streak—would lower the pack's value if I were kept within the ranks."

"So he sold me," I whispered, the final piece of the ugly puzzle falling into place. "He sold me to the Tennessee pack to wash his hands of the problem. They auctioned me off as 'damaged goods' to the highest bidder. A trading chip to settle a territorial dispute."

I fell silent, the air in the room feeling heavy and stale. I had just laid the ugliest parts of my soul bare, showing him the scars that ran deeper than skin. I waited for the pity, or worse, the revulsion. I was the daughter of a torturer and the victim of a system that saw me as property. I was broken goods.