MATED TO THE MAFIA ALPHA

The moon is full tonight, shinning brightly over Mooncrest territory, and I have never wanted to disappear more than I do right now. I stand at the edge of the circle, barefoot in the grass the way tradition demands, while the entire Mooncrest pack watches me with the kind of anticipation reserved for fireworks, aurora borealis or even first kisses. My father stands near the front with Regina's hand looped through his arm, and even from here I can see the tight, proud smile she's wearing, unlike the other fake ones she plasters on her face anytime she pretends to be kind to me, this is the unique one she wears when she thinks she's about to win something. I don't know yet what she’s about to take or has already taken from me. "Sarah Whitmore." Elder Thomas's voice booms across the clearing, and my stomach drops straight through the earth. "Step forward and greet your wolf." I've imagined this night since I was seven years old, watching my older cousins fall to their knees in the same clearing and rise up gasping, eyes flashing gold, more themselves than they'd ever been and the change of aura that comes with it. I used to lie awake wondering what mine would feel like. Fire, everyone says, fire under your skin, and then a surge of power scattering into million pieces like fireworks all over your body. I walk to the center of the circle. The grass is cool and damp beneath my feet. I close my eyes the way Elder Thomas taught us in preparation, and I reach inward, searching for the place where my wolf is supposed to be curled and waiting, ready to answer when I call her name. There's nothing there. Not silence. Not sleep. Nothing, an emptiness so real it feels like searching for cloth inside an empty wardrobe. "Concentrate," Elder Thomas says, gentler now, and I can hear the way the crowd's murmur shifts, the way a held breath starts to sound less like anticipation and more like doubt. I try again. I dig so deep into myself I can feel my own pulse in my teeth. I picture the wolf my mother used to describe before she died quick and clever, she used to say, with your same stubborn eyes and I beg whatever part of me is supposed to answer to please, please wake up. Nothing answers. The moon climbs another inch. Somewhere behind me, someone laughs just one person, just a short ugly bark of a sound, but it's enough. It is enough to spread through the crowd like wildfire. I open my eyes and the crowd is full of faces I've known my whole life, looking at me like I'm something they've never seen before, something disgusting and evil, probably an abomination. "Maybe she's broken," someone whispers, but it was loud enough for me to hear. "Cursed," someone else says, and the word settles into my chest like a stone dropped in still water, rippling outward until it touches everyone. I find Vanessa in the crowd. My stepsister isn't laughing, she's worse than laughing, she's watching me with an expression of pure, undisguised satisfaction, like she's been waiting her whole life for this exact moment and it has finally, finally arrived. Beside her, Regina's smile has gone soft and sympathetic, the perfect mask, and something about the specific shape of her satisfaction makes my skin crawl even though I can't say why My father won't meet my eyes at all, like I’m something he can’t be less ashamed of bringing into the world. "It happens," Elder Thomas says, too loudly, too kindly, the way you'd talk to a child who's just fallen off a bike in front of everyone. "Sometimes the wolf is late. Sometimes" But everyone in this place knows that isn't true. A wolf either wakes at your coming-of-age ceremony or it doesn't wake at all. Late is a story we tell each other so nobody has to say the real word out loud. Wolfless. I don't remember deciding to run. One moment I'm standing in the center of the circle with three hundred pairs of eyes on me, and the next I'm pushing through the crowd with my vision blurred and hot, murmurs chasing me like something with teeth. Someone reaches out, Elder Thomas, maybe, or one of my aunts but I twist away from the hand before it can land, and then I'm past the last row of pack members and into the tree line, running. The party lights fade behind me. The laughter fades slower. I run until the ceremonial grounds are just a wash of gold light through the trees, until my lungs burn and my bare feet are raw against roots and stone, and only then do I stop, slamming myself against an old oak and sliding down to seat at its bench-like roots, sobbing in a way I haven't let myself sob since my mother's funeral. Eighteen years old and wolfless. In a pack like Mooncrest, that isn't just an embarrassment. It's a sentence to eternal misery and a life of mockery. I'll spend the rest of my life being the girl who couldn't, the cautionary tale mothers use to frighten their pups into behaving, the name people say when they want to describe something broken beyond fixing. I press the heel of my hand against my mouth to muffle the sound of my own crying, and that's when I hear it a voice, low and careful, coming from somewhere in the dark behind me. Not one of the search party I expect any minute. Not anyone I recognize at all. "She was never supposed to awaken tonight." I go still. Every hair on my arms lifts at once. I turn, heart pounding, but there's nothing behind me except trees and shadow and the distant gold glow of a ceremony I'll never be forgiven for ruining. There's no one there. But I heard it. I know I heard it. And underneath the fear, something colder and sharper is already taking root a single, terrifying question I can't seem to shake loose. What if it wasn't supposed to awaken at all because someone made sure it couldn't