The Last Moonborn Wolf

What am I Feeling

Harper’s POV

For a moment after he speaks, I think I must have misheard him because words like that do not belong in my world and certainly not to someone like me, but the silence that follows makes it clear that everyone else heard him too, and the way the entire courtyard looks toward me makes my chest tighten.

“She is the reason I came.”

What does he want from me? Does he want to kill me because I am a useless human? The words do not make sense in my head because there is no reason for someone as powerful as him to look for me and kill me, and yet King Mason Whitlock is still looking at me like I am the only thing in this entire place that matters.

Why? What have I done to him? I am not afraid of Alpha Carter. He cannot hurt me any more than he already did when he rejected me.

Alpha Carter lets out a sharp laugh as if he can force reality back into place by denying it.

“That is impossible,” he says quickly, his voice louder than before, as if he is trying to hide his fear with loudness. “She is nothing, just a defect, a wolfless mistake that has no value to anyone.”

The word mistake hits harder than it should because I have heard every version of it my entire existence since I turned eighteen, and still something inside me reacts every time.

King Mason does not even turn to him properly. His attention stays on me, steady and unbroken, like everything Alpha Carter is saying does not register in his mind.

“You speak too much for someone who understands nothing, who does not understand what he has done and what powerful enemy he made,” the King says calmly. He does not shout, yet his voice fills this place. His voice is full of authority, and it makes me shiver.

What does he want with me?

The silence that follows feels heavier than anything I have ever experienced, because even the pack that has hurt me since my eighteenth birthday seems to understand that something is not right and that their Alpha has pissed off the King.

I should look away from him because that is what I have always done when someone powerful looks at me, but I cannot. Something inside tells me he is a part of me somehow. It is not like with Alpha Carter when I knew straight away he was my mate. It hits me little by little. First the scent. He smells like sandalwood and rain after a thunderstorm.

Can it be? Can the Moon Goddess be so cruel as to give me a powerful mate again? Someone who will reject me because I have no wolf?

No, it is my imagination. How can I have a mate if I have no wolf? Yet Michael was my mate. I knew it back when I still thought my wolf was just shy and hiding.

The King is looking at me curiously, as if he is studying me and seeing something inside me that no one else ever noticed. It feels like he is sensing something inside me. Something that has been silent for a long time is speaking to me again. Something that wants to come forward but feels restrained, almost bound by chains that cannot be broken.

Alpha Carter steps forward again, trying to reclaim control over the situation, but there is something desperate in the way he does it now, like he already knows he is losing.

“She has no wolf,” he says again, forcing certainty into his voice. “She is useless, she contributes nothing, she is only...”

King Mason moves, and then Alpha Carter is suddenly on his knees without me fully understanding how it happened. The King is fast.

The courtyard reacts instantly, and everyone gasps, but no one moves forward to help him, not even his warriors, because whatever just happened is something they understand better than I do. The King has pure and absolute power.

King Mason does not look down at Alpha Carter for long, and when he speaks, his voice is quieter than before, which somehow makes it more dangerous. “She is coming with me.”

My heart stops at the words because I realize he is not asking, and he is demanding that I go with him. I do not understand why. If he wanted to kill me, he would do it right here and now. I feel like I am being chosen, but his face says something else, as if he is not happy.

Alpha Carter coughs as he forces himself to speak again, his pride clinging to him even as everything else is falling apart.

“She is nothing. She is a burden, King Mason. What do you want with her?” He says, as if his words mean anything to the King of the North.

King Mason finally turns his head slightly, and for the first time, his gaze moves fully away from me and toward Michael, and I see his eyes grow darker, his expression more ominous.

He smiles a wicked smile and says simply. “You are wrong,”

Then his eyes return to me again, and it feels like everything in my body tightens under that look, like I am standing too close to a fire and I know it is going to burn me, but I cannot help being pulled to it like a moth to a candle.

“I already told you she is NOT nothing.” He says dangerously low. It almost sounds like his wolf is speaking and not him.

He takes one step forward, and suddenly I am aware of every part of my body, every bruise, every wound, every breath I am trying to control, because I have never been looked at like this before, not once in my entire life.

“Stand up.”

It is not loud, but I know better than to refuse, and my body reacts before my mind can even question it as I push myself up on shaking legs that barely hold me. I hate that I listen. I hate that my body responds to him more easily than it ever responded to my own survival instincts.

His eyes move over me again, slower now, like he is confirming something only he can see, and the silence between us feels heavy.

Then he speaks again, almost like the words are meant only for himself. “It is worse than I thought. Who did this to you?”

I know instinctively that he is not talking about the bruises and the blood. He knows who did it. I do not understand what he means, but I feel like something is pulling inside me. Something that wants to be let out but cannot.

He turns slightly toward his soldiers, then he commands them. “Take her.”

“You cannot take her... She belongs to me... my pack,” Alpha Carter stumbles.

“She never belonged to you,” King Mason says.

“King, do you and your men not want to stay for the night? I can prepare a room for you,” Luna Carter says flirtatiously.

“Who gave you the right to speak to me in that manner? We are leaving, and you can consider yourselves happy to be alive.” King Mason says.

I move automatically as if something is pulling me along with him. Away from this pack, this life I used to live. Something is pulling me to King Mason Whitlock. I do not know whether I should embrace this pull towards him or fear it.