BOUND BY BLOOD AND THE MOON

THE NIGHT MY PACK DIED

The fire smelled like fur burning.

Not wood. Not pine sap. Not the clean ash of a campfire. Fur. Blood boiling off stone. Wet earth turning to steam. Her pack burned alive while she slept.

Elira Voss woke to screaming.

Old Maren was screaming her name through the thin walls of her cottage, banging on the door so hard the wood shook. "Elira! Elira, get up! They set the east line!"

The sky outside her small window was orange. Not sunset orange. Fire orange. The kind that eats.

The Larkspur pack - three hundred acres of pine she had known since birth, where she learned to shift, where her mother taught her to track deer - was on fire. Flames licked up the trunks, jumping from tree to tree like wolves themselves. She could hear howls. Not battle howls. Death howls.

"Ma?" she screamed, throwing on her clothes, not even tying her boots. "Joren? Where are you?"

No answer. Only Maren, grabbing her arm, face black with soot.

"They came from the north! No warning! Alpha is dead! Elira, you have to run!"

"I'm not leaving them!"

"You will die if you don't! Go! Go to the river!"

She ran.

She didn't think. Her wolf took over halfway to the tree line, clothes tearing as she shifted, paws tearing through smoke and ash, eyes streaming, throat raw from breathing fire. She didn't know who attacked. Rogues? Another pack? She didn't know if her mother made it out of the Alpha house. Her little brother Joren was only twelve. He couldn't shift fully yet.

All she knew was the border stones ahead, half-buried in moss.

DO NOT CROSS.

Every pup in Larkspur knew that warning since they could walk. Beyond those stones was Ashworth land. Kade Ashworth's land.

The Alpha who rejected three mates because he found them weak.

The Alpha who took his father's title at twenty-three and buried him in snow the same night, no funeral.

Ruthless. Unbending. A wolf who had locked his wolf down so tight he barely shifted anymore. And he hated trespassers more than he hated weakness.

They said his wolves who crossed back were never seen again.

She crossed anyway.

Because burning alive was worse than whatever Kade Ashworth would do to her.

She didn't get far. Ten steps over the line, her paws hit clean, cold earth - Ashworth land was not burning. It was untouched. That told her everything. Whoever attacked Larkspur was careful not to touch Ashworth. Everyone was afraid of him.

A growl stopped her.

Not loud. It didn't need to be. It rolled out of the dark like it had always been there, like the forest itself growled.

She shifted to human without thinking. Less of a threat, maybe he would spare a naked girl over a wolf. Her knees hit the dirt, hands up. She was shaking from the cold and smoke.

He was already human. And that was worse.

Kade Ashworth stepped out of the treeline.

Tall. Broad. Dark henley, sleeves shoved up like she'd interrupted something ordinary, like he'd been chopping wood. Pale gold eyes. Wolf-bright even in skin. Hair black, short. A scar through his left eyebrow.

He looked at her like she was already dead. Like she was a problem he would solve quickly.

"You're on Ashworth land," he said. Quiet. The kind of quiet that made the forest go quiet with it, made birds stop. "Do you know what that means?"

"I didn't mean to - Larkspur is burning -" Her voice broke. She hated that it broke. She was Larkspur Gamma's daughter, she was not supposed to break. "My pack was attacked. I just ran. I didn't check whose land, please, my family is ..."

"Larkspur?" Something flickered in his eyes. Not sympathy. Calculation. "Burned tonight?"

"It's burning RIGHT NOW!" she screamed, and finally tears came, hot and angry. "While you're asking me questions! My mother is in there! My brother is twelve! And you're worried about your border?"

He didn't move. Didn't reach for her. Just watched her cry, jaw tight, fists clenched.

Then the wind changed.

A small shift of air, curling down off the ridge, passing straight between them, carrying her smoke, her sweat, her fear, her wolf.

It hit him.

Elira watched his whole body go still. Absolute stillness, like a predator who just scented blood. His nostrils flared once. Twice. His hands closed into fists so tight his knuckles went white. Gold eyes blew wide, then narrowed into slits.

"No," he whispered. Not to her. To fate. To the Moon Goddess herself. "No. Not tonight. Not her. Not now."

"What? What are you talking about?" She tried to stand, but her legs wouldn't.

He was closer now. He moved without her seeing him move. Close enough she could feel heat coming off him, close enough she could see his chest rising hard, fast.

He looked at her like a man looking at a death sentence he didn't want but couldn't escape.

"Mate," he said, voice shaking with pure, furious rage. "You're my mate."

Elira's blood went cold. The word stole all the air from her burning lungs.

The Alpha who swore he'd never take a mate, who rejected three girls before her, who said mates made Alphas weak - had just scented her.

And from the look in his gold eyes, murderous

and hungry at once, he wanted to kill her for it just as much as he wanted to claim her.