The Luna's Forgotten Vow

How It All Started

By the time I reached the Pack Clinic that morning, my mind was a chaotic storm. I moved through the white corridors like a zombie, barely registering the nurses greeting me.

Alpha Ryker was my soul. Long before the Moon Goddess revealed he was my mate, I had loved him. My love for him was the sole reason I had refused to go with my human mother when she abandoned the pack years ago. Now, that choice felt like a self-inflicted curse.

As I scrubbed my hands for the morning ward rounds, my mother's third, desperate warning echoed in my chest like an old, infected wound: "Whatever you do, Arya, don't ever fall in love with a werewolf. They are beasts ruled by instinct, duty, and pride. They will break your human heart and never look back."

To understand my despair, you must understand who I am. My name is Arya Grayson. I am twenty-one years old, and I am a half-wolf.

I don't even know the name of my original pack; my father was brutally banished before my birth because he committed the ultimate taboo: marrying a human.

My grandfather claimed a human mate could never produce a true wolf, especially not with the rare, ancient bloodline my father carried. My father was exiled and disgraced.

He moved us to the Golden Lake Pack, where I was eventually born.

When I was five years old, a family conflict forced Ryker's family to leave their pack and seek refuge in the Golden Lake Pack.

Ryker was just eight then; his brother, Aerion, was five, and their mother was heavily pregnant with their younger sister, Isla.

The very day I set my eyes on eight-year-old Ryker, a pure, innocent love took root in my heart. I couldn't explain the instant, magnetic connection, but it was an undeniable gravity. He felt it too.

As we grew, we became inseparable. He was my protector, my mentor, my absolute everything in a pack that looked down on half-breed blood like me.

When I was seven, my father died. Broken-hearted and terrified, my mother packed her bags to return to the human cities.

She begged me to come. But I looked at ten-year-old Ryker standing in the doorframe that night, his young eyes fierce and pleading, and I refused to go with my mother.

I couldn't leave the pack. Losing each other would leave wounds too deep for either of us to heal, and I wasn't ready to carry that kind of pain.

My mother left the Golden Lake Pack alone. From that day on, Ryker and I raised each other as best friends.

Then came my eighteenth birthday.

The pack still viewed us as outsiders, so Ryker threw a small, secret party for me in the privacy of my small room with a few of our friends.

When the few guests finally left, the atmosphere shifted. The air became charged with years of unspoken longing.

One gentle touch led to another, and we crossed the line. We became mates that night like two hungry wolves who had been starved for years. It was his first time taking a she-wolf, and it was my first time giving myself to anyone.

It was the most beautiful, transcendent experience of my life. Lying in his arms all night, I felt that sacrificing my mother's love to stay in the pack with him was entirely worth it.

The very next morning, we woke to the shocking news that the Alpha was dead. His heart had been ripped from his chest. That same day, I discovered that Ryker was my fated mate. He had known all along but never told me.

With the Alpha's death throwing the entire pack into mourning, we never had the chance to talk that day. I kept hoping we would after the funeral, but he never came close to me again.

He stopped playing with me. He began avoiding me like a plague. I tried for months to bridge the sudden chasm between us, but he treated me like a stranger. He never spoke of the night we shared, burying it as if it were a shameful mistake.

A year after the death of the Alpha, the Luna and the pack council appointed Ryker as the new Alpha. The late Alpha had a daughter who was only sixteen at that time and unable to challenge for leadership.

When Ryker took power, the late Alpha's daughter appointed me as the medical director of the pack clinic, which automatically made me the Alpha's personal doctor.

I was supposed to check his health every single morning. At first, my heart soared. I saw it as a divine second chance, an opportunity to force him to look at me, to finally demand answers.

Instead, it became a two-year torture sentence. For two long years, during every morning check-up, he never spoke more than four words to me: "Thank you, Doctor Arya."

The only reason I clung to a shred of hope was his absolute fidelity to the ghost of our bond. I never saw him with another she-wolf. Several times over the years, when he entered his rut, his powerful, agonizing pheromones would catch the wind and torment my wolf from afar.

Yet, he always locked himself away. He never touched anyone. He never invited me to his chamber for mating.

I also noticed that despite rising from an outcast to an Alpha, he was profoundly unhappy. A deep, dark melancholy hung over him.

But today, Malia was in his bed. The fragile hope I had harbored for three years dissolved into ash.

As I walked down the clinic corridor toward my private office after the ward round, my head throbbed violently.

Outside, the sky suddenly darkened, and heavy rain poured from the heavens, matching the sorrow in my heart.

I threw open my office door, desperate to lock myself inside and finally let the tears fall. I halted in my tracks. A violent shudder ripped through my body.

Alpha Ryker was there. He was sitting in my leather office chair, completely relaxed, his long legs crossed at the ankle.

He wore nothing but dark athletic shorts. Even in such simple clothing, the commanding presence of an Alpha surrounded him. Our eyes locked, and I could feel my blood rushing through my veins.

Ryker was still in his rut, and the rich scent of his pheromones filled my office. The cold outside only made the office feel cozier and more intimate.

“Did he come to tell me the truth about what Malia was talking about, or did he come to explain why he stopped being my best friend after our first mating?” I asked myself.

His face gave nothing away, so I couldn't tell which one he had come for. All I knew was that, after three painful years of never coming to me, he was finally here, sitting in my office.