Howl: I Met My Mate

CHAPTER 4 WHITE MOON

The howling didn't stop.

It rolled through the forest like a wave, pack after pack picking it up. White Moon. Blackstone. Even the distant Silver Fang howls I had never heard before.

Every wolf within fifty miles was howling at the same thing.

Me.

I was on my knees on my bedroom floor, Cade's arms around me, my body shaking so hard my teeth clattered. My skin felt too tight, too hot. Gold light was spilling out from under my skin like cracks in porcelain.

"Elara, breathe!" Cade shouted, but his voice sounded far away. "You have to breathe through it! You have to let her out or it will kill you!"

Let her out.

I didn't know how. Twenty-two years I had waited for a wolf. Prayed for her. Cried for her on full moons when all the other teenagers shifted and I was left human.

And now she was here, and she was furious.

They caged us. They made us weak. They called us wolfless.

Her voice in my head was not sweet. It was ancient and cold and pissed off.

Show them.

My back arched. A scream tore out of my throat that was not human.

The light exploded.

Cade was thrown back against the wall with a snarl, his hand over his eyes.

When the light faded, I wasn't me anymore.

I was on four paws.

I looked down. White fur. Pure, snow white, so white it glowed in the dark room. My paws were huge — bigger than any female wolf I had ever seen. Bigger than most males. My claws were silver.

I turned my head and saw myself in the mirror.

I was a wolf. I was actually a wolf.

But not just a wolf.

My fur was white. My eyes were molten gold. And on my forehead, a crescent moon mark glowed faintly silver.

The White Wolf.

The legend every pup in White Moon was told at bedtime. The first wolf blessed by the Moon Goddess herself. The wolf that only appears when the packs are about to fall.

It was extinct. It had been extinct for two hundred years.

Until now.

Holy s**t, I thought.

Holy s**t indeed, my wolf answered, and she sounded smug. I told you we were not wolfless. We were dormant.

Dormant Luna.

The name from the book cover suddenly made sense.

The door burst open again. My father ran in, half-shifted, claws out, followed by Thomas and three guards. They stopped dead when they saw me.

My father's face went white.

"No," he whispered. "It can't be. Edwarda? Edwarda, is that you?"

Edwarda was my mother. She had died giving birth to me. And she, the stories said, had also been... different.

Cade pushed himself up from the floor, blood trickling from his nose where my power had hit him. His eyes were locked on me, wild, reverent, terrified.

"Elara?" he breathed.

I bared my teeth at him. My teeth were very, very sharp.

Before anyone could move, another scent hit the air — sweet, sharp panic.

Selene appeared in the doorway, her hand on her chest. Her face was twisted.

She looked at me — at the white wolf standing where the weak, wolfless girl had been — and she did what cruel girls do when they are scared.

She attacked.

"Rogue! It's a Rogue White Wolf! Alpha, it killed her! It killed Elara!"

She lunged, her own wolf bursting out of her skin mid-air. A sleek, beautiful silver wolf with black tips — an Alpha's fated mate's wolf, fast and vicious.

She went for my throat.

Cade roared, "SELENE NO!"

But he was too slow.

I was faster.

I had never fought in my life. I had never even shifted. But my wolf knew.

She sidestepped, impossibly fast, and slammed her massive white head into Selene's side. The silver wolf yelped and crashed into the dresser, shattering it.

I stood over her, my huge white paws on either side of her head, my jaws inches from her throat. One bite. One bite and the woman who murdered me in my last life would be dead in this one.

Selene whimpered, shifting back to human, naked and shaking under me. "Please... please..."

I could feel everyone staring. My father. Thomas. Cade.

Kill her, my wolf growled. She killed us before. She will again.

My human heart, even after everything, hesitated.

That hesitation cost me.

"ENOUGH!"

Cade's Alpha command ripped through the room like a physical force. Every wolf except me dropped to their knees, heads bowed. Even my father.

But I didn't bow. White Wolves don't bow to Alphas.

I slowly turned my massive head to look at him.

He was standing, his own wolf fighting to get out, his eyes pure gold, his chest heaving. He looked at me like he had never seen me before. Like he was seeing a goddess and his mate at the same time.

"Elara," he said, his voice shaking with Alpha power and something else. Something raw. "Shift back. Please. You are hurting. First shifts—"

I snarled at him, low and long.

I didn't want to shift back. I wanted to run. I wanted to run into the forest and never come back to this house where I was sold and this man who bought me.

So I did.

I leapt.

Straight through my bedroom window.

Glass shattered everywhere. The cold night air hit my white fur.

I hit the ground two stories down on all fours and didn't even stumble. Behind me, I heard Cade roar my name, so loud the trees shook.

"ELARA!"

But I was already gone, a flash of white moonlight disappearing into the dark woods.

For the first time in two lives, I was free.

And I was not alone.

Run, little Luna, my wolf laughed inside me as we ran faster than the wind. Let him chase. Let him learn what it feels like to be the one left behind.

Behind us, a huge black wolf burst out of the packhouse — Cade — howling for us to stop.

I didn't stop.

This time, he would be the one who had to beg.