Her Four Alphas

The Nobody

The cabin had no name. That was intentional—no name meant no record, no way for the North Mountain Pack to track who lived three miles from their border, hidden in the tangle of pine and spruce that marked the edge of the no-man's-land between human settlements and wolf territory.

Luna pressed her palm against the frosted window, the glass biting into her skin even through her threadbare mitten. Outside, the first snow of winter was falling in slow, heavy flakes, coating the forest floor in a layer of white that would hide all footprints by morning. Three miles east stood the boundary of North Mountain Pack territory—a line no one crossed, especially not a lone wolf with no family, no pack, no bloodline to speak of. She wasn't even supposed to exist.

Her mother had died giving birth to her. That was all Luna knew. The elders in the nearest village, a cluster of wooden huts twenty miles south, had found her as an infant, wrapped in a blanket made of white wolf fur that smelled of rain and wildflowers, and they'd left her at the edge of the human world with a note pinned to her blanket: *Her name is Luna. May she be lucky.*

She'd been lucky enough to survive. That was about it. The villagers called her a bad omen, whispered that her mother had been a rogue wolf who'd snuck into the human world to die, that Luna carried a curse that killed anyone who got too close. She'd grown up on the outskirts of the village, sleeping in barns, eating scraps, never staying long enough to make friends, because every time she did, the fever would come, and the whispers would get louder.

The fever came every full moon. Always had. The village healers said she was just sickly, a weak pup who somehow survived infancy, that her body couldn't handle the change. But Luna knew better. She felt it underneath her skin—the wrongness, the pressure, something massive and furious trying to break through from inside her chest. Tonight, the full moon hung low and heavy in the sky, its light turning the snow outside a sickly silver, and the fever was worse than it had ever been.

She'd nearly burned through her small firewood stack already, and the sweat soaked through her thin cotton shirt as she stoked the dying flames. Her wolf pressed against her ribs, not yet formed, not yet real, but *hungry*—for the first time, Luna could feel its fur, soft and thick, brushing against her insides, could hear its growl rumbling in her throat, a sound that wasn't human.

"There's a deer in my territory," she muttered to herself, gripping the windowsill until her knuckles turned white. The smell of it was overwhelming—fresh, sweet, blood-warm even through the closed window. "You can smell it, can't you?"

Her wolf answered with a pulse of heat that made her knees buckle, sent her crashing to the cabin floor. The pain in her chest was white-hot, like her ribs were expanding, cracking, trying to make room for the beast inside her.

She'd never shifted. Not once in her twenty-two years. The village children had shifted at twelve. Some earlier. Luna had tried every full moon since she was ten—climbed to the highest peak near the village, stripped off her clothes, screamed at the moon to let her wolf out, but nothing happened. Her wolf stayed buried, dormant, refusing to emerge no matter how many times she'd tried. The villagers had laughed when she told them, said she was a mutant, a half-breed too weak to be a wolf, too strange to be human.

Maybe she wasn't a real wolf at all. Maybe that's why her mother had left her with humans. Maybe her mother had known she was a mistake.

The next morning, she made her mistake.

The fever had broken at dawn, leaving her weak and shaky, her muscles aching like she'd run for miles. The deer's scent still lingered in the air, stronger now, and when she stepped outside, the snow crunched under her boots, cold biting at her nose. The deer had crossed into the no-man's-land between the forest and the pack territory, its hoofprints clear in the fresh snow, leading deeper into the trees.

Luna followed it on foot—stupid, reckless, half-blind with hunger. She should have turned back when the trees grew too dense, when the snow stopped showing human footprints, when the only sounds were the creak of pine branches under the weight of snow and the distant howl of a wolf pack, far too close to be human.

Instead, she kept going.

The forest here was different. No birds sang, no squirrels chattered, the air was thick with the smell of pine and something older, something wild and dangerous. Luna's heart pounded in her chest, her wolf pacing restlessly under her skin, urging her to run, to catch the deer, to feel the wind in her fur for the first time.

The trap was old iron, rusted but functional, half-buried in a drift of snow. One of the pack's hunting snares, maybe decades old, abandoned and forgotten when the pack had moved their hunting grounds north. The jaw clamped around her ankle with a sound like breaking branches, the iron teeth biting through her boot, into her skin, and Luna screamed.

The pain was white-hot, radiating up her leg, making her vision blur. She couldn't free herself—the more she tugged, the deeper the iron dug in, the rust burning where it touched her skin, setting off a fresh wave of fever. Her wolf—*finally*—surfaced, thrashing beneath her flesh, wanting to shift, wanting to tear the trap apart, wanting to *run*.

And then the air changed.

She felt them before she heard them. Four presences, exploding into existence around her like a net of pure power. The forest went silent. Even the wind stopped.

Three sets of footsteps. No—four. Four hearts beating in sync, four wolves circling closer, close enough that she could smell them: pine and blood and something ancient and *impossible*.

*Mine.*

The voice wasn't spoken. It was *felt*, pressed into her mind like a brand, layered and deep, four different tones all saying the same word, all claiming her as their own.

Luna looked up, her breath hitching in her throat.

Four figures emerged from the trees. Four men, all tall, all watching her with eyes that glowed like their wolves were right beneath the surface, waiting to emerge.

The one in front was massive—six-foot-five at least, with close-cropped black hair and scars that traced every inch of his exposed forearms, silver lines that told stories of battles Luna couldn't imagine. His eyes were amber, almost orange, and when he looked at her, something in his expression *shifted*—from cold indifference to something hot and possessive. This was Kael, the Alpha of the North Mountain Pack, she realized, the rumors of his temper and his strength echoing in her mind.

"You've been trespassing," he said. His voice was gravel and granite, deep enough to rattle her ribs. "Do you know what that means?"

"I got caught in a trap," Luna whispered, her voice trembling. The iron burned her ankle, the fever was rising again, and the four men surrounding her made her skin prickle with a fear she'd never felt before—and something else, something she couldn't name, a pull toward each of them that made no sense. "I wasn't—"

"It doesn't matter." Kael stepped closer, crouching down to examine the trap, his finger brushing against her calf, sending a jolt of electricity through her that made her gasp. The other three stayed back, watching, and something in their silence told her they were used to letting Kael speak first, but their eyes never left her face.

To Kael's left was Rylan, lean and quick, a braid of dark hair hanging over his shoulder, a silver bow slung across his back. His eyes were silver, glowing like the moon, and when he looked at her, he tilted his head, like he was trying to place her face. Behind him was Mason, broad-shouldered and bearded, an axe strapped to his hip, his hazel eyes narrowing as he took in her bleeding ankle, the sweat soaking her shirt. The last was Theo, the youngest of the four, his blonde hair messy, a dagger at his belt, his blue eyes sparkling with a curiosity that made Luna's wolf growl low in her throat.

"We can smell you," Rylan said, his voice smooth as silk. "Your wolf. It's... different."

"She hasn't shifted," Theo cut in, stepping forward, ignoring Kael's glare. "I can feel it. She's the one."

Kael stood up, his amber eyes flashing. "We don't know that yet."

"You feel it too," Mason grunted, crossing his arms over his chest. "All of us do. The pull. The *claim*."

Luna's head was spinning. "What are you talking about? I don't belong to anyone. I'm nobody."

That made Kael smile. It was not a kind smile.

"We'll fix that." He reached down, grabbing the iron trap with one hand, his muscles flexing as he pried the jaw open, freeing her ankle. The relief was instantaneous, but the pain flared again as the iron left her skin, and she hissed, leaning forward.

Mason was there in a second, kneeling beside her, tearing a strip of cloth from his flannel shirt to wrap around her bleeding ankle. His touch was gentle, surprising for a man his size, and when he looked up at her, his hazel eyes softened, just a fraction. "Easy, now. You're safe."

"Safe?" Luna laughed, a shaky, hysterical sound. "I'm in the middle of your territory, caught in your trap, surrounded by four alphas who say I belong to them. How is that safe?"

Theo crouched down on her other side, his blue eyes searching hers. "Because we won't let anything hurt you. Not anymore."

The voice in her head—*Mine*—echoed again, louder this time, and her wolf let out a howl, the first sound it had ever made, a thin, high wail that cut through the silence of the forest.

The reaction was instant. All four men went still, their eyes glowing brighter, their wolves answering hers with a chorus of howls that shook the trees, snow falling from the branches in soft clumps.

Kael stepped forward again, his hand reaching out to brush a strand of hair from her face, his touch leaving a trail of fire on her skin. "You're not nobody, Luna. You're ours."

And as the snow fell around them, cold and soft against her burning skin, and her wolf howled again, louder this time, shaking the ground beneath her knees, Luna realized with a jolt of terror and something that felt dangerously like hope—they were right.