The Alpha's Wolfless Breeder

Mitchelle's POV The blood moon was already rising when my mother pressed the seventeenth vial into my hands. I stared at it, dark red and thick. It smelled of crushed moonflower and iron and everything we had already tried. "Mama." I looked up at her. "This is the seventeenth version." "I know." Her voice didn't waver. "Just drink it." "It won't work. They never work. We both know—" "Mitchelle." She cupped my cheeks in both hands the way she had done since I was small, her thumbs pressing gently against my cheekbones. "I know what I know. And I know that the moon goddess does not abandon her children. Not even the ones who seem forgotten." Her eyes held mine. "Drink it. For me." I hesitated for a few seconds before I drank it, only because she was the only person in the entire Moonridge Pack who had never once looked at me like I was something to be managed. My father appeared in the doorway just before I could set the vial down. Alpha Garrison Ashford, dressed in his ceremonial robes, broad and grey-templed and wearing the expression he always wore when he looked at me lately—the one that was love strangled slowly by fear until what remained was something too complicated to name. "The pack is assembling," he said. "I know." "Remember what we discussed. Whatever happens in that circle, you do not break. Not in front of the council. Not in front of Rowan." "And if my wolf doesn't come?" He opened his mouth, and then closed it. "She'll come," he said finally. But he was looking at the wall when he said it. My mother squeezed my shoulders once. "You don't have to be afraid. I will be right there." I believed her. I held onto her words like it was going to be the last time. * * The sacred grove was electric. A thousand wolves gathered under the blood moon, their energy pressing against my skin like heat from a fire. The drumming rose and fell in waves. Torches burned along the tree line casting everything in red and amber. Pack members had traveled from the outer territories to witness this—the Rite of Awakening, the moment the Ashford heir bonded the bloodline to Moonridge's protection wards for another generation. This was the moment I was supposed to shift. Elder Rowan stood with the council on the eastern side of the grove, his hands folded and his eyes already on me. He had been waiting for this night for years. I could see it in the patient way he watched. I stepped into the ritual circle and the drums reached their peak. The pack priest began to chant. The words were old—older than the pack, older than the Ashford name, carved into the mountain long before my bloodline claimed it. Every heir before me had felt their wolf respond to those words like a key turning in a lock. But I felt nothing. I closed my eyes. I asked—not for the first time, not for the hundredth, but with every last piece of me that still believed asking was worth anything. Please. Tonight. Just tonight. Please. The chanting rose. The blood moon burned against my eyelids. The drums hammered toward their final beat— And then they stopped. The silence came down like a wall. I opened my eyes and a thousand faces stared back at me. Their eyes gleamed with confusion at first, then something worse. "She didn't shift," someone whispered. It was a woman near the front. Her voice carried in the silence like a stone dropped in still water. "The heir didn't shift." "She's wolfless—the Alpha's daughter is wolfless—" "Cursed. She's cursed—" "Broken—" I stood in the circle and kept my face exactly where it needed to be, buried to the ground. I was very good at that. Eighteen years of practice. Elder Rowan stepped forward from the council line. He was smiling. Just slightly. Just enough. "Alpha Garrison," he said, his voice carrying easily across the grove. "It appears the moon goddess has made her judgment tonight. We should—" Suddenly, the tree line exploded. They came in from everywhere at once. Masked figures in dark clothing, moving with a precision that was wrong, too smooth, too coordinated, too practiced for anything random. Silver blades caught the torchlight. The smell hit the air half a second later, the smell of wolfsbane, coating every weapon they carried. The pack erupted in a fleeting moment. Warriors shifted mid-stride. Screaming broke from the outer edges of the grove where the first wave struck. The council scattered. My father was shouting orders but his voice was swallowed by the chaos. I was spinning in the ritual circle trying to find her— There. My mother had shifted. Her wolf was silver-white and enormous, the most powerful wolf I had ever seen. And she was already fighting three of them at once near the eastern torches. Her movements were precise and fearless even as the wolfsbane in the air began to slow her. She drove one back, dodged the second, turned to find the third— "Mama!" She heard me. That was the mistake. She turned toward my voice for one half second and the blade found her side. The sound she made tore something open inside me that I don't think ever fully closed again. I ran, wolfless and useless and running anyway because she was still calling my name and I couldn't stand still while she called my name. I reached her as the shift left her, her wolf fading until she was small and human and bleeding in the trampled grass of the sacred grove with silver weapons buried in her side. "No." I dropped to my knees beside her. "No, no, no. Someone help her, someone," "Mitchelle." Her hand found my face. They were cold already. "Listen to me." "I'm going to get help, just hold on—" I tried to assure her. "Listen." Her grip tightened with the last of her strength. "You are not broken. Do you hear me? Whatever they say tonight, whatever anyone ever says, you are not broken. The moon goddess has a plan for you." she breathed raggedly. "Run. Survive. Promise me." "Mama, please," "Promise me, Mitchelle." she pressured. "I promise." The words came out broken. "I promise. I promise." Her hand went slack against my face. The assassins were already gone, melted back into the forest before the pack warriors could regroup. Twelve bodies lay in the sacred grove when the dust settled. One of them wore a Luna's ceremonial gown. I stayed on my knees beside her until my father's guards came to pull me away. I didn't fight them. I didn't cry. My wolf never came. Not for the ritual, nor for the attack... not even for her. For eighteen years I had asked quietly, desperately, with everything I had. I had drunk seventeen versions of the same prayer. I had stood in sacred circles under blood moons and believed, despite everything, that tonight might be different. My mother believed it too. Right up until the moment she turned toward my voice. But something changed in me that night. I stopped asking that night. I began planning.