Was I Ever Yours?

Chapter ONE: The Hunter and it's Werewolf Mate Bombs were still falling when I found him. Evan. Face-down in the dirt, bleeding out. No. No, no, no— "Evan!" I dropped to my knees beside him, hands already pressing into the wound splitting open his stomach. The blood was warm. Too warm. Too much. My claws scraped against his shirt and I yanked them back — terrified of making it worse — before pressing my bare palms down hard. "Stay with me." My voice cracked. "Please. Stay with me." He'd come looking for me. In the middle of an aerial attack, with bombs tearing the treeline apart, he'd run into the forest screaming my name. Because of me. He was dying because of me. "Raiya—" "I'm here." I leaned over him, blocking the smoke-filled sky. "I've got you. Just — don't you dare close your eyes, Evan, I swear to the moon—" My ears twitch, picking up on two sets of rapid footsteps coming right at us. I start to panic debating if I should try to throw his body over my shoulder or just try to cover us with leaves and hide low in the bushes, before a familiar scent reaches me. It’s cedarwood and moss, Mimi — Evan’s sister and Her. “What happened?!” The voice exclaims. The older woman crouches down and I can clearly see Evan’s mother, The Grand Huntress, leader of the Hunter Clan look panicked as she assesses her son’s wound. “I don’t know,” I reply “I found him like this, please you have to help him” “I knew coexisting with wolves would only bring trouble,” The Huntress yells at me, kneeling behind her son’s head, “Your kind have always been monsters.” The growl that ripped out of me wasn't voluntary."Your clan," I snarled, "your hunters declared this war—" “Enough, mother. I brought a healing elixir,” Mimi states, taking a small vial of a radioactive green color from her satchel. She uncaps it and pours it into her brother's mouth. Silence. The three of us held our breath. Then — a sharp inhale. Evan's chest rose. The bleeding slowed. Mimi let out a breath, "It's working." His eyes dragged open. Heavy. Unfocused. He tried to say something, and it came out in broken syllables, each one costing him. "...O…kay?" "You're okay," his mother said softly. And for one unguarded second she sounded like a mother — not a Huntress, just a woman terrified of losing her child. "You were shot. But you're healing." Evan shook his head. Weakly. Desperately. "Not… me." His grey eyes dragged around, searching. Frantic. "Raiya?" Everything in my chest seized. He was bleeding out in a war zone, and he was asking about me. His mother's gaze snapped like a whip. The silence stretched one second too long, and I watched Evan's breathing change — faster, shallower, panic overtaking pain — "Raiya — have to find — she was in the—" "Calm him down," Mimi hissed at me over his thrashing. I moved without thinking." I pressed both hands to his face, thumbs finding his jaw. He was still fighting me, still trying to sit up, until my palms hit his skin. He stilled. Like my touch was all he needed. "Evan. I'm right here." Nothing. I brushed the platinum hair back from his forehead, leaned down until I was all he could see. "I'm right here. I'm safe. Look at me." His grey eyes found mine. Blue meets grey, like sky and storm. The panic drained out of him. "You're not hurt?" His voice was raw. "You i***t," I breathed, half-laughing, half-crying, "worry about yourself. You're the one bleeding all over the forest floor." The corner of his mouth curved even now. "You know me," he rasped, "I've always liked being the centre of attention." "Oh, I have so many things to say to you when you're not dying—" He coughed. Then again. Then the coughing wouldn't stop, and the wound ripped open, and blood coated his lips, and the warmth in his eyes drained. "What's happening?!" I lurched forward. Mimi was already tearing through her satchel. "The elixir is failing." Her voice was shattered glass held together by sheer will. "His injuries are too severe — I have one more—" She uncapped the second vial. Poured it. We waited. His chest didn't rise. "It's not working—" "Give it a minute—" "He doesn't have a minute!" “Let’s take him back to my tribe,” I say, “We have better healing magic than you.” “He won’t make it,” The Huntress says in a low voice. “Then what do you suggest we do?!” I yell back at her. “He needs to heal,” The huntress says, scarily calm, her eyes forming a plan. “He can’t just heal, we don’t have that power,” Mimi says back. “We don’t,” The Huntress says to Mimi before she turns her steely, cold eyes to me,“ but they do,” I look at her, confused. “You need to bite him,” Mimi gasps. "He won't turn," the Huntress said, before I could speak. "It's not a full moon. It won't make him one of you. It will only—" "Bond us." The word fell out of my mouth like a stone. "You know what that means?" "I know." "She could die," Mimi said sharply, staring at her mother. "The bonding illness — wolves who bond outside their—" "I know the risks." "My kind stopped doing this," I said, my voice dropping low and dangerous. "We stopped because it was killing us. Bonds don't survive without maintenance. Without—" I swallowed. "If the bond breaks, it doesn't just hurt. It hollows you out. He would spend the rest of his life with a piece of his soul missing. Empty. And I—" My throat closed. "I could die." "If you don't do this," The Huntress said, "he won't have a life to worry about." "He will hate me." The words tore out of me before I could stop them. Tears hit. Real ones. I blinked hard. "He's always said — his biggest fear — losing himself, losing his humanity—" "Yes." Her voice didn't soften. But her eyes did. Just barely. "But he will be alive." Evan's breathing had gone to whispers. Little gasps, wet and shallow. His hand slipped out of mine and landed in the dirt with a sound that broke something open in my chest. His heartbeat slowed. "Raiya." The Huntress's voice was the quietest I'd ever heard it. It was pleading. The ice cracked, just enough. "A mother should never have to bury her child." His heartbeat stops I lean down and bite him. The pain hit like a white-hot blade between my ribs. I doubled forward, gasping, hands clawing at my own stomach — then caught myself. It's not mine. The agony was too big, too jagged, shaped wrong for my body. It was his pain. Then something else rose up beneath it. Warmth. Bone-deep. Ancient. And a word, not heard, not spoken, felt. Carved into the space behind my ribs where my heart lives. MINE It wasn't a thought. It wasn't a feeling. It was a claim — absolute — wrapping around my heart like a fist closing. The wolf in me recognized him before my mind did. Like he'd always had a shape and I'd always had a space for it, and some stupid, primal part of me had known that from the second I'd ever looked at those impossible grey eyes. My mate. Evan Greyhurst. Son of the Grand Huntress and Hunter. My enemy, my rival, the boy who had spent the last few years making my life, the daughter of the Alpha Chief, miserable. My mate. I pressed my hands to the ground to keep from falling over. He was already changing. The colour flooded back into his face, the wound sealing shut, his body pulling itself back together with a speed that made Mimi step back in awe. He sat up like a man waking from a long sleep, blinking, confused, his big frame swaying slightly before steadying. His hand rose to his neck and came away with a single drop of blood. He looked at it. He looked at me. "What did you do?" Four words. And I felt them land through the bond before they hit my ears, a flood of cold, dark emotion pouring through the new thread between us. Betrayal. Horror. And hatred. The rejection hit harder than anything I had ever felt. My mate looked at me like I was the monster they'd always said I was. And somewhere in my chest, still warm and raw and new, something cracked right down the middle.