CLAIMED BY THE FIVE ALPHAS'

The clock on my apartment wall struck midnight just as the pain began. I had been sitting on my worn couch with a*****e bought cupcake, a single candle flickering in the darkness. I am twenty one years old today. No family to celebrate with, no friends who remembered, just me and my sad little cupcake. I made a wish anyway, something about finally feeling like I belonged somewhere, and blew out the flame. That's when my body caught fire. Not real fire, but it felt real enough. Heat erupted from somewhere deep in my chest, spreading through my veins like liquid lightning. I gasped and dropped the cupcake, clutching at my heart as the burning intensified. My skin began to glow with a pale silver light that grew brighter with each racing heartbeat. "What's happening to me?" I whispered to the empty room. The light exploded outward from my body like a bomb going off. Every window in my apartment shattered at once, glass spraying outward into the night. The walls shook. Pictures fell from their hooks. My lamp burst, plunging everything into darkness except for the glow coming from my own skin. I tried to scream but no sound came out. The burning wasn't painful anymore. It felt like coming home after a lifetime of being lost. Like finding water after wandering through a desert. My grandmother's last words echoed in my dying mind. Your twenty-first birthday will change everything, Aria. Everything. She had been right. The world tilted sideways and I fell, my head hitting the floor hard enough to make stars dance across my vision. The silver light pulsed one more time, so bright I could see it through my closed eyelids, and then everything went black. I don't know how long I was out. Could have been minutes or hours. When consciousness returned, I became aware of voices arguing somewhere above me. "She's mine. I arrived first." The voice was cold, sharp as broken ice. "You arrived first because you cheated, Frost. We all felt the call at the same time." This voice carried warmth, like honey poured over gravel. "Enough, both of you. Can't you see she's waking up?" I forced my eyes open and immediately wished I hadn't. Five men stood in my destroyed apartment, all of them staring down at me with expressions ranging from concern to hunger to barely contained rage. Five impossibly beautiful men who had no business being in my home. I scrambled backward across the floor, my back hitting the couch. "Who are you? How did you get in here?" The closest one, a tall man with silver eyes and jet black hair, crouched down to my level. He moved with the grace of a predator, controlled and precise. "My name is Kieran Frost. We're here because of what you are, Aria Vale." "How do you know my name?" My heart hammered against my ribs. "I'm calling the police." I reached for my phone but another man, this one with golden skin and warm brown eyes, was suddenly holding it. I hadn't even seen him move. "No police, beautiful. They can't help you with this. Besides, you broke every window on this floor when your power awakened. They're already on their way." "My power?" I looked around at the five strangers, my mind racing. "I don't have any power. I'm nobody. I'm just a botanist who studies plants." "You're the Lunar Catalyst," said a third man, built like a mountain with stone gray eyes and shoulders that barely fit through doorways. His voice rumbled like an earthquake. "The one we've been waiting for." A fourth man laughed, the sound bitter and sharp. He stood in the shadows near my bedroom door, all lean muscle and dangerous energy. Dark hair fell across scarred features, and his eyes gleamed with something wild. "She doesn't even know what she is. This is going to be fun." "Shut up, Raven," snapped the first man, Kieran. The fifth man hadn't spoken yet. He leaned against my kitchen counter, arms crossed over a broad chest. Dark red hair caught the dim light from outside, and when his eyes met mine, I saw pain there. Old pain, deep as an ocean. "We're not here to hurt you," he said quietly. "We're here because we have to be. Because you called to us." "I didn't call anyone." I pushed myself up to standing, my legs shaking. The movement brought me closer to Kieran, and something strange happened. A warmth bloomed in my chest, spreading outward like ripples on water. His eyes widened slightly, telling me he felt it too. "The bond," he murmured. "It's already starting." "What bond? What are you talking about?" I backed away from all of them, my mind screaming that this was insane. "Get out of my apartment. All of you. Now." The golden skinned man, the charming one, smiled sadly. "We can't do that, sweetheart. Where you go, we go. It's the law of our kind." "Your kind?" I was shaking now, fear and confusion warring inside me. "What are you?" "Werewolves," said the man against my counter, the one with the pain in his eyes. "We're werewolves, Aria. And so are you."