The Monster and the Mate
1283 Words
Lizzy’s POV
The bond snapped tight.
Not gently. Not sweetly.
This wasn’t the soft pull from the stories. This was a collision. A cord made of heat and storm, anchoring me to him so hard I nearly hit the ground.
“Mate.”
The word ripped out of me, raw and involuntary.
Gasps broke like thunder across the courtyard.
Time stopped.
Then—
Light.
White-hot and blinding, pouring from my eyes like fire turned gold. The air rippled with it. I could feel everyone freeze—pack members, guards, Elders, even the Alphas.
And from deep within me, something stirred.
No. Not stirred.
Rose.
Nyra didn’t creep forward like a whisper.
She erupted.
Her voice filled me like a battle cry echoing through every inch of who I was.
“Yes,” she growled. “He is ours.”
My knees buckled—but I didn’t fall.
Nyra held me up, our power surging like a second heart. I felt her claws in my veins. Her breath in my lungs. Her strength in my spine.
We weren’t separate anymore.
Not human and wolf.
One.
Together.
Unleashed.
I opened my eyes fully—and the world changed.
Wolves dropped.
All of them.
Alphas. Betas. Elders. Every rank between. Heads bowed. Necks bared.
Even my father—Alpha Marcus Gray—fell to his knees, the weight of my aura slamming him to the earth.
The man who spent my life dismissing me. Denying me. Breaking me—was face down in the dirt, trembling.
Because of me.
Because of Nyra.
Because of us.
And he—
The one standing in the mist like a nightmare dressed in skin—still hadn’t said a word.
The Lycān.
My mate.
He walked toward me slowly, deliberately. Every step he took tightened the air. No sound. No breath. Just power rolling off him like thunder.
He didn’t glow. He didn’t shift.
He didn’t need to.
He was darkness incarnate.
When he reached me, he didn’t touch me. He stood a breath away, staring down with eyes that glowed like twin moons on fire.
“Say it again,” he said.
His voice wasn’t loud.
But it shook everything inside me.
“Mate,” I whispered.
Nyra howled in my blood.
The bond snapped again—hotter, deeper, more final.
I was his.
And he was mine.
A voice tried to rise through the silence.
High-pitched. Panicked.
Sabrina.
Of course.
I didn’t need to see her to feel her outrage.
“She’s faking!” she screamed from behind the crowd. “She’s weak! Her wolf hasn’t surfaced in years, this is—this is a trick!”
She tried to stand.
But the moment she lifted her head—the Lycān looked at her.
And she collapsed with a choked scream, face hitting the ground hard.
The air warped around her. Her limbs shook. Her skin turned pale.
The pressure of his presence alone crushed her back into the dirt.
She tried again. One hand. One elbow. A single knee. Then she screamed again, and blood dripped from her nose.
The pack gasped.
But I didn’t move.
Nyra rose instead.
Golden light poured from my body, brighter than before. My fingers trembled, not with fear, but with force.
I stepped forward.
My wolf walked with me.
I was not the girl in the shadows anymore.
I was fire in a dress.
“You don’t get to speak,” I said, voice layered with Nyra’s.
Sabrina whimpered.
“You don’t get to breathe near him.”
The aura rolled off me like a tidal wave.
“Bow,” I said. “Or bleed.”
And she did.
She sobbed into the ground, shaking violently. Then she crawled back into the crowd, face streaked with blood and shame.
No one stopped her.
No one helped her.
They were all watching me.
The girl they dismissed.
The girl who now radiated power stronger than her Alpha father.
He turned finally—to the crowd.
His voice dropped like a blade.
“I am Lycān.”
Gasps. One wolf fainted. A warrior to my right whispered a prayer.
He continued.
“Born of the bloodline you buried. Heir to the throne you feared. And I have come for her.”
He looked back at me.
His voice lowered—darker, deeper.
“And I am hers.”
A ripple of sound spread—not fear.
Reverence.
Because every wolf in the courtyard understood:
This wasn’t a story anymore.
This was a reckoning.
No one followed us.
They didn’t even lift their heads.
We left them kneeling.
He moved like night made flesh. Silent. Certain. Deadly.
I followed.
Not because I had to. Because I wanted to.
There was no trail. No road. No words.
We walked through the forest like ghosts, the bond humming louder with each step.
Nyra whispered in my head.
“He is power.”“He is ruin.”“He is home.”
When we stopped, it was in front of a secluded house tucked deep between two ridges. Simple. Isolated. Built from stone and timber, like something left behind by another world.
He pushed the door open. I stepped inside.
The interior was stark—just a fireplace, a table, one chair, and a bed in the next room. There was no electricity, no phone signal, no distractions. It was quiet.
He followed and shut the door. The lock clicked.
We were alone.
And now, in the silence, I could feel how loud the bond had become.
It pulsed under my skin. Hot. Alive. Addictive.
Nyra purred.
“This is good.”“We are safe. Claimed. Ready.”
But I wasn’t ready.
Not like she was.
I needed more than instinct. I needed something real.
“Why me?” I asked. “Why now?”
He stood by the fireplace, staring at the dying embers.
“I felt you,” he said.
“That’s not an answer.”
His jaw ticked. “It’s the only one I’ll give.”
“I don’t know you.”
He finally turned to look at me. His eyes locked onto mine—and something inside me flinched.
“I’m not here to be known,” he said. “I’m here because the world is ending, and you’re the reason it begins again.”
My heart pounded.
He stepped closer.
“You want softness,” he said. “Affection. Warm hands. Sweet words.”
My throat tightened. I didn’t speak.
“I don’t have those,” he said.
“I didn’t ask for a monster,” I whispered.
“You didn’t,” he replied. “But you got one.”
Silence fell.
Tension curled in the corners of the room like smoke.
I took a step back.
He didn’t follow.
Just watched me.
Cold. Controlled.
But underneath it—
Want.
The kind that didn’t ask permission.
The kind that devoured.
He turned suddenly, pulled a folded blanket from a trunk, and tossed it on the bed.
“You’ll sleep there,” he said. “I’ll stay up.”
I blinked. “Why?”
“Because they’ll come for you. Your pack doesn’t let go. Especially not when they realize what you are now.”
“And you?”
He met my eyes.
“I don’t share,” he said simply.
The bond throbbed hot in my chest.
I swallowed.
“I’m not afraid of you,” I whispered.
His mouth twisted.
“You should be.”
He stepped back into the shadows, disappearing into them like he belonged there.
And for the first time—
I wasn’t sure if I was the prey.
Or the storm about to hit next.
- Writer
