The Luna He Hates

Prologue. Meluna Lockwood. “Where have you been, bloody w***e?” Alpha Roan, my fated mate backs me to the wall like he has no time to even be here, his fingers work at the hook of my gown and my breasts spring free to him, still tender from his last visit, still bruised from the heat of his mouth. Just like every other day, he forces his gaze low on them because he knows it burns my skin with shame. The leather belt hisses as it slips free from his waist. Roan is here to claim me like every other day but I don’t ever mistake it for want or desire. On what cursed planet would he ever crave the woman who ruthlessly stabbed his own mother? “Part your legs now.” He commands with his breath and I obey, scanning for where he wants me since I’m not near the bed. Like a panther dragging prey, he hurls me onto the vanity table and raises my dress. I know the rules. I am never to look at Roan. I must never moan or make whimpering sounds of pleasure. I am not to touch or grasp him during intimacy. Yet, his calloused fingers dig bruises into my thighs as he hooks my legs and presses me against the wall. “Look at me!” He growls but that’s not part of the rules. I am never to look at him! I open my eyes for I know better than to disobey the man who broke my brother’s bones in front of me. Disobedience means broken bones and my mate just happens to be the most powerful Dusthound Alpha in a century. “Look at me and moan as I claim you!” He rasps and like pure butter, no finesse…just hunger. Roan slots between my thighs to find me where it aches. “Ahh…” I gasp in a tiny whisper at the first breach of his thrust. It is a traitorous sound because I know this mate hates me to the core of his belly. He is only doing this because it is the only way to save his mother. The last solution lies in a bone marrow transplant. But Roan is too powerful and too much of a pure-blooded Dusthound for his marrow to be compatible. The doctors say the only chance now is to create a child. A baby. One born of his blood and mine. A perfect mix to save the woman I’m accused of killing. So, I am to lie with him when he commands. To be claimed. To be bent. To be touched by the mate who hates me. Two years ago, I stabbed his mother yet I don’t remember doing it. He sees me as a w***e today and believes I spent the past two years selling myself to Alphas for protection when I was being hunted by him. He doesn’t see a person when he looks at me. Only a vessel. Only a means to an end. He has promised that when I give him his child...he will kill me and make my best friend, Luna. Chapter one. “Please!” I scream as they drag me through the Dunefang Pack House. The home of Alpha Roan of the Dusthound wolves, my fated mate. The one who’s been hunting me for the past two years. This is the pack I grew up in and today, I return…captured as a rogue with blood on her hands and no memory of the crime. My heart feels like it might stop as I'm yanked forward. There is a deep gash caused by a needle in my foot so I’m limping, trying to keep up with the pace of the two Delta gammas who have me by the arms. Delta gammas line the grand hallway in their uniforms dark as midnight. They growl. They snarl. They spit in my direction. They curse my name. I hear someone call me a traitor, another call me a w***e. I can’t stop shaking as shame curls through me. I am heading to the moment where the same man who once held my gaze like I was his entire future… now wants nothing more than to watch me die. He led the hunt himself tonight. He’s the one who found me after I jumped into the ocean to drown and die, rather than to be tortured by him. A bucket of freezing water is thrown over me, and I shriek as it hits my skin. I convulse from the cold and tears spring to my eyes, mixing with the water as I begin to sob. I swear…I didn’t mean to do it. I didn’t mean to stab his mother! I don’t even remember choosing it. It was like something else had taken my body and twisted it into a weapon. One moment I was standing there, holding the knife. And in the next, it was buried inside her chest. It happened on the day of Roan’s coronation to Alpha. The Dunefang pack house had opened its gates to every high-ranking family and mine was one of them. I still remember stepping through those grand doors for the first time with nervous excitement. I had just turned eighteen. I didn’t expect to walk into that celebration and find out that my mate was none other than Roan, the Quarterback captain, the wolf who basically struck fear into the hearts of every student back at Delta Academy, our equivalent of high school where training and education are all mashed into one system. Roan was a senior, at least four levels above me. Everyone stayed out of his way, not just because he was our future Alpha, but because he is a powerful wolf. On that night, the elders made him mark me on the spot. Said fate had chosen its Luna, and there was no point in waiting. They wanted the bond sealed quickly, a wedding soon after, a united front. That was two years ago. Two years since everything fell apart and I became a rogue with a blood debt on my head. They drop me on the marble floor like a sack of ruined things. Then…every shout, every growl and every insult from the crowd around me is gone. I know exactly what this silence means. He’s here. I don’t dare lift my head. I’ve been a rogue for two, long, hunted, terrifying years and that was more than enough time to learn the worst truths about Roan. About what he’s become since that night…the moment I ruined everything. Roan isn’t just any Dusthound. He’s pureblood. A true-born. An anomaly of strength not seen in centuries. Where other wolves leave pawprints, Roan leaves nothing behind. I have heard my father say he was born from the bones of ancient wolf warriors of centuries ago. He is the kind of wolf that make even the bravest go still. They say his fangs are translucent. That his claws aren’t made of bone but obsidian, fused with iron. Where others s***h, he pierces. Straight through skulls, through ribs, straight into the heart and he does it without resistance. And once his claws sink in, they lock like spears driven deep into the earth. My hair is yanked at once and I squeal, twisting to see the one who holds the strands in his hands and as I dare to lift my head, I cannot tell if he’s real or some cruel hallucination. I know he has always been the space between arcane and devil. But in two years, when did Roan have tattoos? Violent diagrams line his thick neck like vines, disappearing behind his ears only to reappear along his temples, smudged along the sharp line of his brow. Two years ago, he was just a ruthless alpha now he looks like a prophecy. Taller than I remember during his coronation where our parents asked if we accepted the bond. We said only one word to each other. “Yes.” “Ah!” I scream as he yanks me and my feet barely touch the ground before I’m face to face with him. His arcane gold eyes burn into mine and dilates with something unholy. My lungs seize, and I forget how to breathe. This is the first time we’ve laid eyes on each other two years. “The b***h tried to drown herself?” His lips pull back in a cruel smile, and I see his teeth lengthen into his wolfen fangs! “Boys, should I show her how it’s done?” My legs trip over themselves and I fall to my knees, but it doesn’t stop him. His hand clamps around my shirt, jerking me along while the others pound their chests, cheering for my punishment. I’m crying… openly now, not just from shame but from the pain that pulses with every tug of his hand. I see a tub full with water so cold I can see mist rise from the surface. I barely have time to scream again before he fists the front of my shirt and hurls me forward, headfirst. I gurgle. My eyes sting, my chest screams, and water floods every opening as I trash. Is this it? Is this how I die? For one blurry moment, I think maybe it’s mercy because I wanted to drown anyway. When my strength starts to give out and my lungs begin to surrender, he takes me out of the water. I start coughing and vomiting as I lean to the side, throwing up everything I inhaled in the tub. My fingers… I can’t feel them. They’re stiff and white and frozen, like the rest of me. But Roan isn’t done. He tilts his head slightly, like he's disappointed I’m still alive. His hand fists my shirt again and plunges my head back into the freezing water. I kick. I fight. Then I stop. There’s a moment where the cold feels far away, like I’m falling somewhere darker until he yanks me out a second and third time. I collapse. He throws me down like garbage and I try to feel my fingers again. The sharp pain in my chest tells me I’m still breathing, but I wish I wasn’t. “Someone get me a bloody knife! Let me carve her! Let me butcher her! Let me pierce her as she did to my mother!” His fists pound his chest in a blasphemous rasp. A tall gamma offers the Alpha a blade and Roan begins to stalk. “For what reason did you pierce my mother?” My lips barely work and yet I know I must say something. I want to tell him I'm sorry. I want to explain, even if I don't know how to. “P-please…” At the sound of that one word—please—his arm swings at me and I drop flat to the marble floor in a rush of instinct. The blade slices through the air where my neck was just a second ago. Roan is on top of me in an instant as his knees pin my legs. Roughly, he pushes the wet strands of my hair aside to rip my shirt open and tears at the seams, exposing me further than I ever wanted to be in front of him. I flinch as his calloused fingers graze my skin…not in desire, not in care, but like I’m something ruined that he’s dissecting. The blade returns and he paints a cruel line of red across my chest. I cry! “This wasn’t even close to the depth you went when you stabbed my mother with a wolfsbane knife. You went straight through her chest, through her bones and left her there to drown in her own blood.” “I—I’m sorry—” Roan raises the knife high above him and I brace myself for the end of my life until someone yells. “Alpha, stop!” The doors open. “That’s your fated mate! You are a pureblood Dusthound and cannot have a second-chance mate if she dies! You destroy your only chance of a pup—” The words are cut off by the whistle of Roan’s knife as it thunks into the speaker’s genital area, missing the real thing by an inch. The elder freezes and I twist my head just enough to see his face blanch. Roan did not even look and yet he did something as vile as that!