The Alpha Who Claimed My Fire

Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE: The Birthday I Should Have Skipped

The bass from the speakers hit my chest before I even got through the door. Damon's hand was wrapped around mine, pulling me past the line like we owned the place, which, in a way, he kind of did. His father ran half the businesses on this side of town, human and wolf alike. Tonight was his eighteenth birthday. Tonight, everyone said, was the night we would finally bond.

I had been waiting for this night since I was twelve years old.

"You look nervous," Damon said, leaning down so I could hear him over the music. His breath was warm against my ear. "Don't be. Tonight's going to be perfect."

I smiled up at him, and I meant it. I had picked out this dress three weeks ago. Blue, because he once said blue looked good on me. My hands were sweating inside his. I told myself that was normal. Everybody got nervous before something this big.

"I'm not nervous," I lied. "I'm just excited."

He grinned, that easy grin that made every girl in our pack sigh when he walked by, and pulled me toward the private booth his father had reserved. Priya and Sasha were already there, drinks in hand, waving me over like I was some kind of guest of honor.

"There she is," Sasha said, pulling me into a hug that smelled like vanilla perfume and vodka. "Future Luna."

I laughed, but something in my stomach twisted at the word. Future Luna. I had heard it my whole life. Everyone assumed it. My parents assumed it. Damon's parents assumed it. I assumed it too, so hard and for so long that I never stopped to ask myself if it was actually true, or if I just wanted it to be true so badly that I convinced myself the feeling was fate instead of hope.

The night went on the way birthday nights go. Someone brought out a cake shaped like a wolf paw. People sang. Damon's father, the Alpha, gave a short speech about legacy and strength and the future of Ravenwood Ridge. I stood next to Damon the whole time, his arm around my waist, and I felt like I was glowing. This was it. This was the life I had built my whole heart around.

Then midnight came.

I know the exact second, because I was watching the clock on my phone, waiting, my whole body tensed like a held breath. Midnight was supposed to be the moment fated bonds fully bloomed. Damon's birthday, the night he turned eighteen, the night the pack always said our connection would finally settle into something permanent and undeniable.

Nothing happened.

I mean, nothing happened between us.

Damon went still beside me. Not the good kind of still, not the kind where you're waiting for a first kiss. His whole body locked up like something had grabbed him from the inside. His head turned, slow, toward the hallway near the restrooms.

"Damon?" I said.

He didn't answer me. He didn't even seem to hear me. His eyes were fixed on something, someone, coming out of that hallway. A girl I had never seen before. Dark hair, plain jeans, the kind of person who looked completely out of place in a club full of pack royalty. She looked confused, glancing around like she'd wandered in by mistake.

Damon crossed the room like I wasn't even standing there.

I watched him go. I watched him walk straight past his father, past Priya, past Sasha, past everyone, and stop in front of that stranger. I watched him lift her hand to his face and breathe in like he'd been drowning his whole life and just found air.

"Mate," he said. Loud enough that the music seemed to drop away around us. Loud enough that every single person in that club heard it. "You're my mate."

The girl's eyes went wide. She didn't even know him. She didn't know any of us. But Damon didn't care. He pulled her into his arms right there, right in front of the entire pack, right in front of me, and held her like she was the only person in the room.

I stood frozen by the booth we'd been sitting in ten seconds ago. My blue dress suddenly felt stupid. My whole body felt stupid, standing there in the middle of a room that had gone completely silent except for the low murmur of people realizing what they'd just witnessed.

Sasha's mouth was hanging open. Priya wouldn't look at me at all.

Damon's father's face had gone hard, unreadable, the face of a man doing math about what this meant for his son's future, his pack's stability, his own plans. Not one thought, from what I could tell, about me.

Damon finally looked over Nadia's shoulder and found me in the crowd. For half a second, something that might have been guilt crossed his face. Just half a second.

"Mira," he said. "I didn't know. I swear I didn't know she was—"

I didn't wait for the rest.

I don't remember deciding to move. One second I was standing there, humiliated in front of everyone who had ever called me future Luna, and the next second I was pushing through the crowd, past whispers I didn't want to hear, past hands that reached out and didn't quite touch me, out through the front doors and into the cold night air.

I ran until my heels gave out on the gravel and I had to pull them off and run barefoot. I ran until the music was just a memory and my lungs burned and my face was wet, though I couldn't tell if it was from the wind or from crying, probably both.

I had spent six years of my life certain that Damon Reyes and I were written into each other's fate. Six years of shaping myself into whoever he needed me to be. Quiet when he wanted quiet. Fun when he wanted fun. Small when he needed to feel big.

And in one single moment, standing under those club lights, that whole story had collapsed into nothing. He wasn't my mate. He never had been. Everyone in that room now knew it before I did.

I stopped running when I reached the edge of the tree line outside town, my chest heaving, my bare feet cut and bleeding a little from the gravel. I looked back at the lights of the club glowing behind me, and I understood, with a clarity that hurt worse than the humiliation, that I had built my whole identity on a foundation that was never real.

I didn't know yet what I was going to do. I only knew I couldn't go back in there. I couldn't go home and see the pity on my parents' faces. I couldn't face Sasha and Priya at school on Monday, whispering behind their hands.

Something in me, something new and cold and clear, made a decision right there in the dark. I was done being the girl who waited to be chosen. I didn't know what that meant yet, or where I would go, or how I would survive it. I only knew I couldn't stay.