Mated to the Moonbound Alpha

POV: Aurora The mansion doors are wide open when I arrive. That's the first sign something is wrong. I stand at the bottom of the stone steps, my suitcase heavy in my hand, staring up at Thornwood Manor. The place looks like it's been ripped straight from a nightmare. Ivy crawls up the walls like grasping fingers. Windows stare down at me like hollow eyes. And those doors, those massive oak doors that should be locked tight, hang open like a gaping mouth waiting to swallow me whole. "Hello?" My voice comes out smaller than I want it to. No answer. Just the wind howling through the trees behind me. I shouldn't go in. Every instinct in my body screams at me to turn around, get back in my car, and drive as far away from this place as possible. But I can't. Aunt Margaret left me this house in her will, and I have nowhere else to go. No family. No home. Just this crumbling mansion in the middle of nowhere and a letter that said, "Come home, Aurora. It's time." Time for what? She never explained. I climb the steps slowly, my heart hammering against my ribs. The air feels wrong here. Thick. Heavy. Like trying to breathe underwater. There's a pressure building around me, pushing at my skin, pulling at something deep in my bones that I don't understand. The front door creaks as I push it wider. That's when I see them. Claw marks. Deep gouges carved into the wooden floor, stretching from the entrance into the darkness beyond. They're fresh. The wood is still pale where it's been torn. "What the hell?" I step inside, and the temperature drops. My breath comes out in visible puffs. In August. "Hello? Is someone here?" Silence answers me. Then, faint as a dying breath, I hear it. "Aurora." My name. Whispered from somewhere in the shadows. "Aurora." Again. Closer this time. Multiple voices now, layered over each other like a twisted choir. "Who's there?" I spin around, but there's nothing. Just darkness and dust and the smell of something old and rotten. And blood. I can smell blood. "Aurora, come." The voices pull at me, tugging me deeper into the house. My feet move without permission, carrying me down a long hallway lined with portraits. Eyes in the paintings seem to follow me. I want to run, but I can't. Something inside me needs to go forward, needs to find the source of those whispers. The hallway opens into a massive room. A library maybe, or a ballroom once. Now it's just emptiness and shadows that move wrong, that twist and curl like living things. The pressure in the air intensifies. It wraps around my chest, squeezing until I can barely breathe. My skin feels too tight. My bones feel too big. "Aurora. Welcome home." The shadows gather, forming shapes. Faces without features. Hands without bodies. They reach for me, and I stumble backward. "Stay away from me!" Pain explodes through my spine. I scream. It feels like someone's driving knives into my vertebrae, one by one. My knees hit the floor hard. The agony spreads, racing through my bones like wildfire. My fingers claw at the ground, and I watch in horror as my nails lengthen, darken, sharpen into something that isn't human. "No. No, no, no." My vision blurs. The room tilts and spins. I can hear my bones cracking, reshaping, breaking apart and snapping back together in a way that just wasn't right. Every cell in my body is screaming. The curse, something whispers in my mind. The curse is waking up. What curse? I want to scream, but I can't form words anymore. My jaw is changing, elongating. Teeth sharpen in my mouth. The shadows close in. They whisper faster now, excited, hungry. Cold fingers brush my skin, and everywhere they touch burns like ice. I'm dying. I have to be dying. Nothing could hurt this much and let you live. I curl into myself, trying to make the pain stop, trying to breathe, trying to hold onto who I am. But I'm slipping away. Aurora is disappearing. Something else is taking over. Glass shatters. The sound explodes through the room like a gunshot. I force my eyes open just in time to see a massive shape burst through the window in a shower of glittering shards. A wolf. But not just any wolf. This creature is huge, bigger than any wolf should be. Its fur is midnight black, and its eyes burn gold like molten metal. It lands between me and the shadows, and the sound that rips from its throat makes my blood freeze. It's a snarl, a roar, a promise of violence so raw it shakes the walls. The shadows recoil. The wolf attacks. It tears through them like they're made of smoke, jaws snapping, claws ripping. Every movement is brutal, precise, protective. It's fighting for me. A stranger. Why? I try to move, try to help, try to do anything, but my body won't obey. The transformation is still tearing me apart from the inside. I can feel myself fading, consciousness slipping through my fingers like sand. The wolf kills the last shadow and turns to me. Those golden eyes lock onto mine, and I see something in them. Recognition. Rage. Desperation. It shifts. Bones c***k and reform, fur recedes, and suddenly there's a man kneeling where the wolf was. Broad shoulders. Dark hair. Face hidden in shadow. He reaches for me, his hand warm against my freezing skin. My eyes are closing. I can't fight it anymore. The last thing I hear, right before the darkness swallows me whole, is his voice. Deep. Rough. Absolutely certain. "You're mine." Then nothing…