Claimed by the wild

I was the pack’s greatest shame until the darkest moon started turning me into their worst nightmare. I stood at the starting line with dirt under my nails and every camera in the stadium angled toward the wolves who actually mattered. Above us, the broadcast drones buzzed like angry hornets, their lenses zooming in on the Alphas' heirs while the stadium lights felt heavier than usual, like they had already decided how the night would end. The inter-pack games always drew the big families, the money, and the live feeds, and tonight the air itself seemed to wait for me to fall. The horn blasted and I ran. My legs burned the same way they always did while the others pulled ahead like the track had never belonged to me. Maeve Sterling took the inside clean, and Declan’s wolves owned the middle lane. I pushed my human lungs to their absolute limit, staying within striking distance until the final turn. That was when Calla Thorne flicked her gaze back at me, a cruel, calculated smirk cutting across her face. As she surged past, her elbow drove hard into my sternum, and her heavy combat boot intentionally clipped my ankle. Without a wolf’s reflexes to save me, the gravel rose up to meet me. I went down hard. Both palms tore wide open on the sharp stones, and a broadcast drone immediately dropped lower, hovering directly over my head to catch my failure in high-definition. The sound of the crowd shifted the second my body hit the ground—that low, collective murmur of pity and disgust that always followed me when I finished exactly where everyone expected. I pushed myself up, ignoring the grit embedded in my raw flesh, and crossed the finish dead last again. My lungs dragged at the air while blood dripped from my hands onto the dirt. For a moment I only wanted to stay bent over until the cameras moved on, but they did not. Cassian Vane stepped into the winner’s circle like he had been waiting for this exact second. Someone pushed a microphone toward him while I was still trying to steady my breathing, the giant stadium screens broadcasting his flawless, unbothered face across the entire East Coast. His voice rolled out clear and deafening across every speaker. “Lyra Vance is not my mate.” The words landed heavier than the fall. I stared at him, and he did not look away. “I reject the bond,” he said, his voice steady, formal, and utterly devoid of human emotion. “Publicly. Permanently. The Vane Pack will not carry dead weight.” The moment the final syllable left his mouth, the air left my lungs. A violent, agonizing shockwave ripped through my chest as the invisible silver thread connecting our souls violently shattered. It felt like an iron spike driving straight through my heart. My knees buckled, and I nearly collapsed from the sheer, burning trauma of an Alpha’s public rejection. A few people in the stands laughed, and someone clapped. Fueling my agony into raw fury, I forced myself to take one agonizing step forward, even though my legs still shook. “You don’t get to say that on live television,” I said, my voice echoing back at me from the speakers. Cassian kept his face even. “I just did.” “Why? Because I finished last again? Because I never shifted?” My voice cracked on the last word, and I hated the sound of it. “You felt the bond the same way I did. You know what we are to each other.” “The bond was a mistake.” He spoke the way he did in pack meetings—controlled, cold, and final. “The pack comes first. You were never going to be strong enough.” An elder with silver hair moved up beside him, casting a disdainful look at my bleeding hands, and added, “The decision is final. Step aside.” I searched the crowd for Gia. She was there for half a second, close enough that I could see the conflict on her face, and then she turned away—like looking at me any longer might cost her something she was not willing to pay. Calla Thorne already stood near Cassian, her posture perfect and a victorious smile ready for the cameras, effortlessly sliding into the space I had never been allowed to fill. “Stronger wolves lose races,” I said, and the words came out rougher and darker than I meant. “You don’t throw them away in front of the whole world.” Cassian’s gaze flicked toward the lenses, calculating the public relations damage, and then snapped back to me. “This conversation is over.” “It is not.” I moved closer, and the Alpha guards shifted with me, their hands dropping to their silver-weighted batons. “You told me to wait. Last year under the blood moon, you whispered that the pack just needed time to accept a human mate. That was a lie.” Something tight and furious moved behind his eyes, a flicker of the possessive beast he was forcing down, and then it was gone. “Take her out of the compound,” he ordered. Two burly enforcers locked onto my arms. I yanked once, but they only held firmer, grinding their fingers into my bruises. The broken bond between us twisted sharp, sick, and bleeding when Cassian finally looked at me one last time. For a second I thought he might say something else, but he only turned his back while the cameras kept rolling, broadcasting my exile live to millions. They dragged me past the blinding stadium lights, the laughing faces, and the people who used to nod at me in the hallways. Every step felt longer and heavier than the one before it. As we left the paved courtyard, the artificial warmth of the stadium vanished. The air hit me cold and suffocating, and I realized the sky had gone completely wrong. No stars. The moon hung black and heavy above the jagged tree line, looking like someone had poured thick, cursed ink across the cosmos and left it there to watch. I stopped walking, staring upward. “What is that?” Neither guard answered. They only shoved me roughly down the dirt path that led toward the outer gate. The Vane Pack boundary loomed ahead—a towering wall of reinforced steel, topped with wicked silver spikes and guarded by sentries holding heavy, glowing spears. Beyond it lay the Dead Zone, the lawless rogue territory where rejected wolves went to die. The ancient law had never felt as loud or as terminal as it did now. They unlatched the heavy iron deadbolts, the metal screeching in protest, and threw me forward. The massive gates slammed shut behind me, the locks clicking into place with absolute finality. I was entirely alone. My palms still bled, and every step pulled at the torn skin, but I kept my eyes on the dark forest path because looking back at the glowing stadium would have cost me the last of my pride. Halfway into the woods, a deep, crushing pressure settled low under my ribs. It wasn't sharp enough to drop me, only heavy and hot enough that I couldn't breathe past it. It felt like something massive and terrifying had been sleeping in the marrow of my bones for nineteen years, and the agony of the broken bond had finally forced it to roll over in its sleep. I slowed without meaning to. The pressure didn't grow stronger; it only waited, pulsing in tandem with the ink-black moon above. Behind me, far off near the stadium lights, I heard the faint echo of Cassian’s voice rise again as he gave new orders. The perimeter alarms began to chime. Someone must have told him the rejected girl wasn't walking the way rejected girls were supposed to walk. They were coming to make sure I crossed the outer border completely. I turned back toward the compound one last time. The severed mate bond pulled, ugly, alive, and weeping raw energy. I felt him feel it, too—a sudden spike of Alpha panic echoing through the broken link. Then the wind shifted violently through the trees ahead of me. A low, wrong sound rolled out of the dark. It wasn't my own, it wasn't human, and it wasn't the sound of any wolf I had ever heard inside the Vane Pack. It was a guttural, cosmic rumble that came from somewhere the moonlight could never reach. The night went dead still. The leaves stopped rustling. The distant alarms faded into static. As I took a step toward that sound, the ink-black darkness from the sky literally bled downward, pooling around my combat boots like heavy, living smoke. The dirt beneath my feet vibrated, warming against my bare skin as if the earth itself already knew my name. And out of the pitch-black shadows of the rogue woods, two glowing eyes snapped open—not yellow, not blue, but a terrifying, brilliant midnight violet. And they were staring directly at me.