Chapter 2: The Intruder Revealed
Drain POV
As Willow and I ran through the woods, feeling the exhilaration of our free-spirited run, a peculiar scent caught my attention. "Willow," I called out to my wolf , "do you smell that?"
"Hmm, not sure," he replied. "But it smells nice."
"Let me take control," I insisted. "This could be something important." Willow hesitated for a moment before conceding, "Nah, you gave me two hours of freedom, remember?"
We both came to a stop as we reached the source of the intoxicating aroma. It was a light gray wolf standing just ahead of us - a rogue who didn't belong to our pack. In an instant, we all sprang into action.
"Sniff it out," I urged Willow. The scent was irresistible - vanilla frosting with a hint of chocolate. There was something captivating about it; something that made me yearn for more.
As we pursued the rogue wolf with fervor, I couldn't help but revel in the thrill of the race. Leading the pack with my beta by my side reminded me why being next in line for Alpha was such an honor.
Soon enough, we cornered the intruder on a cliff with nowhere left to run. We all shifted back to our human forms and faced each other cautiously.
And then I saw her - a girl? She stood at 5'4", her long orange hair flowing down to her breasts like silk. Her skin was flawless and radiant. Her eyes matched her hair with a touch of yellow, captivating anyone who dared stare into them. And curves...her body was simply divine.
"Mate," both Willow and I said in unison as realization struck us simultaneously.
"She's our mate!" yelped Willow excitedly within my mind.
I stood there speechless; unable to find the right words. The word "mate" had escaped my lips, and now I was left vulnerable and exposed, like a newborn pup.
"Seize her!" commanded the beta. But I found my voice again, asserting my authority. "Be careful with her! We don't know who she is."
"Yes, my prince," they all responded in unison.
Back in the palace
I couldn't shake off the feeling of pure astonishment as I shouted for my mother. "Mother! I think we found the intruder. She's in the dungeon."
"What? Are you sure? And she's a she?" My mother's surprise was evident in her stammering voice.
"I'm certain," I replied confidently. "I believe she's our mate."
My mother seemed taken aback by this revelation. "Well," she said with a mixture of harshness and excitement, "we must inform your father immediately."
When we finally brought my father up to speed, he couldn't contain his astonishment either. "Hold on," he exclaimed. "Are you saying that the intruder we've been searching for is not only a girl but also your mate?"
"Yes, Father," I confirmed with conviction.
"Well then," he declared vehemently, "take me to her at once. She must be interrogated."
"But Father," I protested earnestly, "do we have to interrogate her? She's my mate; surely the Moon Goddess wouldn't pair me with an enemy or someone who would harm our pack?"
"We can't take everything for granted, son," my father replied sternly yet placing his hand gently on my shoulder. "Remember that the pack comes first; their safety is our highest priority."
With those words echoing in my mind, we made our way towards destiny - one that held both uncertainty and hope for us all.
POV: Liana
The world dissolved into a tunnel of green and black. My lungs were twin bellows of fire, my paws—alia's paws a raw, throbbing agony with every strike against the unforgiving earth. The pine-scent of their territory, once just a smell, was now a thick, accusing presence, coating my tongue. I'd been so stupid. The deer, the thrill of the hunt, the forgotten line… it all curdled into a single, panicked thought: Run.
Left! Elara screamed in my mind, and I swerved, claws gouging moss as a snarl ripped the air where my hindquarters had been. They were toying with me. Herding me. I could feel their predatory confidence like a pressure on my flank, their communication a series of silent, tactical pulses I wasn't privy to.
The trees thinned. Moonlight, sudden and brutal, washed over a clearing. My heart plummeted. A wall of granite rose before me, a slick, impassable crescent. A perfect trap.
Skidding to a halt, I turned, gravel spraying. The growl that tore from my throat was pure, undiluted defiance. I would not die cowering. Elara rose within me, lending her fury to my fear, fur bristling along my spine.
They emerged. Four of them. Shadows given flesh and fang. My gaze flickered between them—the russet, the ash-black, another—but it snagged on the leader. The massive gray. Power radiated from him in a way that made the very air feel dense, difficult to pull into my searing lungs. He took one step forward, and his amber eyes held not just the promise of violence, but a cold, calculating intelligence.
This was it. I'd make them pay.
But then he stopped. His great head lifted, nostrils flaring. He drew in a long, deep breath, as if tasting the wind for the first time. And he… froze. The aggressive tension in his shoulders slackened. The amber glow of his eyes flickered, the fierce command in them dissolving into something that looked like sheer, unadulterated shock.
A whine, confused, came from the russet wolf beside him. The whole energy of the clearing shifted, the imminent violence bleeding away into a tense, bewildered silence.
My own growl faltered. What was happening? A trick? Elara was silent, a wary, listening stillness inside me.
Then the gray wolf shifted.
It wasn't the brutal, wrenching transformation of battle. It was swift, seamless, almost graceful. One moment a beast, the next a man kneeling on the forest floor, head bowed. He rose.
Moonlight sculpted him—broad shoulders, a chest marked with old scars, a face all hard lines and severity. But his eyes… they were blue now. A turbulent, storm-sea blue, and they were fixed on me with an intensity that stole the remainder of my breath. He took a step, his hand coming up. Not with a weapon. Not in a fist. It was an open, almost hesitant gesture.
"Shift."
The word was a graveled command, but it cracked in the middle. That crack held everything—a tremor, an awe so profound it shook his voice.
And inside me, something broke open.
A warmth, golden and terrifying, unfurled from the very core of my being. It was a pull, a magnetic, soul-deep yearning that pointed at him like a compass finding true north. Elara didn't just go quiet; she recognized. A single, reverberating pulse echoed between us: Mate.
The truth of it was a physical blow. My legs trembled. The fight, the flight, all of it drained away, leaving me hollow and shaking. Dazed, I obeyed.
My own shift was a painful, shuddering collapse. Fur receded, bones realigned with a series of pops that made me whimper. I fell to my knees, the cold of the dirt a sharp shock against my human skin. I clutched myself, feeling smaller and more exposed than I ever had in my life. Slowly, forcing my chin up, I met his gaze.
6ft too. He felt it. The air left his lungs in a sharp, visible gust.
"adrain?" a voice—the russet wolf, now a man—asked from the side, confusion lacing the name.
He didn't hear. He was staring as if I were water in a desert. He moved then, closing the distance between us with steps that seemed both deliberate and involuntary, until his shadow fell over me. His scent—snow on cedar, forged iron, wildness—enveloped me. It was the first smell I'd ever known. It was home. It was the enemy.
He knelt, bringing those devastatingly blue eyes level with mine. His gaze was a physical touch, tracing the line of my brow, the curve of my cheek, the part of my lips as I tried to remember how to breathe. The cold Alpha's mask was gone, shattered, leaving a raw, vulnerable man beneath.
"You." His voice was a breath, a prayer, a ruin.
His hand lifted, fingers trembling slightly as they reached for my face. The pull became an ache, a roar. Every instinct screamed to lean in, to press my skin against his, to seal this terrifying, beautiful fate.
I flinched.
It was a tiny movement, a survival jerk from the part of me that remembered the chase, the snarling jaws, the dead-end cliff. The part that knew what our packs were. What this meant.
A storm erupted in his eyes. Possession, a fury that seemed directed at the universe for my bruised knees and bleeding feet, a tenderness so vast it threatened to swallow me whole—and horror. Stark, gut-wrenching horror at the role he'd just played in my terror.
His outstretched hand curled into a tight, white-knuckled fist. He lowered it, jaw clenching so hard a muscle leaped in his cheek. But when he spoke again, his voice was low, sanded soft, a secret for just the two of us in the crowded, silent clearing.
"You," he repeated, and this time the word was a vow, a curse, and a question that held the weight of our shattered worlds.
The chase was over. I was cornered more completely than I had been by the cliff. Not by an Alpha, but by a bond older than packs, older than borders. My heart hammered against my ribs, a frantic bird in a gilded cage it had just discovered. I was caught.