A smell hit me like a truck going full speed. Pine trees and winter storms. Leather and something wild and scary and completely overwhelming. It made my wolf go totally crazy inside my head, scratching and clawing to get out. My knees went weak. The cleaning materials fell from my hands, clattering to the floor like my world was falling apart.

"Do you smell that?" a deep voice asked. The voice sent shivers down my spine.

"Honey and wildflowers," another voice answered, rougher than the first. "Like summer and sunshine. Where is it coming from?"

A third voice, softer but just as strong, said, "It's the most beautiful thing I've ever smelled."

But that was impossible. I was just an omega. Just unseen Aisla who cleaned floors and stayed out of sight and never caused trouble for anyone important.

The footsteps got closer. I could hear them breathe now.

My wolf was going crazy inside me. She wanted out. She wanted to run toward that smell, not away from it. She wanted something I didn't understand.

"There," the third voice said, softer than the others but somehow more dangerous. "In the kitchen. She's in there."

The footsteps stopped right outside the door. I could feel them there, waiting.

Deep down, I knew my life was about to change forever.

I could swear I heard three wolves roaring inside my head.

The kitchen door handle turned slowly.

I was about to meet my fate.

Or my doom.


~

I had spent my entire life in the shadows. As a lowly omega, I was used to being overlooked, ignored, and unseen. 

But everything changed on my 18th birthday.

That was the day the Moon Goddess gave me a cruel kind of blessing. 

I had a mate. 

Not just one. 

Not two. 

But all three of the Alpha’s sons, the legendary triplets were bound to me.

The grove had stopped feeling like shelter.


Mora pulled me from the bed before dawn every morning, her voice slicing through my exhaustion. And she kept me on my feet until I collapsed with a trembling body and skin streaked with ash and blood. 


She had stopped teaching me chants since the night of the attack. We no longer did gentle rituals to coax the moon's gift.


Instead, she taught me to bend it. To seize it with my hands and force it to obey me.


I did not even train as a warrior anymore. She gave me impossible tasks. Tasks that made me rely on my moonblood. 


"Lift it," she ordered one day, pointing to a boulder twice my size.


I laughed because I thought she was joking. "I can't,"


"Lift it." She commanded as her staff cracked against my shin. The sting set my nerves on fire.


Chapter 40 - The Dark Boom