I didn't mean to kill them.
But my parents' blood still stained my hands.
It wasn't supposed to happen that way.
One mistake.
One moment of weakness.
And my entire life collapsed into darkness.
The night they died, I screamed until my throat tore.
I begged the Moon Goddess to take me instead.
To strike me down.
To erase me from this cursed world.
But she didn't.
Instead, she cursed me in the cruelest way possible.
My brother made sure of it.
He stood before the Elders with tears in his eyes and venom on his tongue.
He told them I was dangerous.
Reckless.
Unworthy of being a wolf.
And they believed him.
With one command, they bound my wolf.
Tore her from me like ripping out my soul.
The silence inside my head was worse than death.
Then came the chains.
Not iron.
Not silver.
But the chains of servitude.
From that day on, I became nothing but a slave in my own home.
I washed.
I cooked.
I bowed my head.
And every time I looked into my brother's eyes, I saw the hatred that kept me caged.
At twenty-two, I stopped dreaming.
I stopped believing that life could ever be more than pain.
Survival—that was my only goal.
But survival is not living.
It's breathing with empty lungs.
It's walking with broken bones.
It's existing without hope.
And that was all I had left.
Until the day he came.
The ground trembled when his pack arrived.
The air grew thick, suffocating, as whispers spread through the camp.
Even the strongest warriors lowered their gaze.
I had never seen fear ripple through men like that.
And then I saw him.
The powerful Alpha with crimson eyes.
Dane.
Stories about him traveled faster than the wind.
A beast in human skin.
A ruler who crushed without mercy.
A wolf who bathed in blood.
I should have looked away.
I should have hidden in the shadows like I always did.
But I couldn't.
His presence was magnetic.
Dangerous.
A pull I couldn't resist.
And when his gaze met mine, something inside me stirred.
Something I thought had died years ago.
My pulse raced.
My chest tightened.
Heat rushed through me in a way I didn't understand.
It terrified me.
It thrilled me.
Because in that single glance, I knew—
My life was about to change.
Not for the better.
Not for the worse.
But into something I could never escape.