Nathan stared at his reflection in the mirror, tracing the delicate curve of his jaw, the soft, almost ethereal glow of his skin. His large, amber eyes blinked slowly, framed by lashes that gave him an almost innocent, bunny-like appearance. Seventeen years old, and yet he felt older than anyone in Whilestone. Older because he had learned the painful truth: in his pack, being different was a curse.
The room was cold, the shadows of the late afternoon stretching across the walls. His father, the Beta of Whilestone, was pacing downstairs, a storm of frustration behind every step. His mother, an omega like him, avoided him completely, her gaze always slipping past Nathan as if he were invisible. His three elder brothers, all Beta males, trained under their father's strict supervision, leaving Nathan to linger in the corners like a shadow.
Being the only male Omega in Whilestone wasn't just unusual—it was considered shameful. The pack whispered about sins, mistakes of the Moongoddess, and portents of disaster whenever Nathan appeared. Every glance, every snicker, every whispered warning reminded him: he didn't belong.
School was no better. Nathan walked the halls of his human high school in America, blending in just enough to avoid attention. Humans had no idea that the boy who appeared so fragile and harmless was part of a world beyond their comprehension. A world where strength, power, and dominance decided life and death, loyalty and love.
But Nathan had learned to survive in silence. To be invisible.
That night, while the pack gathered in the main hall for the weekly council, whispers of Denefendore reached their ears. A brutal, unstoppable pack, feared across the world. And their Alpha, Kael—a man of terrifying strength, rumored to be both ruthless and unmatched in his search for his mate—was stirring the currents of fate that Nathan had long tried to ignore.
Nathan shivered, not from the cold, but from a strange, magnetic pull he couldn't explain. Somewhere, deep in the dark heart of the world, Kael's presence loomed—a predator, a force, a destiny. And Nathan… he didn't know yet that destiny had already chosen him.
Alone in his room, Nathan curled up on his bed, his ears twitching at the faintest sounds of the pack below. A life of rejection, of quiet endurance, lay behind him—but beyond the forest, beyond the shadows, something waited. Something powerful. Something that might see him not as a mistake, but as the missing piece in a world he didn't yet understand.
And for the first time in his life, Nathan dared to imagine… hope.