He stood between me and the monster.
If I hadn't been bleeding so heavily—if the pain hadn't blurred my vision—I might have been shocked beyond words.
Because it looked like he was shielding me.
Him.
I blinked again and again, desperate to prove he was only some fevered illusion, a fragment my mind had conjured in its desperation.
But no. He was truly there, solid and unmoving, a lone barrier against the nightmare that loomed over us.
The cold light caught on the tension in his shoulders, and I saw the faint tremor in his clenched fists. He was the last person—the very last person—I could ever imagine stepping between me and danger. Yet here he was, facing the monster as if every ounce of fear in him had been burned away.
My breath hitched, heart pounding. I couldn't tell if the sound in my ears was the monster growling, or my own pulse screaming in disbelief.
In fact, if someone had asked me yesterday who would be the cause of my death, I would've said his name without a moment's hesitation.
The bully who had ruined everything for me.
The boy who once held my head underwater until I thought I'd drown.
The one who turned my life into a living hell—was now standing between me and death itself.
Yet here he was. Protecting me.
I pushed myself up, ignoring the sharp sting in my arms, just to be sure I wasn't hallucinating. But no—those broad shoulders, that familiar scowl—it was really him. The same boy who had once taken pleasure in breaking me now stood as my shield, defying every cruel memory I had of him.
The world seemed to tilt around us, blurred by blood and disbelief, and for the first time, I couldn't tell whether I should feel safe… or terrified.
He let out a low growl, his dark eyes cutting toward me for the briefest moment—filled with something I couldn't name. Fury? Possession? Guilt?
The emotion flickered and vanished before I could grasp it.
Then he turned back to the monster, every muscle in his body coiling like a drawn bow.
"How dare you hurt my mate," he snarled, the words reverberating through the air, thrumming with raw, unrestrained rage.
Before I could even make sense of what he'd said—mate?—his body lunged forward, bones cracking and reshaping midair in a grotesque symphony of sound.
In the span of a heartbeat, he was no longer human.
A massive black werewolf slammed into the monster with an earth-shaking thud, claws slicing through flesh, fangs flashing under the moonlight. The ground trembled beneath them as a guttural roar tore through the night, ripping apart everything I thought I knew about him
My mind went blank. The world tilted, sounds melting into a distant, distorted hum—the growls, the clash of claws and teeth, the monster's horrifying screeches—all fading until there was nothing left but the echo of that one word.
Mate.
Mate.
Mate.
It pulsed through my skull with every heartbeat, like a bell tolling the end of everything I knew.
No. It couldn't be true. It shouldn't be true.
Not him. Not the boy who had made my life unbearable.
The universe had to be playing some sick joke
But deep down—in the marrow of my bones—something stirred. My heart pounded, my blood thrummed with a rhythm older than magic, and my skin prickled as though the word itself had burned into me, etched like a brand.
My whole body responded to the call, betraying the scream of denial in my mind.
There was no explanation. None that made sense.
Yes, I'm a hybrid. But—
My mother is a witch.
My father… a vampire.
A witch and a vampire. That's what I am.
Not a wolf. Not part of his world.
So how i
n the name of every ancient law could I be a werewolf's mate?