Chapter 1
Adea
The alarm jolted me from my misery. A migraine gnawed at my temple.
The pulsing was a hammer to the skull and the smell of death lingered in the air like a battlefield I couldn’t quite remember.
I surfaced from the dream the way I always did, gasping, my hand pressed flat against my chest as if I could hold something in that was already gone.
The phantom pain lived there, below my collarbone, over my heart.
It usually faded within minutes. Not today.
The Goddess gave and the Goddess took, and somewhere between the two, I’d decided to hate Her for it.
She’d shaped every wolf with a piece of Herself, or so the elders always said—a second soul stitched into the first, meant to keep us honest when we couldn’t trust ourselves.
Mine had been cut out before I was old enough to remember having it.
Wherever it went, someone else was walking around with two souls instead of one, and I was the only wolf in Half Moon Kingdom who understood what it meant to be unfinished.
I found my phone on the floor. In this castle, sleeping in was a luxury I hadn’t earned, and the Alpha’s hunger waited for no one.
I sat on the edge of my bed, staring out the window in the cramped room he’d assigned me ten years ago when he decided not to have me killed.
They usually killed rogues because the outcasts went rabid or feral on their own, but I guess they thought I was a special case.
The walls were white. They were always pristine here, even in a room allocated to a dead girl walking.
Goddess. I knew how I sounded, but there I was, waking before everyone else.
A stray allowed to breathe their air, eat their food, and sleep under their roof on the condition I remained useful.
The pack members of Half Moon Kingdom never allowed me to forget it.
We all had wolves crawling beneath our skin and law stated I should have been dead.
I dragged myself from the thin, but warm mattress, the cold floor biting at my feet.
I pulled on my worn jeans and black hoodie, dressing in the dark, keeping the sounds minimal.
On the shelf above my bed, the bag of pretty clothes Mavy had bought me sat untouched, sneering at me.
Silk and lace I had no business wearing.
It was a gift that weighed more like a bribe for a soul I wasn’t sure I still owned.
A heavy, impatient knock shook the door frame.
In the tiny mirror, I pulled my hair back to reveal the damage: chocolate tangles, bloodshot eyes, and a hollowness around my jaw that hadn’t been there a year ago. I resembled a raccoon, and no amount of cold water could wash away the fact I was running on fumes and fear.
“I’m here,” I said, my voice cracked and rasping.
Gabe filled the frame the way he always did.
He was a foot taller than me, his blue eyes bright with the remnants of a night I’d be hearing about soon.
He filled out his white t-shirt and slacks, his hair flopped over his brow.
He smelled of forest floor and someone else’s heat.
His full pearly smile appeared on cue, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes this morning.
He stretched out a hand and placed one little red-foiled square on the shelf beneath the mirror and I snatched the dark chocolate up and inhaled it.
His blue eyes moved over my face the way they always did—reading me. Whatever he found there made the smile shift into a subtle softness for a second before he buried it under something ridiculous.
“Morning, Ady baby. You know I love you, but honesty really is the best policy, and I have to tell you, well, you look like shit,” he chuckled, watching me goblin-munch the last of it.
“Thank you, Gabe. I hadn’t noticed.” Sarcasm was a thin veil for the exhaustion. I crumbled up the little foil and pushed it into my pocket.
He was filling the quiet with drivel so stupid I had no choice but to return to myself. Last week it had been the way Alpha Jaxon failed miserably at parallel parking. The week before, a detailed retelling of how he thought Devin wanted him.
He chuckled as I shoved a notebook into my bag for the Academy—another gray building where I’d spend the day pretending I wasn’t a heartbeat away from being cast out.
“The dream again?”
I didn’t answer, but nodded. They told me the Awakening would bring a beast of my own—a gift promised by the Goddess. I waited for a name, a change, but I got nothing. Sometimes, in the fog of sleep, I could almost say her name. But when I woke, there was nothing but the hollow in my chest.
How do you explain the sensation of waking up with tears on your face and the taste of someone’s name on your tongue? For a year, the dreams had been haunting; but since my twentieth birthday, they had become a leaden weight I carried even when awake.
I stepped into the hallway. He fell into step beside me without pushing it. That was the thing about Gabe—he knew when not to pry. Once upon a time, he was the only one who had lied for me when the pack wanted a scapegoat. We’d been friends ever since.
The hall stretched around us, grand and immaculate. White-washed walls of stone that Alpha Jaxon kept in a state of religious order. I had fallen in love with it at once when I first arrived, before I understood that beautiful cages were still cages.
“… an amazing night, Ady. A she-wolf from the southern border and her mate,” Gabe murmured, his voice dropping into a low, gravelly promise that made my skin prickle.
“The air was thick with the scent of the hunt. He had her pinned against the oak, and I was right there in the fray—the slapping of skin, the bitter tang of sweat. You should have seen the tits on her, Ady,” Gabe said as he lifted two open palms to his chest. “I gripped his hips and—”
“Please, Gabe. I do not want to hear where, how, or what position you had her in,” I interrupted, my cheeks flushed. “I’ll take your word for it.”
“You’re no fun. That wasn’t even the best part,” Gabe huffed. “If not you, who would I tell?”
I fought the smile at the thought of his wolf pouting.
Felix was the other half of Gabe’s soul, a massive golden beast with far more heart than his human counterpart.
As much as I loved the wolf, I didn’t love him enough to subject myself to a play-by-play of Gabe’s bedroom, or in this case forest, antics.
“Oh, my virgin ears,” I called out as I covered them. Gabe continued to pout as we made our way down to the kitchen.
The kitchen smelled of rosemary and grease. I set to work. Gabe moved through the space with the ease of a man who belonged, while I moved with the precision of a woman who was always watched. We worked in a practiced harmony, the clink of porcelain against marble and steel on wood.
I didn’t need to explain why I was there.
Whenever I looked at the long wooden table or the heavy matching shelves, I was reminded of the debt.
Jaxon and Emilia hadn’t merely given a home; they had purchased my loyalty with the blood they chose not to spill.
I had been initiated, folded into the Half Moon pack, and given a purpose.
Mavy burst in like a sunbeam, all blinding and oblivious.
She was a contrast of ink and moonlight—long, wavy black hair that smelled of citrus and silver eyes that danced with a mischief I would never dare share.
She was a replica of her mother’s beauty, but none of the Luna’s coldness lived in Mavy’s smile.
She was dressed in a white crisp blouse and charcoal skirt—the Academy uniform.
She wrapped her arms around my waist, a show of affection that always warmed me.
“Good morning, Adea! Thank you for breakfast!” She pressed a quick kiss to my cheek.
“I made your favorite,” I said, forcing a lightness into my voice I didn’t feel. It was easy to love Mavy; she was the only part of this family that didn’t feel like a threat.
Twins were rare among our kind and thought to be a gift. They were a balance of scales. Mavy was the youngest and the light; Shane was the shadow. My blood pounded in my ears and every cell in my body stood to attention as he walked in, a monolith of dark intent.
He knew I was defenseless. At twenty years old, I was nature’s mistake—a human-shaped nothing in a house full of predators.
I had no beast to snap back at his, no internal fire to ward off his ice.
No wolf meant no rank. A wolf’s strength determined where you stood in the pack hierarchy—your ability to fight, lead, protect.
Without one, I had no status beyond what Jaxon granted me by choice.
Shane eyed me like a toy he hadn’t quite finished breaking yet.
He had his father’s height and that same ink-black hair, but his eyes were voids—flat, black, and endless. Something slithered in their depths, and some old, stupid instinct in me wanted to look closer anyway.
He smirked as he passed by, but it never reached his eyes. He didn’t speak—he didn’t have to. He took his seat, his presence filling the room until the walls seemed to shrink. He was a mirror of his father’s power, but with a cruelty that was entirely his own.
Gabe nudged me, effectively breaking the spell, a warning to start plating before the Alpha arrived. I moved quickly, filling their plates with the heavy, traditional fare that fueled their strength. I’d placed them on the table, ready to retreat when the door opened.
Alpha Jaxon and Luna Emilia walked in with the grace of apex hunters. Ten years hadn’t touched them; they appeared as timeless as the white walls of their castle.
“You don’t need to leave, Adea,” Jaxon said, his voice a low rumble of command dressed up as a suggestion. “Sit. Eat with us.”
It wasn’t a question. Gabe strode over. My hands trembled slightly as I took the plate from him. There were open seats by the Alpha and Luna. As much as I tried to avoid Shane at all costs, the best choice was the one wedged directly between the twins.