3. Milo
— ? —
Milo
A Week Ago
The moon is full, and my father is dead, and I’m so tired of being king.
The great hall empties slowly after the council session. I remain at the head of the table, my father’s chair, now mine, a throne I never wanted this soon, and watch the pack file out in pairs and clusters, their whispered conversations cutting off whenever they glance my way.
Poor boy, their eyes say. Too young. Too raw. How will he lead us?
I don’t know. I’ve been asking myself the same question for three weeks.
“Your Majesty.”
My beta, Cassius, hovers at the door. Old enough to have served my father, young enough to have trained beside me. His face is carefully neutral.
“The perimeter team has returned. Nothing unusual.”
“And the eastern border?”
“Quiet.”
The eastern border. Where my father died. An accident, they called it, a rockslide on a hiking path he’d walked a thousand times, the kind of stupid, ordinary death that shouldn’t happen to a king. But the land beyond our borders doesn’t care about crowns. Neither do falling rocks.
“Thank you, Cassius. You’re dismissed.”
He goes. They all go. And I’m left alone in a room that still smells like my father’s tobacco and the particular cedar of his favorite chair and the grief that’s settled into every corner like dust.
I push away from the table and walk.
The compound sprawls across the mountainside, a collection of buildings that have grown over centuries from a single hall to a small village.
We call it the compound; outsiders, the few who know we exist, call it a cult.
They’re not entirely wrong. We keep to ourselves.
We follow old ways. We worship a goddess most packs have forgotten.
The goddess’s favorites, we’ve been called. Her chosen pack. The ones who never stopped believing.
I wonder, sometimes, if she’d still choose us if she could see me now. Twenty-nine years old, crowned three weeks ago, barely holding the threads of a pack that’s starting to fray.
My phone buzzes. My mother.
Genevieve: How are you, sweetheart?
I don’t answer. I’ll tell her I’m fine later, when I can make it sound convincing.
The path winds uphill to the old temple, a stone circle our ancestors built before the first house, before the great hall, before any of us knew what we’d become. The moon hangs heavy overhead, fat and silver, and I feel her watching. The goddess. Always watching.
“You’re brooding,” says a voice like bells and broken glass. “I can smell the self-pity from the celestial realm.”
I don’t startle. I’m used to her now.
“I’m reflecting.”
“You’re brooding,” the Moon Goddess repeats, and she steps out of the light like she was always there, luminous and silver-bright and annoying as hell.
She looks different every time, tonight she’s young, ageless, with white hair and eyes like mirrors and a smile that’s seen civilizations rise and fall.
“Your father never brooded. He’d just punch something. ”
“My father isn’t here.”
“No.” Her smile dims, just slightly. “He isn’t.”
We stand in silence. The moon shifts overhead.
“Tomorrow is your birthday,” she says.
“I’m aware.”
“Thirty. The naming year.” She tilts her head, studying me. “Are you ready?”
The naming. When a lycan turns thirty, if they’re fortunate enough to hear her voice, the goddess names their knotting partner, the one chosen to stand beside them during the ritual that grants power, strength, a prosperous life. For most lycans, it’s a gift. A blessing.
For a king, it’s a requirement. The ritual deepens the root of royal power. My father did it. His father before him. Every Ashevale king since the first one has stood under the full moon with their partner and received the goddess’s blessing.
The ritual is in one month.
“I don’t have a choice,” I say. “Ready or not.”
“Free will,” the goddess sighs. “So inconvenient. Sleep well, pup. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
She vanishes. The moonlight stays.
I don’t sleep.
***
The naming happens at midnight.
I’m alone in my chambers when the light comes, silver flooding through the window, impossibly bright, light that doesn’t exist outside of dreams. My lycan rises beneath my skin, alert and eager, and I know before she speaks that this is it.
“Miles Draven,” the goddess says, and her voice is everywhere, inside my head and outside it, ancient and amused. “King of Ashevale. The youngest in three centuries, poor thing. Are you ready for your gift?”
“I’m ready.”
“Such confidence.” I hear her smile. “Let’s see if you keep it.”
The light pulses.
“Your knotting partner,” she announces, “the one I have chosen to stand beside you in the ritual, the one whose name I inscribe in moonlight-”
She pauses. Dramatic, as always.
“ - is Lindsay Crowe.”
The name lands in my chest like a brand.
Lindsay Crowe.
I don’t know her. I’ve never heard of her. But her name is already carved into something deep inside me, and my lycan is howling with recognition I can’t explain.
“Well?” the goddess asks. “Aren’t you going to thank me?”
“Who is she?”
“Ah.” The light flickers, almost playful. “That’s for you to discover, pup. Happy hunting.”
She vanishes.
I don’t move for a long time.
***
The trackers return three days later.
The council convenes in the great hall, my father’s oldest advisors, gray-muzzled and skeptical, watching me with the same cautious concern they’ve worn since the crown touched my head. I sit at the head of the table and try to look like I belong there.
“Your Majesty,” my head tracker says. He’s a lean wolf named Aldric, efficient and humorless. “We’ve found the female.”
“And?”
He hesitates. The room holds its breath.
“She’s… human, Your Majesty.”
The silence is deafening.
“Human,” Elder Thorne repeats. He’s eighty-seven, which means he knew my great-grandfather and has never once been impressed by anything I’ve done. “You’re certain?”
“Entirely, Elder.” Aldric’s jaw is tight. “She attends Ashevale College. Final year of a literature degree. Twenty-two years old. No lycan blood. No supernatural heritage of any kind.”
“This is unprecedented,” another elder mutters. “The goddess has never named a human-”
“She has,” my mother interrupts. She’s sitting beside me, Isla on her other side, and her voice is calm but firm. “Twice in recorded history. Both times during periods of great change for the pack.”
“With respect, Your Highness, those were centuries ago-”
“And the goddess moves in centuries.” My mother’s eyes flash. “Or have we forgotten that?”
The council rumbles. I feel the tension rising, fear disguised as disapproval, uncertainty dressed up as tradition, and I know if I don’t take control now, this will spiral.
“The goddess named her,” I say. My voice cuts through the noise. “That’s the end of the discussion.”
“Your Majesty, surely we should consider alternatives-”
“There are no alternatives.” I stand. My lycan surfaces just enough to flash gold in my eyes, to remind them who they’re arguing with. “The ritual is in one month. The goddess named Lindsay Crowe. I’ll find her, I’ll court her, and I’ll stand beside her under the full moon. That’s not negotiable.”
The room goes quiet.
“How?” Elder Thorne asks finally. “How do you propose to court a human woman who has no idea our world exists? Who would have no reason to believe any of it? You have four weeks, Your Majesty. That’s barely enough time to introduce yourself, let alone explain-”
“I know,” I cut him off. “That’s why I’m going to teach.”
More silence. Then-
“Teach?”
“At the college.” I’ve been thinking about this for two days, turning the problem over like a puzzle. “I have the credentials. Dead languages, mythology, ancient texts - I’m more qualified than half their faculty. If I can get close to her as a professor…”
“You want to be her teacher?”
“I want to have access. Time. A reason to speak with her every day.” I meet Elder Thorne’s eyes. “It’s the only way.”
The council exchanges looks. My mother, beside me, squeezes my hand.
“It’s insane,” Isla whispers. “I love it.”
“All in favor,” I say, “of pursuing this course of action.”
The votes come slow. Reluctant. But they come.
The goddess named her. Nobody argues with the goddess.
***
One week later, I’m standing in a campus library watching two vicious girls torment the woman I’ve been looking for.
I find her by scent. Nobody warns you about that part of being named, you don’t just get her name. You get her essence. The moment I stepped onto this campus, my lycan locked onto a trace in the air and followed it like a lifeline.
To here. To her.
She’s small, shorter than I expected, with dark curly hair escaping a messy bun, a pencil stuck through it like she forgot it was there.
Her eyes are big and brown, the color of autumn, and she’s holding a book to her chest like a shield while the two blonde demons in front of her mock her for existing.
“ - werewolf porn-”
“ - ADHD thing-”
My lycan surges. Protect. Claim. MINE.
I step forward before I make the conscious decision to move.
The confrontation is quick. The girls flee. And then she’s looking at me, flushed and defiant and so goddamn beautiful it makes my teeth ache.
Lindsay Crowe.
I can’t think. My lycan is howling. My human brain is screaming at me to be calm, be collected, be the king who plans and strategizes-
She stumbles.
I catch her.
And then her scent hits me fully, warm and sweet and home, and I lose every rational thought I’ve ever had.
I bury my face in her neck, breathing her in, tasting her skin because I have to, because my lycan won’t accept anything less, and the sound that comes out of me is pure animal.
“Mate.”
She goes rigid. “What?”
Reality crashes back.
What am I doing? This isn’t part of the plan. It isn’t anything like the plan. I’m supposed to be her professor, gain her trust slowly, explain everything carefully, not assault her in the stacks like a feral creature.
“I have to go,” I manage, and I tear myself away before my lycan can do anything else stupid.
I make it to the parking lot before the goddess speaks.
“That,” she says, silver laughter in her voice, “was embarrassing, pup.”
I don’t answer. I’m too busy trying to remember how to breathe.
Lindsay Crowe. My knotting partner. Named by the goddess herself.
And my mate. My fated mate, the word I didn’t let myself think until now, until her taste was on my tongue and her heartbeat was in my ears and my lycan was screaming MINE MINE MINE.
I wasn’t supposed to find my mate. The goddess names partners, not soulmates. But there she was, the same person, both names written in moonlight: partner and mate.
And I’ve just licked her throat in a library.
The first lecture is worse.
I spend all week preparing, filing credentials and claiming an office and writing a syllabus, and I practice my introduction in the mirror until it sounds professional, professorial, nothing like a man about to combust.
Then she walks in.
She’s tired, I can see it in the shadows under her eyes, and she’s wearing a sweater that’s too big for her and there’s still a pencil in her hair and I want to cross the room and pull her into my arms and never let go.
Focus.
“Good morning, class. My name is Miles Draven-”
I make it seven minutes into my lecture on wolf mythology before someone touches her.
A boy. Tap on her shoulder. Casual. Innocent. His hand on my mate’s body, and my lycan doesn’t care about context or innocence or the forty witnesses-
“MINE.”
The growl escapes before I can stop it. My eyes flash gold. The room freezes.
Shit.
I recover. Somehow. I pivot to possessiveness in wolf myth, territory and bonding, the academic explanation for my very personal breakdown, and by the time I dismiss them, I’ve almost convinced myself it was intentional.
But she knows. I see it when she looks at me: the recognition, the confusion, the same charged pull that’s dragged at us both since the library.
She stays after class.
We talk. I tell her to go.
She goes.
And I stand in the empty lecture hall, gripping the edge of my desk hard enough to dent it, while the goddess laughs in my head.
“Partner AND mate,” she muses. “The same name. Do you know how rare that is, pup?”
“You did this on purpose.”
“I do everything on purpose.” Her voice softens, just slightly. “She’s magnificent. You’re welcome.”
I don’t answer. I’m watching the door she disappeared through, her scent still lingering in the air, her name still burning in my chest.
I have four weeks to make a human woman fall in love with me.
And I’m already so far gone for her I can barely see straight.
The goddess is right.
I’m going to go insane before this month is over.