CHAPTER 9
I'm back! Thank you for the love and patience, Dreamers. Here's the next chapter. Let me know what you think!
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Mia sat curled in the corner of Daniel's chamber long after he had stormed out. Her body still trembled from the mark, her throat ached where his fangs had pierced, and the scent of him clung to her skin like chains she couldn't wash away.
For hours, she couldn't move. Couldn't breathe. His words replayed again and again in her head. "I never wanted this."
Her chest cracked with each echo.
At first, she wanted to cry. To scream. To beg the moon, why would fate give her a mate who despised her so fiercely? But no sound came. Only silence. Only the dull throb of her heart.
And then, something inside her shifted.
The pain didn't vanish, but it hardened.
Like molten metal poured into her bones, it solidified into something more substantial.
She had survived worse: years of being mocked, years of bowing and enduring every cruel hand that shoved her lower.
She had survived being dragged here, humiliated, treated as less than dirt.
And now she was bound to an Alpha who would rather destroy himself than admit he needed her.
Fine.
Her wolf stirred for the first time in days, restless, fierce, no longer caged. The mark burned, but with it came strength; a hum in her blood, a fire in her veins. She touched the scar on her neck and shuddered, not in shame this time, but in realization.
He marked me. He regrets it. But he cannot undo it.
Her lips curved into the faintest, bitter smile.
For so long, she had been nothing but prey. A servant. A victim of fate's cruelty. But not anymore.
If Daniel thought she would break, he was wrong. If the pack thought she was nothing, she would show them otherwise. If her mate despised her bond... she would grow strong enough to make him regret ever underestimating her.
Slowly, Mia rose from the cold floor, her body aching but her spine straighter than ever before. Her wolf whispered inside her, a low, steady growl of defiance.
You are not nothing. You are Luna.
She pressed a hand to her chest, where her heart still raced wildly, and whispered to herself:
"I belong to no one's shadow. Not even his."
That night, Mia did not sleep. The girl who had entered Daniel's territory in chains was gone. The woman who would rise from those chains - his equal, his Luna- was only just awakening.