The fated hunter wolf a.., p.5
The Fated Hunter Wolf: A Rejected Mate Shifter Romance, page 5
Once upon a time, the Orions didn’t just lead a pack—we commanded an empire. Multiple sub-packs spread across territories that stretched from mountain peaks to coastal shores, each with its own alpha who answered to our Great Alpha. We were the heart that pumped life through all the Shadow Moon packs, the law that kept order, the strength that protected the weak.
Other packs sent tribute. Begged for alliances. Traveled hundreds of miles just to petition for our wisdom.
Now we were a cautionary tale whispered around distant campfires.
The Great Separation had gutted us. Within a few generations, it had carved out everything that made us legendary and left us scrambling to hold on to scraps. Logan’s victory over Grayson should have been our resurrection story—the moment the mighty Orions reclaimed their birthright. Instead, it had felt like winning a single battle while the real war continued to rage on around us.
Yesterday’s brawl between pack members had put Blair in the hospital three doors down, proof we were still bleeding internally. Heraclids and Orions trying to coexist, old grudges simmering beneath forced smiles. Peace held together with duct tape and bandages.
The other Shadow Moon packs weren’t exactly lining up to kiss our rings. Hard to command respect when you could barely keep your own wolves from tearing each other’s throats out.
We’d tried everything short of sacrificing goats to the Shadow Moon Goddess. Rituals that left us drained and disappointed, offerings that vanished into smoke without delivering miracles—precious metals, first hunts, even blood from our own veins poured onto ancient stones.
Some desperate souls had crawled to witches, trading pride for promises that turned to nothing the moment coins changed hands. I’d watched grown men return from those encounters looking hollow, knowing they’d been played.
The whispers had started in earnest a few years after the Great Separation, but had gotten worse when our parents were killed. The Goddess has truly abandoned us. Like we’re cursed. Pack members would stop talking when Logan entered a room, their conversations dying like snuffed candles.
Turned out, the whispers were right about the cursed part. Leave it to that cryptic bitch Mariyah to give us a name for our slow extinction. Curse. Our bloodline was withering on the vine, every generation producing fewer pups. Bonds that should have been unbreakable snapped like overloaded cables.
The Great Separation hadn’t just shattered pack alliances—it had ripped something essential out of our DNA. Alphas dying young or losing their minds to the kind of feral madness that left them nothing but monsters wearing familiar faces. Everything our ancestors built, crumbling to dust while we watched, helpless as children. Then the curse that made Orion wither to an almost forgotten and lost pack.
But if Eve had conceived…
“Why didn’t you tell me?” It sounded more accusing than I meant it to be.
Logan kept his face buried in his hands as if he could hide from reality. “Because I didn’t know. Neither of us did.”
“How did you not know—” I stopped myself. Even if the human didn’t want to accept that a pregnancy had a occurred, the wolf always knew. Logan and Eve were our alphas—more than anyone, they’d have known almost from the moment of conception. That’s the way it had always been. Though I shouldn’t have been surprised, since nothing about our situation followed normal rules anymore.
“She said it felt like someone whispering a secret into her visions, a sense that the child was there, then it was snatched back before she could understand the words.” His voice cracked like breaking glass. “Like the pregnancy was there and then gone.”
Something crashed, the sound echoing down the hallway. We both went rigid, predator instincts flaring, but silence swallowed the sound. Just us, trapped in this whitewashed purgatory while the most important person in my brother’s world fought battles we couldn’t reach.
I studied Logan’s profile, noting the new lines around his eyes, the way his shoulders carried a weight that hadn’t been there six months ago. Being alpha had always been Logan’s destiny, but he’d inherited a broken crown and a dying kingdom. Every day was a balancing act between holding together what remained and somehow building toward a future that seemed increasingly impossible.
And now this. Eve, his fated mate, his anchor in the storm—experiencing something none of us understood.
If we lost her…
I shoved the thought away before it could take root. Logan needed me, his beta, to be strong, not spiraling into catastrophic scenarios.
The door opened, cutting through my thoughts. Anwen drifted in like an ancient oracle, all jingling jewelry and layered fabrics that seemed to contain stories from a dozen different eras. Raina followed, her practical energy so different from Anwen’s mystical vibe that they might have been from different species entirely.
Logan exploded out of his chair before they’d crossed the threshold.
“How is she?” The words detonated from his chest. “Tell me everything, and don’t you dare cushion it with pretty lies.”
Anwen blinked at the raw desperation bleeding through his alpha mask, but she didn’t retreat. Good for her. Lesser wolves had cowered when faced with Logan at full intensity, but this Heraclid elder held her ground.
Raina radiated her particular brand of elder authority that could make grown wolves sit and behave. “She’s stable,” she said. “Logan, she wasn’t pregnant. Not in any conventional sense.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Logan’s hands fisted in his hair like he could physically tear the confusion out of his skull. “Are you calling her a liar?”
I rose to my feet, one hand clamping down on his shoulder. My wolf recognized the warning signs—his control shredding, his alpha instincts screaming at him to tear apart whatever threatened his mate. The problem was, you couldn’t fight phantom pregnancies with teeth and claws.
“Easy, brother.” I kept my voice low, steady. “Let them explain before you demolish the building.”
For a heartbeat, I thought he might take a swing at me. His wolf was right there, pressing against his skin, demanding action when there was no clear target. Instead, he spun and drove his fist through the wall with enough force to send splinters flying.
Anwen jumped backward, her hands flying to her chest. Raina just sighed—she’d seen alpha meltdowns before.
“Outstanding.” I surveyed the fresh hole in the drywall. “Add renovation to our ever-growing list of responsibilities. At this rate, we should just build the new settlement out of reinforced steel.”
Through our bond, I pushed what little calm I could scrape together into the chaos of his emotions. You’re losing it, and that’s not helping Eve. She needs her alpha in control, not having a breakdown in a hospital waiting room. Whatever is going on, we’ll figure it out. You and me. Like we always do.
His shoulders dropped fractionally, the immediate violence ebbing. I hate when you’re the voice of reason.
Yeah, well, someone has to keep you from punching your way through the entire hospital. Save some walls for the rest of us to destroy.
That earned me a grunt that almost qualified as amusement.
“My apologies,” Logan said to the elders, though his voice was gravelly enough to pave a road. “Anwen, you’ve been nothing but helpful since joining us, and I’m acting like a rabid animal. That’s not who I usually am.”
“You’re acting like a terrified mate,” Anwen corrected gently, her weathered face creasing with understanding. “Which, given what we’ve discovered, seems entirely appropriate.”
The tension in the room eased from imminent violence to merely simmering disaster. Progress, of sorts.
“There’s magic at work in Eve,” Anwen continued. “Something that reaches deeper than flesh, deeper than pack bonds. Ancient magic I’ve only read about in texts that predate the Great Separation.”
“Define ancient,” Logan demanded.
The look that passed between Anwen and Raina made my wolf pace restlessly in my chest. Whatever they’d discovered had rattled them—two of the most experienced healers in our territory—and that was saying something.
“Oracle magic,” Anwen said finally. “Not the diluted version we’ve seen in recent generations. This connects directly to the first wolves, the bloodlines that existed before the Great Separation fractured everything.”
My blood turned to ice water. There was only one bloodline that old, only one pack that predated the others under the Shadow Moon.
“You’re talking about Crux.”
“Crux wolves died out centuries ago,” Logan said, but the words carried about as much conviction as a prayer in a hurricane.
“Did they?” Anwen’s eyes glittered with a knowledge that made my skin crawl. “Or did they simply learn survival meant invisibility?”
I felt the exact moment understanding hit Logan. His face went white.
The pieces slammed together with the subtlety of a freight train. Eve’s impossible visions that came true with terrifying accuracy. Her connection to magic that defied every rule we knew. The way she’d always seemed slightly other, even when we’d believed she was nothing more than Grayson’s oracle.
“She’s Crux,” I repeated.
“The ancient Crux magic awakened when she bonded with you,” Raina confirmed to Logan. “Her blood recognizes an alpha powerful enough to be trusted with its secrets.” She paused, glancing at Anwen before continuing. “When I touched her during the examination, the magic threw me against the wall hard enough to crack the stone.”
So that was the crash we’d heard earlier.
Logan went statue-still, and through our bond, I felt his world reorganizing itself around this new reality. “And the curse Mariyah spoke of, the one on Orion?”
“… is fighting her,” Anwen finished. “Her body wanted to conceive, but something is actively preventing Orion bloodlines from continuing. The curse recognized the threat a Crux-Orion child would represent and struck back.”
The room seemed to contract around us, squeezing the air from my lungs. Six years of failed pregnancies in the pack suddenly made horrifying sense. We weren’t just unlucky—we were under deliberate attack.
“How do we break it?” Logan’s question came out flat, deadly.
“The same way all curses are broken,” Raina said quietly. “By confronting the source.”
I watched understanding dawn across Logan’s face like sunlight breaking through storm clouds, and my wolf began to howl before my conscious mind caught up.
“Mariyah,” Logan breathed. “At the bonfire. She said there would be no peace for Orion until the lost threads were woven back together.”
My chest tightened. “The twins.”
“Nash and Wyatt.” Logan’s voice carried new steel. “We find them, we break the curse.”
The certainty in his words should have been comforting. Instead, all I could think about was her. The mysterious woman who’d invaded my dreams with visions of my brothers, chained and broken. Who’d claimed knowledge she had no right to possess. Who’d disappeared like smoke before I could demand answers, leaving me with nightmares and a hunger that wouldn’t leave me alone.
Sable. Even thinking her name made my wolf pace restlessly, torn between desire and suspicion.
“We gather at dawn—the inner circle,” Logan said. “We figure out our next steps and we make this happen.”
I looked at my brother, hoping he couldn’t see the torment going on between my wolf and I. “I know where to start.”
8
SABLE
My feet moved in a rhythm that was older than thought, weaving through the trees as though the forest had carved a path just for me. It was a moon was bright, and I was thankful for it. It would keep certain enemies away while we wolves would have an advantage.
I let my eyes adjust. Astrid and I had made our plans, prepared what little we had to bring with us, and set out in the middle of the night. The cool air slid across my skin, alive with the scent of pine, damp earth, and the indescribable pull of the distant Orion border.
“I don’t get it,” Astrid said, her voice cutting through the quiet night like the snap of a twig. “You insist for ages we can’t go to Orion lands, and then you flip a switch and we’re taking off with a single bag on our backs?”
I didn’t answer right away.
“I adjusted my priorities,” I muttered, stepping over a moss-covered root. Mariyah had been the push to leave, but even she couldn’t have known I felt I was going to die if I stayed away from Orion any longer. The bond was growing in me like a cancer, and I had to snuff it out before it took me whole.
As we got closer to the border, the burning started to subside. I knew what that meant, and I didn’t like it. Just being closer to him relieved the burning in my veins.
Ugh.
Astrid snorted behind me. “That’s a fancy way of saying you caved.”
I didn’t bother replying. Let her think what she wants. It’s better than telling her I’m being hunted and to protect us I have to address a bond with a soulless wolf.
The forest stretched wide and wild, shadows pooling thick under the towering pines. The moonlight barely pierced the canopy, but to me, everything was hyperfocused. I could see the subtle flicker of movement far ahead, a bird taking flight from its perch. Further still, the faint indentation of a game trail winding its way toward the Orion border.
“There,” I said, pointing toward the trail.
Astrid squinted. “What? I don’t see—”
“It’s there,” I said firmly, stepping off the path.
Astrid jogged to keep up, her boots crunching over dry leaves. “How do you do that? My wolf didn’t catch it.”
I shrugged. “Practice.”
She huffed, clearly unsatisfied with the answer. “Right, practice. Sure.”
“Shh,” I hissed.
My steps were soundless, even on the brittle undergrowth. Astrid, meanwhile, stomped and shuffled, her every movement a clumsy announcement.
“Do you float when I’m not looking?” she muttered, trying to match my pace. “No one moves like that.”
“You’re just loud.”
Ahead, a faint ripple of energy brushed against my senses. My body tensed, my awareness sharpening. Something was there—several somethings. They weren’t close enough to be a threat yet, but they were moving. And they weren’t prey.
“Stop,” I said quietly, holding up a hand.
Astrid froze. “What is it?”
“Five of them,” I murmured, tilting my head toward the north. “A mile out. Maybe closer than that.”
Her eyes widened. “You felt that? How do you—”
“Quiet,” I snapped, cutting her off and leaving no room for argument. I stopped and turned to face her. “Astrid, I need you to stop asking questions and start listening. You’re loud, you’re distracted, and that makes us vulnerable. If you want to get through Orion territory unnoticed, you need to learn how to move.”
Her mouth opened as if to argue, but she sighed and nodded, her shoulders drooping slightly.
The forest closed in around us again. I kept my senses open, scanning for the dangers that lay ahead—not just for myself, but for her.
Because no matter how much Astrid could annoy me, she was still mine to protect.
The cold hit me like a creeping shadow, wrapping around my limbs and settling deep in my core. A familiar and unnerving cost of using that other part of myself, the part I never spoke of, not even to Astrid. The part of me I feared was the reason why I was being hunted now.
I paused mid-step, closing my eyes. My wolf stirred, restless beneath the surface, eager to take over. I reached for her, pulling her warmth forward, commanding it to fill me.
Warm me, I whispered from within.
She growled in response, a low, eager sound that rippled through my chest. Heat rolled over me, spreading outward like fire chasing away the frost. My fingers flexed, and for a moment, the cold receded entirely, replaced by the steady burn of my wolf’s energy.
I opened my eyes, finding Astrid watching me. Her brows knitted together, I could smell her curiosity from ten feet away.
“We shift now,” I said, brushing past her unspoken question.
Astrid blinked, hesitating. “Here? We’re not that close to the border.”
“The sun is rising. We shift. Now.”
I didn’t tell her the real reason: I needed to feel Rhys, to know where he was, to sense him in the air and the earth beneath my paws. Whether I wanted to go to him or avoid him entirely, I didn’t know. But I needed to know if he was there.
I undressed and dropped to my knees, the shift tearing through me in release. Bones snapped and reshaped, fur rippling over my skin, and when I stood on all fours, the world exploded into sharp clarity. I slung my bag around my neck as the forest sang with life, every sound and scent amplified to perfection.
Astrid undressed and followed with a slower shift, her wolf smaller but nimble. She glanced at me, her head tilting in the way it always did when she had a question she didn’t know how to ask.
I didn’t wait. I leapt forward, the freedom of my wolf filling every part of me. The wind rushed past, carrying a familiar scent that sent my wolf surging.
Rhys.
He was close. And we were getting closer.
Astrid followed, her paws thudding behind me. I didn’t slow. The pull was too strong, and my wolf wasn’t about to resist.
The boundary was invisible, but the moment we crossed into Orion land, it was like stepping into a different world. The air was heavier, charged with an energy that prickled at my fur and sank into my skin. The scents were deeper, more layered—earth and pine and the unmistakable musk of wolves. One scent stood out.
Rhys.
