Sage POVA Few Days Later… The moon was full, high in the sky, it casted a silver glow over the clearing as the crowd gathered. The altar was dressed in white and gold, the traditional colors of unity. Lanterns floated above the space, flickering like stars caught in motion. The scent of night-blooming roses filled the air, mingling with the sound of low drums and hushed whispers. It was all in preparation for the Mating ceremony of I and Bella. We wanted to heed to the warnings of the revelation. Everything was perfect. Except she wasn’t here. I had been waiting for some time now but for some reason, Bella had not shown up. I stood at the altar with my hands clenched at my sides, waiting. Heart thudding. Breath tight in my chest. My eyes scanned the crowd for any sign of her. But Bella wasn't anywhere around. The pack had gathered in silence, excitement humming through the air as they anticipated the Mating ceremony of their alpha. Elders, warriors, even pups—all of them stoo
Sage POVThe place was now empty, flower petals scattered by the wind. The altar still stood—mocking me. The moon hung overhead, full and bright, but its beauty was meaningless.She didn’t come.Guards whispered and avoided my gaze as they filtered out, clearing the area. Malrick stood near the tree line, watching me. He took a step forward.“She’s not coming, Sage,” he said gently.I didn’t answer.“She made her choice.”Still, I said nothing.After a few seconds, Malrick sighed and gave a small nod before turning away. His footsteps faded with the others.But I didn’t move. I couldn’t.Bella knew what was at stake. She knew about the mark. The Blood Moon. The Sentinel. Everything. She wouldn’t just walk away… not after all we’ve faced. Not after we finally began to understand each other again.I waited with hope that she'll show up.The moon began to sink, its light shifting from silver to pale.Still… nothing.Then I felt a snap in my head. Like a bone breaking—sharp, sudden. Not p
Bella POV"She's waking up.""Shut up. Keep your voice down."A groan left my throat before my eyes even opened. The scent of moss and damp earth hit me hard. My head throbbed. My wrists burned. My body felt like it had been crushed and left in the cold."Where—" I muttered, blinking against the faint rays of the rising sun filtering through the trees. The lake shimmered nearby. Water lapped gently at the edges.“She's alive,” someone whispered again. Footsteps retreated fast.I tried sitting up, but my entire back screamed. Then it hit me—last night. The mating ceremony. The preparations. I was in the room. Someone came in. The scent had been sweet, but heavy. I turned too late. A sting in my neck—"Shit," I gasped, scrambling to my knees. The hem of the silk robe I’d been dressed in for the rite was soaked and torn. “No. No. No.”I staggered to my feet, swaying like a drunk. My wolf stirred weakly inside me, still sluggish from whatever had knocked me out. The packhouse was beyond t
Bella's POVHe blinked at me. "Are you that hungry?""Yeah." My voice cracked. "I haven’t eaten since yesterday. I just… I need something. Please."He studied me for another long second. Then he grunted. "Come on. I’ll throw you on an easy job."I followed him to the back where he handed me gloves and a spray bottle that smelled like hospital-grade chemicals. “You clean the corner café down the street. Mop, wipe, trash. They close at ten. You finish before midnight, bring the key back here.”I nodded quickly and grabbed everything.“Don’t steal nothing,” he added. “I got cameras.”I was already halfway out the door.The café wasn’t far. Small place with dusty floors and sticky tables. The cook was just locking up when I got there. He barely looked at me as he handed me the key.“Don’t break anything,” he muttered."I won’t," I said.When I was alone inside, I dropped my bag and started scrubbing. It felt weird—almost unreal—to be wiping down floors instead of dodging guards or prepari
Sage POVI pulled away at the last second, throwing myself sideways into a tree. The trunk cracked from the force. Tree bark embedded into my shoulder, but I barely felt it.“You’re not this. You don’t hunt like this.”But the beast growled in response—my voice, warped and guttural.A war was happening beneath my skin. It was terrifying. I dropped to all fours, panting. The moon was still above, glowing red with warning. My reflection shimmered in a puddle beside me. The creature stared back. Black fur. Twisted limbs. Silver-ringed eyes.Still me.But not.“Stop,” I growled, forcing the word through my muzzle. “This isn’t who we are.”My voice was low. Distorted. But it was there.For a split second, the beast stilled.Then it growled back—from within.I clutched my head. Sharp claws dug into my scalp but it didn’t break my skin. A laugh, but not mine—echoed in my head.“You let her go,” it sneered. “You lost her. So now you lose me too.”“No.”I slammed a fist into the ground.Dirt
Malrick POV“Shut the door,” I snapped the moment the last guard stepped into the room.Ronan kicked it shut with a hind leg before shifting back to his human form. The others followed suit, panting, bruised, and shaken. Some collapsed onto the benches lining the wall, others paced. I stayed standing, facing them, arms crossed behind my back.“That wasn’t Sage,” one of them muttered.“No,” I replied calmly, “that was a monster.”“You sure it was him, Malrick?” Ronan asked. “His scent… it was off. Mixed. Almost like—”“I know my Alpha,” I cut in. “Even in that twisted form. That thing was Sage.”“But he didn’t attack us,” another guard, Kael, said, rubbing his arm where fur had been singed from the brush fire Sage had accidentally triggered. “He ran. Fast. Like a beast with a death sentence.”“He didn’t need to attack,” I said slowly. “Not this time.”Ronan scowled. “Then what do you think he was doing?”I leaned forward, voice low. “Watching. Waiting. Testing how far he could go befor
Bella’s POVIt's a new day as a cleaner and still trying to figure out what I'm going to do with my life. The mop handle dug into my blistered palm as I wrung it one more time into the rusty bucket. My back screamed. My feet burned. The stench of bleach mixed with old food and something I didn’t even want to identify clung to my clothes like a second skin. Another day. Another shift that felt like punishment.“Girl, you missed a spot under table six,” my supervisor barked from across the room.“I got it,” I muttered, forcing my body toward the shadowy corner of the cafeteria.The mop sloshed loudly in the puddle, it was the only sound aside from the faint hum of the dishwasher in the kitchen. My hands were trembling again. I hadn’t eaten since yesterday, and my wolf—though suppressed in this foreign human town—whined low inside me.A voice near the door made me stiffen.“That girl’s weird. Doesn’t even talk. She just shows up, works like a mule, and disappears.”“I heard she sleeps i
Bella’s POV “Keep it to yourself,” I said quickly. “Please.”“Hey, no judgment here.” She held up her hands. “If anything, you’ve just made things more interesting around here.”We sat in silence for a bit. Then she said, “You hungry?”I laughed softly. “Always.”“I saved a pack of crackers from dinner. Wanna split?”“Please.”We shared the crackers like they were a royal feast. It wasn’t much, but sitting beside someone who didn’t look at me like I was insane or dangerous… it made things a little easier to bear.That night, I lay on the bunk staring at the ceiling, listening to June’s steady breathing. For the first time in days, I didn’t feel completely alone.And I had no idea what tomorrow would bring. But I knew I’d face it. Somehow.***Sunlight spilled through the window, warming my face. I blinked, groaning softly as my body reminded me of every ache from the day before. The mattress beneath me wasn’t soft, but it beat the cold concrete of an alley.“Rise and shine, sleepyhea
Liam POVThe wind in Norway felt really good and homy.Every morning, I told myself I’d get used to it. The quietness, the open roads, the way people nodded politely and kept to themselves. But after nearly two months, I still couldn’t breathe right in this place.“Try to blend in,” Harper had said. “Stay off the radar.”“Hard to do when your instincts scream every time a branch cracks.” I always replied. I walked to the edge of the woods again. There was no particular reason. Just the usual scent check, energy scan, terrain memory. The soil here held no pack. No old blood. No buried bones. But the wind was wrong.It felt like someone was watching. I stopped at the base of a twisted pine and sniffed the air but there was nothing. Just frost and tree sap and sea fog.But I didn’t imagine it. I never imagined it.Bella was already home when I returned. She stood in the kitchen in her scrubs, sleeves pushed to her elbows, hair tied back. A soft glow followed her now. Subtle, but I could
Bella’s POV I went to bed quietly without thinking too much about the previous day. In a few hours, it was already dawn. The sky was still dark when I slipped out of the house.No creaking floors, no whispers of magic, no Liam lurking by the window with his arms crossed and jaw clenched. Just the sound of my boots crunching soft frost as I made my way down the gravel path toward the clinic.I didn’t want them to wake up. Not when something inside me had started to shift—slow, quiet, but impossible to ignore.I caught my reflection in a dark shop window on the way. Same face. Same eyes. But there was something in my posture, in the way I moved. Like I was walking toward something instead of running away from it.The clinic buzzed with chatter when I arrived. Coffee cups, paperwork, a few yawning nurses brushing off the last traces of sleep. I smiled, nodded, and kept my head down. As usual.“Bella,” Sofia, the charge nurse, waved me over. “Room five. Triage.”I tossed my bag into the
Bella’s POV“Don’t speak unless asked. Don’t stare. And for Moon’s sake, don’t howl.” Harper said to me with a stern voice. I didn't object to what she was saying because I was too disoriented to make any decision for myself. It all felt like I was on a borrowed life. Nothing that had happened since I left the pack made any sense. How I went from belonging to a pack and being no different from a rogue felt frustrating. Harper shoved a dark blue passport into my hand as we neared the airport gates. Her voice was steady, but her eyes flicked around like she expected someone to jump us before we hit the terminal. June handed Liam a small black backpack, zipped shut and stiff with forged documents.“Where did you even get these?” I asked, eyeing the name printed inside the booklet. Annabelle Moon. Born in Toronto. Age twenty-four. Blood type O negative.“Don’t worry about it,” Harper muttered. “A friend of a friend who owes me two favors and one broken kneecap.”I raised an eyebrow. “C
Bella’s POV The street lights flickered above us as Liam and I kept began walking, his words earlier still echoed in my head. Born twice. Chosen. The Seal of the Broken Moon. I didn’t know what scared me more—his belief in this prophecy or the part of me that didn’t entirely want to disbelieve him anymore.“We need to get out of this town,” Liam said again, glancing behind us like he expected someone to leap out of the shadows. “They’ll come back.”I stopped walking. “And what are you going to do? Just keep following me around like some cursed shadow?”He turned, his jaw was tight, his voice was low. “No. I’m going with you.” he responded. I blinked. “To do what, exactly?”“Protect you,” he said. “Like I should have earlier.”Something in his voice made it hard to argue. So I didn’t.We passed a 24-hour diner, the windows glowing soft yellow in the night. “I need food,” I muttered. “Something that isn’t gas station jerky or stolen crackers.”Liam nodded. “Quick. We don’t have long.”
Bella POVI woke up choking on smoke. My lungs felt clogged as I shot up from the floor, coughing and swiping at the air. The mattress I’d been sleeping on was torn to shreds, and the front window was shattered. Moonlight illuminated the room—right onto the three snarling wolves standing in the middle of the room. I didn’t think so. I shifted.Bones cracked and skin split, and the pain of the transformation barely registered. My wolf hit the ground running, claws scrabbled across the wood as I dodged a lunging gray brute with scars across his snout. One of them managed to land a slash along my side. Fire raced through my ribs. I howled, more in fury than pain, and leapt through the broken window.I ran as fast and hard as my legs could. Branches tore at my fur as I barreled through the trees. Behind me, paws thundered. They were following me. Of course they were.But I knew these woods now. I veered hard left, ducked under a fallen log, and doubled back. It threw them off just enoug
Harper’s POV The dream didn’t feel like a dream. It started like falling—only slower. The room around me disappeared. The sound of the wind outside the lake house faded into a strange, pulsing silence. I was no longer lying on the couch but standing in a forest I didn’t recognize, shadows weaving between the trees like smoke. The sky was a dull red, the kind of color that came right before disaster.Then I saw her.Bella.She was in wolf form, her fur slick with blood, eyes wide and wild. She stumbled, clearly injured, but kept running, limping through a thick underbrush. Something followed her—something fast, something not entirely solid. I couldn’t see it clearly, only the way the trees seemed to recoil when it passed. Then I heard a voice, older than anything I’d ever known.“The marked wolf cannot hide. The hunt has begun.”The image flashed, and Bella’s human face appeared—eyes pleading, lips trembling. She reached out, mouthing something I couldn’t hear—I jolted awake, gaspi
Bella’s POV “Say it,” I snapped. “You think I’m that wolf?”His silence was all the answer I needed.“You’ve been watching me like I’m a threat.”“No,” he said finally. “Like you’re a target.”I narrowed my eyes. “That supposed to make me feel better?”He stepped closer, and I instinctively took a step back.“I didn’t know for sure at first,” he said. “But the way you fought that rogue… the way you healed. Something’s different about you.”“You don’t know anything about me.”“I know your scent changed the moment you crossed into this town. I know there’s power humming under your skin that most wolves don’t carry. And I know others are looking for you.”My chest tightened. “Who?”He didn’t answer.I turned sharply. “We’re done here.”“You need to be careful,” he said. “If they find you first—”“I said we’re done.”I shifted before he could say another word, bones snapping, fur bursting through skin as I let the wolf take over. My wolf didn’t hesitate. She bolted through the trees, hea
Bella’s POV I jolted awake, heart racing, sweat slicked my back. The garage was still. My leg ached, but the bleeding had stopped. The dream clung to me, the whisper of my father’s voice echoed in my mind.I sat up slowly, pulling the thin blanket around my shoulders.And that’s when I heard it.Liam’s voice. Low. Steady. From just outside the door.He was on the phone.“She’s here,” he said. “I’m sure of it.”There was silence and then, softer: “No. She hasn’t said anything yet. But I’ll keep watching.”My heart dropped. He wasn’t just a café owner. And I wasn’t just a runaway anymore.I didn’t say a word about the call, nor did I flinch. I didn’t ask questions either.When Liam stepped back inside and saw me wide awake, I let my eyes drift shut again, pretending to sleep. He didn’t say anything. He just watched me for a moment before turning off the light and walking away.I laid there till morning, heart pounded so loud I was sure he’d hear it through the walls.But if he suspecte
Bella’s POV After walking for hours, I finally arrived at a small town. The town looked like something out of a painting—quiet, still, and wrapped in morning fog. I hadn’t even known its name when I arrived, only that it was off the main highway and surrounded by mountains thick with trees. The kind of place you could disappear in.Perfect.I used a name that wasn’t mine—Leah Ward. I lied that I was just passing through, maybe staying a few weeks. No one asked too many questions, not here. I could breathe again, kind of.I looked around and I spotted a cafe. The café was small and warm, tucked between a bookstore and an old barber shop. I saw the sign—Wolf Pine Café—and something in me stilled. I almost turned away, but my stomach growled louder than my instincts. I stepped inside.The bell above the door jingled.A man behind the counter glanced up. Dark hair. Slate-gray eyes. His jaw ticked when he saw me, like he was trying not to react too quickly. He looked me over, not in the w