Prologue.

“Hand her over.” The new Alpha was growling at my dad as I hid behind my mum. I could just about make out the brilliant blue of his eyes. When they flash at me, I hide my face.

“Alpha, she is only ten years old.” I hear my dad growl back, standing his ground.

“She needs protection.”

“You are not having her.” My father was the old Alpha’s Beta. He had planted himself between the new Alpha, my mum and I. “She is just a child.”

“I am well aware of that. I hate it as much as you do, but you can’t protect her any longer. I can keep her safe until she is an adult.” His deep voice echoed around me, but I wasn’t afraid. There was something about him that called to me. A tug in my heart maybe, an overwhelming sense that I knew I was made for him.

“Then just reject her.”

“You know it doesn’t work like that. Not anymore. I will wait until she is old enough. I will ensure she is healthy and cared for, but you have to hand her over.”

For a moment, everything around me was no longer important. I tried to make sense of what he had said. Mum pushes me back a bit further. Trying to put distance between us and him.

“She will never belong to an arsehole like you!” Mum screams and dad throws a fist. Mum grabs me and races to the car. Half dragging and half sobbing as dad tries to hold off the new Alpha. She throws me into the backseat and sped away. As I looked out the back window. Watching as the new Alpha ripped my dad apart.

“Lilah, come on.” Mum calls from the otherside of the door as I pull myself from the bed. Another night and the same nightmare. I sigh as I get dressed.

Looking into the mirror. I was looking sicker by the day. Trying to rub the bags under my eyes away, I tell her that I would be out in a moment. Brushing out my long raven hair, I pull it down around my collar bone, hiding how frail I was becoming. I knew what was happening. I knew that being away from him was making me like this. But we had to keep moving. He could never find me.

 

Grabbing my bag, I make my way out of the hotel. The bag was small, but we never needed much. We were never in the same place long enough to have belongings, only necessities.

“Sorry, I’m tired.” I mutter as I hand her my bag.

“Nightmares?” She looks at me with pity. The same look she gave me most mornings.

I nodded my head, but it wasn’t nightmares plural, it was just the one. The same one every night for the past seven years. The replay of my fathers death and the way the new Alpha had looked at me. It was like my mind was trying to work out the meanings behind the Alpha’s words, but each and every time there was something slightly different. I started to wonder how much of it was true. Or if my mind was playing tricks on me.

Since that night we have constantly moved. Travelling all over the world, looking for a pack to protect us. We never got to stay long. As soon as they heard the name of who we were running from, we were sent away. It was always just my mum and I and it had been that way for the last seven years. The way I liked it.

“Lilah, I’m sorry honey. You can sleep in the car.” She throws my bag in the back next to hers.

“What happens when I’m eighteen?” My birthday was just days away. The day that I had been dreading. It would mean the mate bond would work both ways. It would mean that he could link me. It would make it so much harder for us to escape his clutches.

She tucks a strand of my long raven hair behind my ear. Her cool hand cups my cheek, but her eyes glance at my thinning shoulders. She doesn’t comment, instead, just telling me that we would deal with it together. Mum tries to give me a warm smile, but just like every other time, it doesn’t reach her deep blue eyes. It hadn’t done in months, she was just as tired as I was.

I inwardly groan. The man we were running from was my mate, the one that had killed my father. The King of Alpha’s, a murderer of packs, a psychopath, a Lycan.

“Lilah. We will deal with it together.” She gestures for me to get in the old honda. As I slide in next to her, she pats my knee. Giving me an awkward smile. Because she knew the truth as well as I did. The day that I turn eighteen, I will not be able to ignore his call. 

The problem was, I had already felt the pull to him. I had that night all those years ago. I was somehow drawn to him even as a ten year old. I also felt the pull whenever he was near. It’s how mum and I knew to keep moving. How we were always one step ahead. If it wasn’t for me being a Luna and a Beta’s daughter, I wouldn’t even feel the connection.

Mum had explained it to me years ago. She finally broke down telling me that she was a Luna, the second born of an Alpha. Mum had met my dad when she was seventeen and several years later, they had me. They knew I would be different. I carried her bloodline and my fathers bloodline. A Luna and a Beta. They just didn’t know how different until Alpha Colt took over. That’s when they learnt that I, a werewolf, was mated to a Lycan. Something that has never happened in the history of our kind.

“What if he does find us?” I push a little more, desperate for answers.

“We will deal with it!”

“Mum, you can’t keep saying that. I need to know, I need to prepare myself.” We had the same conversation at least every other day. Sometimes I wondered what she was so afraid of. But deep down I knew. The moment he found me, mum was as good as dead. She had been keeping me from him.

“Lilah, he is a murderer. That's all you need to worry about.”

“I know he killed Dad, but you have told me the mate bond does weird shit.”

“Lilah language!” She scolds me. 

“How am I supposed to escape him? It’s not like I can reject him.”

“He has wiped out dozens of packs. Killed hundreds of our kind. It’s what Lycans do.”

“That doesn’t help me. I want to know what he will do with me?”

She blows out her cheeks. The sign that she was done talking. Both of us fell into silence.

“I need to know so that I can defend myself.” I mutter after a few miles.

“Lilah, you can’t even shift yet.” she just about screeches at me.  I knew it was time to drop the matter.

She was right. I couldn’t shift yet. My wolf abilities were pretty much nonexistent until my birthday. I couldn’t even heal like a wolf. It was a stupid design fault. Shift at eighteen. Find your mate at eighteen. As if being a teen wasn’t hard enough already!

Leaning over the backseat, I reach for my bag. Rummaging in it for the book I was in the middle of reading. If mum wasn’t going to talk. I might as well do something else. Just as I grab the book, I feel the pull in my heart. Stronger than before, like he was trying to speak to me. He was near and he was calling me. Something he had never done before.

“Mum…” I mumble, pressing my hand to my chest. Because this time, it hurt. She knew instantly and stuck her toe down.

“Put your belt on! She snaps as I sit back down.

“It’s fine,” I groan, tugging the seat belt around me. The pull on my heart increases and I realise we are moving closer to him. “Mum, turn around.” I panic, we were heading right towards him.

She spins the car and a truck is coming directly at us.

“MUM! Look out! 

It collides into the side of us. I hear her scream, followed by glass shattering. The sickening crack of my own bones echoes through my head as I’m thrown through the window. The tyres screeched across the tarmac. Moments later, the sound of sirens echoed around me.

Images and noises come in flashes. Mum calling for me in between her screams. Blood was sprayed across the ground. The thud of my own heart echoed in my ears. The patter of feet of those running towards me. My mum’s voice grows distant, weak. After all the years of running, I was about to die. 

The smell of musk mixed with oak invaded my senses, but it was oddly calming. It was him, I just knew it. Alpha Colt had finally found me. Seven nearly eight years I had escaped him. And just like that, my life was over.

“It’s alright, I’ve got her.” His voice was deep. It was a sound I remembered from all those years ago. My heart pounded through my chest as I recalled the last time I saw him. 

“MATE!” He growls as he bends down next to me. His hands run over me checking for my wounds. Flipping me over onto my back, he exhales loudly, almost groaning.

He puts a hand on my hips.

“Ouch” I mutter, feeling a shock as he touches me.

“Sorry” He mumbles back. He almost looked disappointed that he had hurt me. I must be seeing things.

He touches me again, pressing against my bone. He presses down as hard as he can. Sending a wave of pain through me as my hips crack. I almost vomit and I let out a scream.

His face is close to mine as he speaks. I could smell the recent chocolate bar he had eaten. “Fucking lucky you are not paralysed.” He sounded annoyed.

“Mum…” I mumble and he sighs. Lifting his head, looking in the direction of the wreckage . But I couldn’t see anything and realise that I hadn’t heard her in a few minutes.

“I’m sorry Lilah. She didn’t make it.” My need to make her turn the car around had killed her. “I’m sorry, but this is going to hurt.”

His hands slip under my shoulders, someone else’s hands grip my ankles. They move me onto some kind of board. Lifting me up. I find myself looking into his cobalt blue eyes. He gives me a small smile, but his eyes were full of pity. Why did he care so much? He was probably going to kill me anyway.

Moving past the wreckage, I see mum. Her eyes closed, her head back, blood trickling out of her mouth as paramedics tried to free her. For the last seven years it had just been us. Now I was alone. I would have to deal with Alpha Colt alone.

“Where are you taking me?” I mutter slowly. Trying to make sure I was making sense as everything started to spin.

“To the nearest pack hospital and then home.”

Seven years I had outrun him. Seven years of escaping whatever the future held for me. But he didn’t sound angry. He was unnervingly calm.

“Now close those pretty grey eyes of yours.”

“No.” I couldn’t move, not even if I wanted to. It was like my body was working against me.

A smile teases on his lips. I realise that he probably has never been told no. Well not since my dad told him no. After all he was the King of Alpha’s, everyone obeyed him. Everyone did as he said.

“Do you ever do what you are told?” He cocks an eyebrow at me as I’m placed into the back of an ambulance type of vehicle. He slides himself in next to me. Telling the other guy where to take us.

I choose not to answer. Mostly because I was fighting to stay awake.

“In just a few days, you will have no choice but to listen to me. To answer my questions.”

“Fuck off.”

This time his lips curve up into a proper smile as he starts to laugh.

“You will make an interesting mate!” He mutters before I pass out.