Chapter One

AURORA'S POV

It was cold. Very, very cold. The air seemed made of ice and every breath I took in was torture. The hard floor on which I sat was also cold and the coldness seeped through my flimsy clothing and into my skin but I could not move nor stand from my position and even if I could, there was no space to shift to. The cell that I had been thrown in was filled to the brim with young girls that were no more than my age. The only difference between me and them was that I had stopped crying ages ago. Tears hadn't stopped them from throwing me out of the only place I had ever known.

When my rejection and banishment had just taken place, I had cried and cried, thinking that perhaps my tears would move my former pack members and mate, but it had been for nothing. They had thrown me out and turned their backs on me.

I turned into a wanderer, a rogue with no roots. Days and nights had passed with me crying at the edge of our pack borders, hoping and praying they would take me back. Hoping and praying that they realize they had made a mistake and that I had been wrongly accused. My life at the pack hadn't been great, but it was the only life I had, the only life I had ever known.

It had taken me three days to realize that they didn't want me 

anymore and that I would starve to death if I didn't leave there and find something to eat. I had wiped my tears and left, my survival now on the forefront of my mind.

Where would I go? Where would I stay? 

I had survived and had been surviving until I stepped into the borders of the most vile, most unlawful pack in our history. The BloodMoon pack.

I had been chasing a squirrel, intent on catching it for breakfast that I didn't know when I stepped into their territory, and automatically I knew I had lost my freedom.

The pack members were well-known traffickers, selling most of their captives to breeders or whoever needed them. There were brutal and absolutely without mercy and their women were nothing more than their playthings. They had no say in anything other than the home and raising of their pups.

There was no chance of me ever getting away. I might as well be dead. There would be no one to mourn me anyways. So I would welcome death or whatever hellish world awaits me.

A WEEK AGO: FLASHBACK 

I listened quietly as some of the girls in the pack spoke excitedly and gathered around Brie and gushed about how lucky she was that her longtime boyfriend, the Alpha's son, turned out to be her mate afterall.

Brie is the IT girl of the pack. You know, the one that everyone adores and tries to be friends with, so I think it's only natural that she gets the most eligible of the males in the pack irregardless of the fact that she totally despises me.

A whole lot of people don't like me in this pack but I think her hatred overshadows theirs. It wasn't hard to figure out why. Her uncle, the then beta, had been the man my mother rejected as mate. My mom had rejected him because he was a cruel man with no heart, and not only had she rejected him, she had gone ahead to fall in love with a rogue and had gotten pregnant with me. The Rogue, who was my father, had been exiled from his pack after being framed for killing his mother and brother. My father disappeared shortly after I was born. 

Gone, they said, but my mother knew that the men she had rejected had something to do with her lover's disappearance. There was no evidence though, so there was nothing she could do. A year later, she died and I was left all alone. So yeah, my life had been bumpy from the beginning.

I tuned into the conversation around me when I realized that the girls had now moved closer to me and were now addressing me.

“What about you, Aurelia? ” Brie said as she reached out and toyed with a lock of my golden brown hair. “Have you gotten your mate yet?”

“Um, no.”

“Oh,” she cooed in fake sympathy, “So sorry about that. Then again, we shouldn't hold our breaths or anything. Who knows if the moon goddess remembered to pair you with someone.”

Lola, Brie's best friend, snickered. “She wouldn't know what to do with a mate, Brie. She would probably reject him.”

“You're right, Lola,” confirmed Brie. “Like mother, like daughter.”

I hissed in a sharp breath of pain at the mention of my mother but I was used to this so I did not let my face betray my emotions. I kept it blank, devoid of any expression. Betraying my pain would only make them target me more. 

“You made your point, Brie. Now move along, please.”

The moment those words left my lips, I regretted it. I should have just kept quiet and let her run herself out, but now it was too late. She would begin ranting in earnest.

I watched as Brie opened her mouth, a scornful twist to it, but before a word could make it past her lips, a masculine voice rang out towards us, “What's going on?”

The scornful twist to Brie's mouth turned into a pout as she saw who it was that had appeared. 

It was her mate, Gabriel. With the pout still on her face, she went towards him and clung at his chest.

“Baby,” she began, “does she-” Brie pointed at me, “- have to be at the mating ceremony tomorrow?”

Tomorrow, a party was being thrown in celebration of the Alpha's son, Gabriel, finding his mate.

“Yes, baby,” Gabriel replied. “Aurelia will be there. The whole pack is invited. Everyone is coming.”

Out of everyone in the pack, Gabriel is one of the few who treated me decently in the pack and I couldn't help but wonder why the Moon Goddess paired him with such a bitch as a mate. If I were Gabriel, I would have prayed to be mateless than to have someone like Brie as a mate. The torture would have been to much for me to endure.

But who knew what the moon goddess had in store for me, I thought as I stood up to leave.

And that was where I went wrong. I shouldn't have wondered. I shouldn't have imagined.