Chapter 0001

Amalie

“No!” My father threw himself in front of Beta Tyler. “You can’t do this. She is just a child.”

Beta Tyler glared at my father with cold eyes. Behind him, the blazing red sun rose and cast him in a halo of menacing crimson. “She is eighteen, Archie.”

“It’s okay, Daddy,” I said and knelt next to my disabled father.

Dry leaves crunched under my knees, and frost soaked into my pyjama bottoms. My father bled for them. Broke his body in half for them. And this was the thanks they gave him. It hurt to see him humiliate himself in front of the pack.

“Please, Beta,” I looked up at Tyler. “Do it in the woods where they won’t see. My family has suffered enough.”

Tyler chewed the inside of his cheek and glanced over his shoulder at the pack members he had gathered to support him. He gave me a curt nod. “That is fair.”

“What is fair?” Easton Marquis’ asked, and came strolling through the crowd, his Alpha aura rolling out in front of him.

The gathered wolves, mostly warriors, gasped softly and parted to clear a path for him.

“Easton,” Beta Tyler said. “She is a spirit wolf. She has to die.”

“I’m afraid I can’t allow that.”

“Why not?” The Beta was genuinely confused. This was the natural order of things.

Spirit wolves weren’t proper wolves. We carried the spirit of a wolf, but couldn’t shift. My wolf was incomplete. Unformed. She had no voice and no physical form.

We were bad omens, and lately, a lot of bad luck had befallen our pack.

“She’s my mate, Tyler. My fated mate.”

My eyes nearly bugged out of my skull. Never in my wildest, most secret fantasies, did I ever dream about being with Easton Marquis.

I refused to believe it, even when he went down on one knee and asked, “Am I worthy of you?”

It was strange to hear our future Alpha ask if he was worthy of a thing like me. “Yes,” I whispered in a shaky little voice.

It was the only answer I could give anyway. Fated mates were a gift from The Goddess. The bond was unbreakable and sacred. Saying no would have ended in my death, which would have killed my father.

Easton smiled. A warm, beautiful smile that lit up my heart and set my soul on fire. He rose and pulled a simple golden necklace with a black Obsidian pendant from his pocket. “Will you accept my token?”

Numb and mute, I nodded and got to my feet. When his hands brushed over my neck, my whole world came crashing down. It didn’t feel right. The mate bond was dark and ominous.

Easton fastened the clasp of the necklace and warmly grasped my shoulders. “Mine,” he growled softly. “Now and forever.”

“Now and forever,” the pack chorused.

**

“He’s hot right?” Jenna, one of the Davenport girls says loudly.

Is she trying to get my attention or Easton’s?

I shield my eyes with my hand and look up at Jenna and her identical twin, Nina. The girls and their little cult of followers started to torment me after Easton announced that I’m his mate. Until we’re officially married, they still outrank me, and they’re making sure they’re getting their licks in and their rocks off while they can.

My mate’s powerful body glistens in the sunlight and his muscles bulge as he hurls a warrior through the air. Jenna’s not wrong. Easton’s a god among men – I’ll give him that.

“I wonder what he sees in it,” Celia, one of the twins’ friends says.

It. Not she or her. It. I’m nothing. A bug they can squash under their feet.

“Maybe it’s good in bed,” Nina replies while she follows Easton’s lithe body with her eyes.

Two warriors try to tackle my mate at once, but he makes quick work of them, both of them eating dust in seconds. “Come on!” he hollers and throws his arms open wide, giving the onlookers a spectacular view of his naked torso. “Give me a real challenge.”

The warriors look terrified.

They should be.

“Does it even have a hole he can stick his dick in?” Mia asks and gives me the meanest, ugliest smile I’ve ever seen.

On the other side of the training grounds, my sister, Magnolia gets up and starts to make her way over to me.

“It has a mouth, doesn’t it?” Jenna pipes up. “I’m sure that will work. A hole is a hole right?”

They’re just words, I remind myself. Ugly, vulgar words, but words can’t hurt you. Words can’t kill you.

That doesn’t mean I have to hang around and listen to them though.

With a sigh, I get up to leave. Easton always wants me here to watch him train, but maybe if I explain to him what happened, he’ll understand.

“Where are you going?” Celia asks.

“Home,” I lie. “My mother wants to-”

*smack*

My head swings back from the blow Jenna hands me. My cheek stings and my skin burns. I instinctively reach up to touch my burning face, then rethink and clasp my hands behind my back.

Annoyingly, tears spring to my eyes, but I quickly blink them away. “Liar,” she says, her voice filled with venom. “Do you think your mother wants to look at her failure all day long?”

I clench my hands into fists and stare at the much taller girl.

“Honestly,” Nina adds. “If I were its mother I would have smothered it in its sleep. No one will even blame Easton if he drowns it in the river.”

Walk away, I tell myself. Just walk away.

I narrow my eyes at Nina. “Easton loves me,” I utter the three words she hates the most. “We are fated,” I go on. “There’s nothing anyone can do about it.”

Nina lets out a screech that threatens to burst my eardrums. “You are nothing,” she screams and launches herself at me. “You’re a slug.”

I side step just before she lands on me and watch as her momentum sends her flying across the training grounds. She crashes in front of Easton’s feet in a puff of dust.

Dazed, she jumps up and glares at me. “What are you looking at?” she snarls and wildly looks around at the laughing wolves. “Who gave you permission to look at me?”

“It thinks it’s special now,” Celia says. “You’re not our Luna yet, slug.”

“You bewitched him didn’t you?” Jenna tries to come to her sister’s defence. “He’s Nina’s mate, not yours.” She goes straight for my eyes, trying to claw them out with her perfectly manicured nails. “You are a miserable, bloody witch.”

She gets one good scratch in, her nails raking across my left eye down to the corner of my mouth before I grab her wrist. She clocks me from the side with her free hand.

Stars explode in my head. My ears start to ring and my nose immediately swells up so much that I can’t breathe. I grunt and sag to my knees, cupping my bleeding nose while I try to breathe through my mouth.

Jenna throws me on my back and straddles me. Her hands curl around my neck, cutting off my air supply. “This is what you deserve.”

The fingers around my throat tighten and panic courses through my veins. She is going to kill me, I realise. She is truly going to execute me right here and now.

“It's what you get for stealing another's mate,” she taunts me. “In the old days, they would have burned a thing like you on the pyre, you know.”

I weakly slap at her arms, but I have no strength left in me. My head spins, and the world around me dims to a pinprick. I'm seconds away from blacking out.

“That’s enough!” Easton roars. “What the hell do you think you're doing, Jenna?”

Ah. The saviour has arrived. Loud and proud for all to see.

His aura washes over us. To me it feels like a warm breeze on a cold day, but the girls yelp and fall back. I pull my legs up to my stomach, coughing and wheezing as I greedily gulp in fresh air.

Easton doesn’t know that his aura stopped affecting me. He can never know.

“Tsk,” he clicks his tongue, but instead of punishing the girls, he just walks over to my side. “Your fathers will hear about this,” he says as he crouches next to me. “Now off with you. Go home.”

Easton lays a hand on my swollen face. “Let me see,” he purrs, his voice dripping with honey. He turns my face this way and that. “Nothing’s broken. You’ll be okay.”

Without any hesitation, he picks me up, and cradles me close to his chest. “Don’t,” I groan weakly. “I’m all dirty.”

“I don’t care,” he says in a gentle voice. “Dirt washes off.”

I put my arms around his neck and snuggle into his warm body, hiding my bruised and bleeding face in the hollow of his shoulder. He grunts a soft approval, but otherwise doesn’t say a word.

“Amalie!” Magnolia finally reaches us. “I’m so sorry…I was on my way to help, but-”

“I took care of it,” Easton interrupts.

I lift my head to look at my sister through my swollen eyes. She openly stares at my mate, her face shining with adoration. “Thank you, Easton,” she says with a warm smile. “You are good to her.”

Easton is great. Everyone loves him. He has a spotless reputation. He doesn’t sleep around, he doesn’t harass the Omega girls, he wins every Alpha tournament. He’s strong, yet gentle, firm, yet fair. Everyone thinks the man’s a saint.

Except for me.

I know better.

He’s a monster.