16

Finn

I was barely sixteen when I found my mother’s body in our pack house, her throat torn out, my father kneeling beside her in a pool of blood. The evidence planted by Alpha Alaric—Scarlett’s father— was meticulous. Witness testimonies, my father’s supposed motive, even his rage were all twisted into a perfect lie that convinced some of our own pack.

My father, former Alpha Marcus Foster, was executed for a crime he didn’t commit. I watched him die with his head held high, his last words to me: “Truth will prevail, son. But patience before vengeance.”

I didn’t listen.

At seventeen, I became the youngest alpha in our territory’s history, rebuilding a pack shattered by scandal. I changed our name from the Steel Pack to the Crescent Pack, erasing history to escape shame. Loyal ones stayed, but we were shadows of our former strength.

For ten years, I restored what Alaric had destroyed. Every alliance was crafted carefully, every business deal planned meticulously. Our pack’s influence grew, and I became known as Alpha Damon—cold, calculating, untouchable. It was safer that way. Easier.

Then Scarlett entered my life.

I was talking with my beta when it hit me— her scent. A blend of lavender and cedar that stirred something deep within me, drawing me closer against my will.

Our eyes met, and the mate bond crashed into me like a thunderbolt. She was everything I’d imagined my mate to be: beautiful, with golden eyes that pierced my soul. My heart fluttered, my body trembled, and Storm, my wolf, recognized her as ours.

Every part of me craved her from the moment I laid eyes on her. We kissed, and in a whirlwind of passion, we made love, marking and claiming her as mine. But who could have thought that everything I believed to be beautiful was merely a façade?

Reality crashed back. She was Alaric’s daughter. The daughter of the man who had taken everything from me, and I struggled to reconcile the bond with the hatred I harbored for her father. The pull was undeniable, but so was the torment of betraying my own past and my father’s memory.

Though years had passed, I couldn’t forget. The images of my mother’s death and my father’s execution remained fresh.

I wanted her, but I convinced myself the mate bond was fate’s cruel joke—maybe a trap laid by Alaric himself.

I knew it was cruel to reject her, especially after marking her as mine. But the thought of accepting Alaric’s daughter and letting her rule beside me was something I could never allow.

“Alpha,” I heard David’s voice in my head. “Where are you?”

“I’m in my hideout,” I replied, mind-linking back. It was a secret place I went to whenever I felt low, a refuge where I could think about her—my mate, my partner.

“Do you need anything?”

“Yes, I’m on my way, Alpha.” I downed the drink in my hand, trying to drown my sorrows, but it only fueled my torment.

What if she’s nothing like her father? Storm linked me.

“Enough. Stop being weak, Storm. You know what her father was like— do you really think she could be any different?”

“But—”

“No buts. She might have been sent to trap us,” I added. “Don’t fall for it. We can easily find another mate—someone different from her.”

“But she didn’t know anything about us, just your name,” Storm protested.

“I don’t care. We’ll look for our second chance mate.”

“Someone we could never love, right?” Storm snapped. “We both know we love her - from the moment we laid eyes on her. She was ours. Our mate.”

“I know,” I yelled, frustration spilling over. “But what about what her father did?”

“You hated her before you knew who her father was.” His words stunned me.

“We needed a strong Luna, you know. I needed to kill everyone who framed my father, and to do that, I had to become king - the king of wolves. Do you really think she can help me achieve that as an omega?”

“I knew it,” Storm pressed. “We can avenge him without her help.”

“You’re right. You could have made me accept her, even if she is an omega, but having my enemy’s blood in her drove me mad,” I muttered. “If I had known she was his daughter, I wouldn’t have made love to her, let alone marked her. I even gave her my real name.”

“We should just kill her, then,” Storm said, making me flinch. “And avenge our pack.”

I knew he didn’t mean it. He was the one who had nagged me for rejecting her because he longed for his mate. When I rejected her, he was furious and refused to talk to me for days.

“Rejecting her was the best choice. She’s probably living happily in her father’s pack.”

“I hope so. I wish she weren’t our enemy’s daughter.”

“Alpha!” David’s voice jolted me out of the mind-link.

“What is it, Beta David? Why have you come to see me?”

“Alpha, it’s about your mate.”

“My mate,” I muttered. “The last time we spoke, I remember telling you that I rejected her.”

“Finn,” David growled.

“Shut up, David.” David was my only friend and Beta. His father was killed back then too. “She’s nothing but my rejected mate.”

“That girl is nothing like her father,” David began, his eyes fierce. “Since you told me, I’ve been looking into her, and I found out that...”

I cut him off. “And what? That she isn’t his daughter?”

“No, that’s not it, Finn.”

“I don’t want to listen,” I said, standing. “I’m done with her.” Convincing myself I hated her was the only way to kill her father when the time came.

“Listen to me, you fool,” he growled, grabbing my shirt. “You love her. You don’t have to deny it. She isn’t like her father.”

“Enough. I don’t want to hear it. She has his blood, and that alone is enough to make me hate her.”

I pushed him away, consumed by rage and confusion, as I stormed out. I didn’t want to know how she was doing or hear how well she was living. All I wanted was to bury the memories and focus on vengeance. But no matter how hard I tried, a part of me would always long for the woman I had marked, the woman who was now my greatest dilemma.