Madeline’s POV“Ouch! Can’t you be more careful?” Despite the fear building up in my heart, I still managed to let that sarcastic remark, which seemed like it had already become my defense mechanism.I rubbed my wrist, which had a red mark around right now, after he gripped it so tightly as he dragged me along the hallway and into his office before throwing me onto his couch. Without mercy or any care, if I may add.“Explain,” he uttered with gritted teeth, staying at the doorway as he slammed the door closed and locked it.To say that it didn’t add to the building fear in my heart would be a total lie.“Are you going to tell me why you are digging into my past, or do you want me to dig the answer fr
Madeline’s POVI looked at Keiran pointedly as I offered a small, sympathetic smile, continuing, “I worked my ass off to master combat skills so I could protect the man she was so worried about until her last breath. The same man she feared would drown in his own sorrow.”His eyes dropped to my hand, still resting gently on his arm. Slowly, he followed its trail until our gazes met.“She was always so selfless,” he murmured with a hollow laugh, though the pain behind it was as loud as a scream. “How... How could she still be thinking about me while she was dying?”“Because that’s how much she loved you,” I said softly, trying to offer comfort. “And I know for a fact she wouldn’t want to see you closing yourself off from the world, hurting and dying on the inside.”But he flinched at my words like I’d struck him. Stepping back, he pulled away from my touch.Right. I must have overstepped.He had opened up, but that didn’t mean we were close—not after everything I’d seen in that archive
Madeline's POVThe air was heavy with silence engulfing us in a warm but tense embrace. The silence felt unbearable as I sat in front of him, watching him look troubled.His elbows were on his desk, hands clasped together, supporting his bowed head. He looked so much in pain, guilt radiating all over him.Seeing the inner struggle he seemed to be putting himself into, I sighed and extended my hand, squeezing his. “You let him go. The pup… You did great, Keiran. You’re not the monster everyone sees you to be.”Everyone looked at him like a monster, despite the respect they had for him as their Alpha. He might have done well in the pack, which they saw, but the fear they had toward him from what happened that day was still embedded in their hearts.An alpha feared by his own pack… How hard could that be?He looked up at me, shaking his head slowly. “It wasn’t mercy either. I was just… afraid. I didn’t want to face him.”His face was tense, his jaws clenching and lips pursing. “I didn’t
Madeline’s POVHe didn’t respond. He just sat there, staring at me like he was trying to read my thoughts, like he was trying to memorise me.And despite everything he’d said, his walls hadn’t fully crumbled. There was just a crack in them.And somehow, I was standing right in it.Whether that was fortunate or not… only time would tell.“Don’t make the mistake of caring for me, Adeline,” he said quietly after a long silence.I shrugged and stood up, smirking faintly. “Too late.”As I walked out of his office and into my room, I couldn’t stop my mind from replaying everything that had happened between us. The shift was so sudden, like whiplash. One minute we were at each other’s throats—or more like, he was at mine—and now this...Maybe it was the anger that made him snap open. Maybe it was hearing about Francine. Or maybe it was an accident. A moment of weakness.But whatever it was, it left something behind—something raw and quietly terrifying. That little crack between us... It was
Madeline’s POVMy hands trembled beside me as I took long strides in the hallway, rushing towards who knew where. I let the pull of the bond follow my mate’s intoxicating scent, which made my wolf and me go crazy.It’s my 18th birthday. I expected to find my fated mate soon, but not this soon. It turned out he had always been around me.I should have been happy, ecstatic even… but I couldn’t help but feel the threatening tears in the corner of my eyes as I felt exactly who it was and where this hallway was leading me.With heavy breathing, I halted in front of a massive wooden door with engravement on it, feeling rejected even before I could see his face.With my hands holding the cold knob of my twin sister’s bedroom door, I heard muffled voices inside. Mixed with my sister, Amanda, was the voice of that man I thought I’d be with even before the mate bond told me he was my fated mate.“You need to reject her, Felix! She’s nothing compared to me. You know that.”My heart stopped cold
Madeline’s POVWhen I turned around, I gasped and was frozen to my place as I watched the massive brown wolf shift back into its human form, and Felix’s figure emerged before me, his clothes torn into pieces and his face tense.“Madeline…” he called out in between breaths.He tried to reach for my hand, but I stepped back in anger. “Get away from me!”“I’m not here to hurt you,” he sounded desperate as he extended his hand to hold my arm, but I snapped it away.Hearing that, I scoffed in disdain, looking at him in utter disbelief. “Oh really? Because you sure didn’t seem to have a problem with that when you promised Amanda, you’ll reject me tomorrow!”Guilt glinted in his eyes. Looking around in worry, he gritted his teeth, frustratedly saying, “I… I didn't know… they’d try to–”“She’s over there!” His words were cut off by a loud, furious voice, followed by several pairs of footsteps rushing in my direction.My breathing hitched.Looking at Felix with disbelief, I asked, “You lured t
Madeline’s POVFelix's hold on my wrist tightened as he nodded toward the cliff. “There’s a ledge. If we do it now, we can jump a few feet and climb down before they see us.”I threw a glare at him almost instantly, hissing, “If this kills me, I’m haunting you!”He managed a weak smile, eyes glinting with the same uncertainty as mine. Nonetheless, he confidently said, “Deal.”Taking my hand, we both jumped. But since the ground below was smooth and on the slope, it didn’t go as we planned. Instead, we slid down and tumbled through leaves and dirt, covering our clothes.Some small stones and twigs even caused bruises and cuts on our clothes and skin. It only happened for a while as I was slammed into a rock, giving us a full stop.But before I could register the pain it caused to my dislocated shoulder, Felix pulled me up, and we stumbled to our feet. “Come on! They’re still coming,” he groaned.And just as he said, I saw shadows following behind us. Some even shifted to make their ju
Madeline’s POV“I’ll ask you again, who are you?” I flinched from the sharpness of his words.Forcing calmness, I looked straight into his blazing eyes. “I told you… Adeline Hansford.”He let out a low growl, threatening, “And I believe I told you not to lie!”Clutching my injured shoulder, I bit my lip, staying on my ground. “I’m not lying. I swear.”He let out a cold smirk. “That’s funny because you know what I heard?”A chill ran down my spine. Was the news about me, a princess, already spread? That couldn’t be that fast. Could it?He crouched beside me, face leaning down. Tilting his head, he continued, “Because I heard someone went rogue and fled from the palace. And now, I find a suspicious little trespasser like you.”Relief rushed into me after learning he didn’t know about my real identity. Knowing that I could never be a Rogue because of my royal blood, a Lycan basically owns the entire werewolf kingdom, so I kept calm.Looking up, I dared him with a shaky voice, “Take a whi
Madeline’s POVHe didn’t respond. He just sat there, staring at me like he was trying to read my thoughts, like he was trying to memorise me.And despite everything he’d said, his walls hadn’t fully crumbled. There was just a crack in them.And somehow, I was standing right in it.Whether that was fortunate or not… only time would tell.“Don’t make the mistake of caring for me, Adeline,” he said quietly after a long silence.I shrugged and stood up, smirking faintly. “Too late.”As I walked out of his office and into my room, I couldn’t stop my mind from replaying everything that had happened between us. The shift was so sudden, like whiplash. One minute we were at each other’s throats—or more like, he was at mine—and now this...Maybe it was the anger that made him snap open. Maybe it was hearing about Francine. Or maybe it was an accident. A moment of weakness.But whatever it was, it left something behind—something raw and quietly terrifying. That little crack between us... It was
Madeline's POVThe air was heavy with silence engulfing us in a warm but tense embrace. The silence felt unbearable as I sat in front of him, watching him look troubled.His elbows were on his desk, hands clasped together, supporting his bowed head. He looked so much in pain, guilt radiating all over him.Seeing the inner struggle he seemed to be putting himself into, I sighed and extended my hand, squeezing his. “You let him go. The pup… You did great, Keiran. You’re not the monster everyone sees you to be.”Everyone looked at him like a monster, despite the respect they had for him as their Alpha. He might have done well in the pack, which they saw, but the fear they had toward him from what happened that day was still embedded in their hearts.An alpha feared by his own pack… How hard could that be?He looked up at me, shaking his head slowly. “It wasn’t mercy either. I was just… afraid. I didn’t want to face him.”His face was tense, his jaws clenching and lips pursing. “I didn’t
Madeline’s POVI looked at Keiran pointedly as I offered a small, sympathetic smile, continuing, “I worked my ass off to master combat skills so I could protect the man she was so worried about until her last breath. The same man she feared would drown in his own sorrow.”His eyes dropped to my hand, still resting gently on his arm. Slowly, he followed its trail until our gazes met.“She was always so selfless,” he murmured with a hollow laugh, though the pain behind it was as loud as a scream. “How... How could she still be thinking about me while she was dying?”“Because that’s how much she loved you,” I said softly, trying to offer comfort. “And I know for a fact she wouldn’t want to see you closing yourself off from the world, hurting and dying on the inside.”But he flinched at my words like I’d struck him. Stepping back, he pulled away from my touch.Right. I must have overstepped.He had opened up, but that didn’t mean we were close—not after everything I’d seen in that archive
Madeline’s POV“Ouch! Can’t you be more careful?” Despite the fear building up in my heart, I still managed to let that sarcastic remark, which seemed like it had already become my defense mechanism.I rubbed my wrist, which had a red mark around right now, after he gripped it so tightly as he dragged me along the hallway and into his office before throwing me onto his couch. Without mercy or any care, if I may add.“Explain,” he uttered with gritted teeth, staying at the doorway as he slammed the door closed and locked it.To say that it didn’t add to the building fear in my heart would be a total lie.“Are you going to tell me why you are digging into my past, or do you want me to dig the answer fr
Madeline’s POVI watched from a distance until Helena vanished from my sight. I was deep in my thoughts as I played with the bottle of water, jiggling it from one hand to another.When I heard rustling coming from the forest, I subconsciously hid in the side of the training wheat straw. My eyes narrowed at the sight of Keiran walking out of the forest with dirty claws and tiny bits of tree bark.“I believe I told you to go back.”I closed my eyes in annoyance as I felt a presence behind me and heard Keiran’s voice. Turning around, I looked up at him and shrugged my shoulders. “I did go away from your sight.”Raising my hands up in the air in fake surrender, I walked back to the pack house, dramatically showing it to him. “Here I am, alright? And have your hand look up by Mara before you scare more of your people than you already did.”With that, I pretended to go to my room, but then took a turn after making sure he wasn’t looking at me anymore.Following Helena’s gesture, I went to t
Madeline’s POV“Why are you still here?”I was surprised to see Helena still in the outside field and punching the hell out of that wheat straw mannequin on my way back to my room, which was now officially inside the pack house like the rest of the other pack members.I guess that’s an upgrade for me. A sign that I was slowly being accepted into the pack. Or at least, that’s what I was hoping for.Halting, she swiftly pulled the towel hanging from the arms of the wheat straw and wiped her sweat.Pointedly looking at her. I gestured at her drenched shirt. “So…”Smirking as she continued wiping off her sweat, she shrugged her shoulders. “What can I say? After training with you for weeks, it now feels less like training someone who isn’t on par with my skills.”“Maybe go to Jonax or one of his goons,” I joked, but went to grab a hand bandage. I needed some exercise anyway to put my mind off Keiran’s weird reaction to those stupid carvings.Helena snickered. “You mean the one you kick the
Madeline’s POVAll day long, Keiran was acting weird, and the questions within me were getting even stronger. When our eyes met after what I heard from the warriors, he entered the academy, and I didn’t see him again.Since I was on patrol now, I changed clothes as soon as we were dismissed from the academy and sprinted to the forest, letting the evening air crips brush through my skin while my fingertips glided to the rough tree trunks I passed by.It was a lovely night. After the stressful night I had yesterday and the day I had today with Helena over my shoulder and Keiran’s stress, I started to feel relaxed.When I looked down at my wrist watch, I realised that there was only half an hour left before the border patrol started. I slapped my forehead for being out of it and turned to meet Leo and the others.However, as I passed through the bushes, I caught sight of something behind… or more like someone.My eyes narrowed, and I moved carefully, trying not to scare off whoever it wa
Keiran’s POV“I… I don’t know…”I looked down at Madeline’s pale face and struggling body as she spoke in a hoarse and breathless voice.She was hurting, and I wanted to let go, but the anger within me was too overwhelming to stop. What I heard from her was enough for me to lose control, as it touched something that had been long buried – three years.Suddenly, upon hearing it from where I passed through her room when I was patrolling, that name started to echo in my mind.“Keidun… Keidun… Keidun…” The name being spoken so many times, countless times, with different emotions by someone I could never forget in this lifetime.No one knew about that name… at least no one besides my pack, and no one dared to say that name except for one person. The person who died a long time ago.The woman I love the most and I buried myself three years ago.Right after I let Adeline lose, I ran back to where she was buried, right on the top of the cliff where she always loved to go. It was overlooking t
Madeline’s POVObviously, after Keiran’s painful visit to me last night, I wasn’t able to gain another sleep and went to the academy the next morning looking like a damn panda with an eye bag and black eye around my eyes.To wonder why that simple thing wasn’t healed by my wolf abilities… Well, it turned out it wasn’t even a wound to heal, so Andy couldn’t care less to use extra of her power and time to do something about it.Credit to my first shift, which everyone was talking about, as my shift was unusual because it never hurt that much for the others and not to mention the crescent moon on my wolf’s head, the rumor about me being a spy subsided a bit and was covered up by my shifting.And the best advantage that I got… was that I didn’t have to train today and only had to watch because my body underwent an an immense shift.So, as cruel as Helena in training could be and this pack was, they still have a little bit of humanity left in them.Sitting at the edge of the training field,