Mireya
I didn’t think we’d make it out of Ivyclaw alive.
The flight was short, but my hands were clenched the entire way. Every breath I took felt borrowed, like death was sitting in the seat beside me, waiting to strike when I finally relaxed. My mother, Emma, sat beside me, clutching her coat tight around her even though the cabin was warm. Her eyes stayed on the aisle. She was watching. Always watching.
We both were.
Every passenger could’ve been one of Dominic’s men. Or worse, a spy from Alpha Voren’s side. I’d seen enough brutality in Ivyclaw Pack to know that silence didn’t mean safety, it only meant danger was waiting for a better time.
We landed far from any capital I knew. The runway was crude, and the airport small, almost deserted. As soon as the plane door opened, I smelled them, wolves.
But not from Ivyclaw. Not from any pack I recognized. Their scents were… foreign. Old. Heavy with earth and something unfamiliar. They didn’t bear the arrogance of highborn wolves, but there was a stillness in the way they stood that made my wolf stir uneasily in my chest.
“They’re not from the Packs we know,” my mother whispered, her fingers twitching at her sides, ready to shift at any moment.
They didn’t speak right away. Just watched us. Their silence was unsettling, but it wasn’t cruel. It was measured.
Finally, an older man stepped forward. His hair was silver, long, tied neatly at the nape of his neck. He looked like he belonged in a war council from an era long forgotten. His presence was strong, too strong for someone who claimed no known pack.
“You’ll come with us,” he said.
“Who are you? What do you need from us? And where exactly are we going?” I asked, squaring my shoulders despite the tremor in my voice.
He gave a slight smile. “To the Moonlight Pack.”
I blinked. “Don’t fool me. That doesn’t exist.”
“It does,” he replied calmly. “Just not for those who shouldn’t know about it.”
We had no choice.
The wolves surrounded us like a loose ring, never too close, never too far. Protective, maybe. Or a warning. We were ushered into a black, heavily tinted van that smelled faintly of pine and metal. There were no windows to track the direction. Just the soft humming of tires over unfamiliar roads.
I sat there, the silence pressing against my skull, trying not to let the panic in my chest show. We’d barely escaped one prison. Now we were being driven into another, and I didn’t even know its name.
The old man sat across from us in the van, his posture stiff but not unfriendly. “Name’s Cassius,” he offered suddenly. “I was told to fetch you. The Alpha was expecting you.”
“Expecting us?” my mother echoed, eyes narrowing. “How? We didn’t even know where we were going until we boarded.”
“Not all things are known through words,” Cassius replied, cryptic and maddening. “The Moonlight Pack has its ways.”
I frowned. “Why would a secret pack want anything to do with us?”
He tilted his head, amusement glinting in his eyes. “Because not all secrets are meant to stay hidden. Don’t worry, we are not fugitives or criminals.”
We drove for what felt like hours. The air grew cooler, the roads narrower. Then I saw it through the one small slit of a window near the roof, a glimpse of something sprawling and green.
The Forbidden City.
That’s what they called it, according to Cassius. A hidden region, shielded by magic and land both. Not governed by any of the known Alphas or their territories. No records. No bloodlines traced.
“The Moonlight Pack is the oldest pack,” Cassius said as we neared the edge. “We do not exist in your books because we choose not to. History favors the loud. We prefer to survive.”
I stared out the sliver of glass, catching sights of towering trees, deep winding roads, and buildings too old to belong to this century, but maintained with care. Almost sacred. It didn’t look like a prison.
But I couldn’t shake the dread coiling in my gut. Freedom shouldn’t feel this much like being swallowed.
We didn’t reach their main territory, though. Instead, the van turned into a long gravel path lined with blackthorn trees and stopped in front of an old, grand manor.
“Why aren’t we going to your main packhouse?” I asked as we stepped out.
Cassius adjusted his coat. “Because the Alpha prefers introductions in neutral spaces. And because what’s waiting for you… is better handled in private.”
That didn’t help the anxiety clawing up my spine.
The manor smelled like cedarwood, old parchment, and faint traces of magic. Wolves walked its halls, tall, silent, disciplined. Every one of them had the quiet strength of those who’d seen centuries pass.
They bowed slightly as we passed. Not out of deference. But acknowledgment. Like they already knew who I was.
It was unsettling.
The walls inside the manor were lined with portraits, not of people, but of forests. Wolves running. Moons in every phase.
Cassius led us to a set of heavy oak doors at the end of a long corridor. He stopped in front of them. His tone softened. “You’ll want to hold on to your mother.”
“What?” I asked, frowning.
But the moment I placed my hand on the door handle, something inside me snapped.
My knees buckled.
Pain. Burning. A strange heat spread from my chest down to my fingertips. I gasped, reaching out blindly, and my mother caught me, pulling me against her.
“Mireya?” she whispered, panic rising. “Is it—?”
The sensation was unmistakable. The same overwhelming pull I’d felt at the ball. The moment Marianne leaked the video and the crowd turned into vultures—I felt this very same thing.
A bond. A soul-level call.
A mate.
“No,” I breathed, eyes wide. But it was already too late.
The doors creaked open slowly, and I felt the weight of the world shift. And there he was.
Standing at the far end of the office, behind a large obsidian desk, backlit by the soft glow of moonlight pouring in through a stained-glass window.
He turned to us, and the breath caught in my throat.
He was young. Strikingly so. Tall and built like the forest carved him itself. His hair was white as snow, falling past his shoulders in soft waves. But it was his eyes that held me still, silver, piercing, ancient.
I didn’t know his name. I didn’t know what role he played here.
But I knew this: he was mine.
My mate.
And nothing in the world had prepared me for the storm that was coming next.
