Chapter 3 CHAPTER 3
Luna remembered.
It hit her hard after the weird and dramatic entrance; she had just recalled the night with the strange wolf.
The flashes came in fragments: silver light cutting through the trees, the heat of his touch, and the sound of her own heartbeat echoing in the still night. She gasped and stumbled back, gripping the wall as her reflection blurred through her tears. That was her first time, and she had it as a wolf.
The memory wasn’t a dream. It was real. The blood stain, the strange ache, the way her body hummed like it had been marked by something beyond human, it all made sense now.
She ran to the school bathroom and locked herself in a toilet stall, chest heaving, trying to hold back the flood of emotions. Awe. Fear. Desire. Confusion. It was too much.
She didn’t know who the strange dark wolf was, but deep down, she knew that night had changed her. Forever.
Oh, the sex. She never imagined her first time would be in her wolf form. The sex was magical—the way their bodies curled together and they merged, the way his wolf form protected her, the way their necks connected as one, and the way his wolf parts found hers and intertwined beautifully. The way the fire was quenched. The way they howled together into the night. She closed her eyes and remembered his rhythm; it was masculine and strong in every thrust and movement. He made a lasting impression.
Luna was still in a daze when a group of girls walked into the toilet, laughing and gushing about the new bad boy student. Luna walked to the sink and splashed water on her face, and put herself together, trying to make her way to the door, but they stopped her in her tracks and pushed her backwards like they did not see her.
These three girls strutted in like they owned the school. And they did. They were the most popular, the best dressed, and the best kept. Their parents were elite, and they demanded respect.
Ava, tall, with platinum blonde streaks in her dark hair, wore the latest Moonlace jacket custom-made for Alpha daughters. Kira and Mina flanked her like bodyguards, their perfumes a mix of moon orchid and money.
Ava’s eyes swept the room pretentiously and landed on Luna as she walked out of the stall. “Oh,” she said, smirking, “look who’s trying to wash off the poor.”
Kira snorted. “Maybe she thinks water will fix her poverty-stricken outcast bloodline.”
Mina laughed. “Or that cheap perfume she wears. What is that, a human poverty brand?”
Luna straightened slowly, her reflection trembling in the mirror. She really wanted to walk away, but something deep inside her stirred this time. Something wild. She tamed it and waited to see what the girls would do and say next.
“I didn’t know you had to be born rich to use the school restroom,” she said quietly.
Shocked, her voice hadn't trembled, or she had no fear.
Ava took a step closer, shocked that Luna could respond, heels clicking like punctuation. “This isn’t about money, sweetheart. It’s about knowing your place. You walk around like you belong here, but you don’t. Your scent doesn’t lie.”
“You reek!”
Luna’s jaw tightened. Her scent. They could smell the hint of something different in her blood. They could smell she had been mated.
Ava leaned closer, her whisper sharp enough to cut. “And word is, you bled last night. First time, huh? Poor thing didn’t even have anyone to teach her how it’s done properly.”
The other girls burst into laughter. Luna froze, heat rushing to her cheeks. How did they know?
Then she smelled it. The faint metallic trace was still on her skin and between her legs. The memory of the dark wolf surged again, fierce and vivid. Her eyes darkened for a second, gold flickering in her pupils.
The laughter stopped.
Ava blinked. “What the hell—”
They had been bullying Luna since grade school, and she had never reacted until today.
Luna stepped forward, voice calm but cold. “Next time you talk about me like that… I’ll make sure you regret it.”
Something primal rippled through the air. The girls stiffened, not from fear, but from confusion. It was as if the wolf inside Luna had briefly awakened and announced itself.
It had become sensitive, like it were activated.
Ava scoffed, recovering. “You'd better watch that tone, outcast girl. You’ll learn your place soon enough.”
The trio strutted out, heels echoing down the hall.
Luna exhaled, hands trembling. She stared at herself in the mirror again, but this time, the girl staring back was neither weak nor scared. There was something ancient in her eyes.
Something dangerous. Something new, something confident.
...
The rain had started again, slow and heavy, like the heavens themselves were mourning the forgotten. The altercation with the girls at school made her emotional and almost hate her late father.
She wondered why her father had to be a poor mechanic and had to die shamefully, rendering her and her mom helpless.
She wondered if she would ever taste what it means to be rich, wealthy, and lack nothing.
She whispered to the world, “You owe me a good life. Where are my treasures?”
Luna sat by her window that night, knees pulled to her chest, watching the small drops race each other down the cracked glass. She always loved the rain. It made the world quiet enough for her thoughts to breathe.
Her house stood at the edge of the pack’s border, where the scent of wolves faded and the forest began. The others called it the Outskirts, where the unwanted and outcast were sent to live and die. That’s where Luna was born.
Her mother, Elenora, had once been the pack healer, a gentle, gifted woman with hands that could calm pain and a heart too kind for a world ruled by power. Her father, Ronan, had been a warrior once. Fierce, loyal, and bold… until the night he was accused of turning rogue.
The elders said he’d been cursed by the Moon herself, his wolf tainted, his loyalty broken. They claimed he attacked a member of the Alpha’s bloodline during a full moon frenzy.
But Luna never believed that story. Not entirely.
She was only five when they came for him, torches and silver chains, the Alpha’s guards shouting, and her mother screaming. The scent of burning fur still haunted her dreams. According to rumours they had burnt him alive and let his ashes fly. Although some said he died in the woods.
No one ever found his body, nor where he was burnt to get his ashes.
Others said he was still out there, a rogue, neither man nor beast, prowling the borders of their land.
Too many stories, and she didn't know which to believe.
After that night, Elenora and Luna became ghosts among their own kind. The pack shunned them and called them curse-blooded, tainted by a traitor’s mark. No wolf would come near them; no child would play with her.
Luna learned early that pity was a luxury and kindness was currency she could never afford.
Her mother grew weaker each year. The healing gift she once used on others now barely kept her alive. Some nights, Luna would wake up to her mother coughing blood, whispering prayers to the Moon Goddess for forgiveness she never owed.
She never healed or moved on from what the pack did to her husband.
That night, as thunder rolled, Luna reached into her drawer and pulled out a faded photograph of her father, towering and wild-eyed, his arm around her mother, the moon glowing behind them.
“I miss you,” she whispered. She knew when he was alive, they were never close, and she wished she had gotten to know him.
The wind outside howled in response, long and mournful and too deliberate to be the storm. Luna’s breath hitched. She moved closer to the window.
There beyond the treeline, two golden eyes gleamed back at her through the dark.
Not human. Not entirely wolf.
Her heart skipped. It couldn’t be…
The eyes blinked once and then vanished into the night. Well, she must be hallucinating.
Her skin prickled. Somewhere deep in her bones, something ancient stirred the same feeling she’d had in the mirror earlier that day at the school's toilet.
Something inside her was changing.
Something her pack had always feared might one day awaken.
The prophecy her mother once whispered before sleep came rushing back to her: “When the cursed blood meets the golden light, the moon will choose its new heir.”
Luna didn’t understand it then.
But now, staring at the forest that swallowed her father, she wondered if destiny had finally come knocking.
Too many questions and no one could answer.
