Prologue - The Betrothed Under the Moon

POV Lunara Grimwald:

“You’re trembling again, Lunara.”

His voice cut through the silence like a blade — low, rough, and heavy with dominance. The night air clung to my skin, cold against the fire burning beneath it. I didn’t dare move.

Alessio stepped closer, and the forest seemed to bend around him, as if it too recognized its Alpha. His scent — pine, smoke, and sin — enveloped me completely. When his hand found my jaw, the air fled from my lungs.

“Do you think you can hide it from me?” he whispered, his thumb brushing the corner of my mouth. “That hunger?”

I wanted to deny it, but my pulse betrayed me — wild and unsteady, echoing his own. The moonlight painted his skin in silver, tracing the curve of his neck, the strength of his shoulders. Everything about him screamed power. And everything in me wanted to surrender to it.

“Say it,” he ordered softly, his hot breath ghosting over my ear. “Say you’re mine.”

My voice came out as barely a breath. “I’ve always been yours.”

His lips curved — not in a smile, but in a promise. A dangerous one.

A growl almost escaped my lips as I followed his command, letting my clothes fall to the ground. He pulled me onto his lap and crushed his mouth against mine, groaning when he tasted himself still on my tongue. His hands went straight to my ass, gripping hard as I rolled against him, driving him to the edge of control.

“Fuck, Lunara,” he groaned against my lips as I kept moving. “If you keep that up, I’ll come in my pants,” he whispered.

“And that’s bad, my wolf?” I murmured, nibbling at his lips while his hands worked at his zipper, freeing his erection.

“I want to feel you come inside me,” I whispered against his mouth, knowing exactly what those words would do to him.

Then he seemed to have a better idea.

“What…?” I muttered, confused by the sudden loss of his heat, but obeyed. He surprised me again when he turned me around and pressed me against the rough trunk of the tree in front of us, my ass lifted in the air, taunting him. My skin burned, and I had no idea what went through his mind as he looked at me like that.

I glanced over my shoulder and caught the devilish smile curving his lips when he saw my expression. That was the moment I understood: love between wolves is never gentle. It’s a storm — one that devours everything it touches.

The wolf that claims you… can also be the one who loves you and destroys you.