Chapter 1 Chapter 1

MIRA

I wasn’t always like this.

There was a time I used to pray to the moon, to the wind, to anything that would hear me. I prayed for safety. For warmth. For someone to find me in the dark and say I mattered.

Then Alpha Darius found me instead.

I didn’t cry when his wolves dragged me through the forest. Not when they broke my leg in two places. Not when they yanked me by my tangled hair into the clearing with the blood-soaked snow and threw me at his feet like roadkill. I didn’t cry then.

I only cried when they smiled.

Zane smiled first. Warm. Like the boy next door who might help you carry your books. His jet-black hair was slicked back, his eyes the color of burnt honey. “She’s smaller than I expected,” he said, like I was a new pair of shoes.

Luca laughed. “Cute, though. Broken but still breathing. Can we keep her?”

And Jax… He didn’t speak. He just stared at me with that cold stillness. That green-eyed silence that stripped the skin off my thoughts.

“She’s yours,” Alpha Darius said, lighting a cigar with a hand that reeked of wolf blood. “She’s not pack. She’s not protected. She’s yours to train, break, breed—whatever you want.”

Breed. That was the word he used.

I don’t remember much after that, not in order. It’s a blur of expensive perfume and dirty hands. Gold bracelets tightening around my wrists like shackles. Bathtubs too clean for someone like me. Dresses that didn't fit, shoes that cut my ankles open, makeup smeared across my face by fingers that didn’t know the word gentle.

Every night, they dressed me like a doll.

And every morning, they made me run.

“Faster,” Zane would say, voice sweet like it was all a game. “Don’t make me catch you too soon.”

Luca would whistle as I stumbled through the woods, his voice teasing over the trees. “You look good on your knees, baby.”

Jax said nothing. Just walked. Always behind. Always close. I could feel his breath before I heard his footsteps.

They never raped me.

Not with their cocks, anyway.

But they took everything else.

They kissed me when I bled, told me I was beautiful when I cried, pressed gifts into my trembling hands like rewards for surviving another day.

Luca gave me a diamond choker. “It sparkles when you shake.”

Zane read to me once, curled on the velvet chaise while I lay at his feet too sore to move. “You’re safe here,” he lied.

Jax gave me silence. And it was the worst gift of all.

I thought if I smiled, they’d stop.

I thought if I screamed, they’d snap out of it.

But they just hunted harder.

That night, it was raining. Not soft drizzle. A downpour, like the moon was trying to drown the whole damn world.

I ran anyway.

My body was torn open in places I didn’t even know had skin. My lungs burned, every step stabbing into my ribs, but I ran. Because I was prey, and prey doesn’t stop. Not until it’s dead.

I slipped on the mud, crashed into a tree, tasted blood in my mouth and kept going. I heard them laughing behind me. Luca’s voice was closest. “Should we stop now? She’s barely crawling.”

“I’m bored,” Zane sighed. “Let her rest.”

Then nothing.

Silence.

I turned my face to the sky. The red moon stared down at me and it was so full. So cruel. My limbs went limp. My shift broke mid-run, bones crunching, leaving me naked and human in the cold mud.

And then—

Bang.

The sound cracked through the trees like the snap of a neck.

A choked cry tore from my lips as pain bloomed in my side. Hot. Deep. My fingers scrabbled at my ribs and came back soaked in red.

They’d done it.

They’d finally done it.

They shot me.

Maybe it was Jax. Maybe they all agreed. Maybe I was never supposed to make it this long.

I coughed, choked on blood. The forest spun.

And still—

a part of me waited. Waited for one of them to come back. To kneel beside me. To say they were sorry.

They didn’t.

My breath thinned. The red moon blurred above me. And all I could think was—

They won’t even bury me.

My body was numb, but the cold still found a way in.

Not the kind that skims your skin and passes. No, it was the kind that seeps under your ribs, settles deep, and whispers to your bones— let go.

I thought I’d cry again. I didn’t.

I just lay there, naked in the mud, blood blooming beneath me like some sick, wilted flower, while the forest around me breathed like it didn’t care I was dying in the middle of it.

The wind shifted. My hair clung to my cheek. The scent of pine and rain clung harder. And beneath all of it—like a ghost I couldn’t shake—was that trace of sandalwood, smoke, and aftershave.

Them.

They were gone already, probably back in that mansion, peeling off wet jackets, drying their boots by the fire, maybe laughing. Maybe forgetting.

Luca would be bragging, loudly.

Zane would say nothing but carry guilt in the crease between his brows like that made it better.

And Jax... Jax wouldn’t say a damn word.

I remembered once—just once—he’d brought me a blanket.

It was after a night hunt, the kind where I’d barely made it back. I’d collapsed near the fire pit, too weak to shift, fur matted with blood and dirt, throat torn up from howling. He didn’t speak. He didn’t even look at me. Just dropped the blanket over my back like I was some stray too pitiful to leave out in the cold.

I held onto that scrap of warmth like it meant something.

God, I was so fucking stupid.

I coughed again, blood oozing from my mouth, and something inside me shifted. It was wrong, loose. My vision curled at the edges. The rain wasn’t easing. It poured harder, and I could still feel the damn choker on my throat.

Luca’s.

It was too tight. Diamonds biting into skin like they were alive, like they wanted me to bleed. I wanted to rip it off, but I couldn’t even lift my hand.

A gift. A collar.

Same thing.

“Pretty when you cry,” he’d murmured while clasping it around my neck, all fake-sweet, all teeth. “Let them see how much we treasure you.”

Treasure.

Like I was gold they didn’t want to keep but didn’t want anyone else to touch either.

They fed me food I couldn’t pronounce. Dressed me in silk I never asked for. Kissed me when they were bored, pushed me down when I looked too long, too soft, too real.

It wasn’t love. It wasn’t even cruelty. It was sport.

They were bored, and I was the thing they broke when the night got too quiet.

I closed my eyes.

It was easier like that—easier to pretend I wasn’t still here, bleeding into the earth like it wanted to claim me. If I didn’t see the trees, maybe I could imagine I was somewhere else. That shitty old shack by the river, roof falling in, wild berries growing out back, where I used to sleep curled up in wolf form, dreaming I had something.

No one would find me here.

No one would weep.

Maybe someone would find the choker in a few years and think I’d been someone important. Someone rich. Someone who mattered.

I laughed. It came out broken. Wet.

A branch cracked far off in the woods.

Too late.

I didn’t want to be saved anymore.

I just wanted—

I didn’t know what I wanted.

Just… not this.

The red moon stared down like it was watching me die on purpose, like it had waited for this. Maybe it had. I wondered if it would hurt less if I stopped fighting.

My eyes fluttered shut again, my heartbeat dragging slow, every beat like it had to climb uphill. I could still hear Zane’s voice, all soft and fake and full of lies.

“You’re safe here.”

Liar.

Luca’s voice followed, whispered against my neck like I was something he cared about.

“You’re not just a game. You’re ours.”

Liar.

And Jax never needed to speak. His eyes used to say everything.

Used to.

I thought there was pity once.

Not anymore.

Maybe this was what I was born for. To be hunted, ruined, forgotten. To rot in a forest that wasn’t mine and wouldn’t even remember me.

And maybe that was okay.

Because in the middle of that ache, in that dirt, shaking, bleeding, alone, I felt something burn hotter than fear.

I hated them.

I hated their smiles. Their sweet words. The way they kissed like they cared.

I hated that a part of me still wanted to matter to them.

I hated the way Zane’s voice softened at night.

I hated that Luca once made me laugh so hard I forgot where I was.

I hated that Jax touched me like I was breakable, like I deserved something gentler.

I hated that they left me here.

I hated—

I—

The pain went quiet.

The forest stilled.

The red moon dimmed.

And then—

Nothing.