Chapters

PROLOGUE

***************

“Sold to the Monster”

Arya Stark’s POV.

I dropped to my knees, body trembling, throat burning. A half-empty water bottle sat within reach. I snatched it and drank like a starved animal, uncaring as it spilled down my chin and onto my shirt.

My stomach growled loud, raw, angry. I hadn’t eaten since yesterday.

“You better hurry up,” snapped the head maid behind me. Her voice was sharp. Cold. Predictable.

I didn’t answer. I couldn’t afford to waste energy. The last time I talked back, I earned a slap and no food. Again.

Yesterday, I passed out in the laundry room because I didn't finish up my activities early. My punishment? Double the chores. No meals.

They thought starving me would break me.

But even shattered things had sharp edges.

And tonight… I was supposed to escape.

I had spent weeks watching the guards’ routines, memorizing patrol shifts, and hiding scraps of food under loose floorboards. Tonight was my window. Just a few more hours. I only needed to hold on a little longer.

I wasn’t going to die here. Not tonight after staying here all through my life.

“Princess Arya?”

That voice. Soft. Familiar. Maya.

I turned slowly to my only friend, but the concern in her blue eyes stripped the hope from mine.

“The Alpha... your brother... he’s asking for you,” she whispered, barely audible.

My pulse quickened. Why now?

The last time I saw Liam, he nearly beat me unconscious. We hadn’t spoken in two years.

“You should go,” Maya urged, glancing around nervously. “You don’t want to keep him waiting.”

No, I didn’t. Not today. Not when I had a plan. But I had no choice.

Swallowing the lump in my throat, I forced myself to my feet and headed toward the Alpha’s wing, each step dragging me farther away from freedom.

***********

I was four years old when my father was murdered. He was Alpha then strong, respected, feared. And he was slaughtered by the Crescent Moon Pack without mercy.

From what I’ve been told, my mother was already pregnant with me when it happened. Barely a few months along, still reeling from the loss, still grieving a mate she never got to bury.

According to the ancient laws of the Hollerith Pack, my brother couldn’t ascend yet—he was too young to rule. So instead, my mother, Luna Elara, stepped into power. She bore the title with grace, even while bearing me in her womb.

It was a time of chaos. The war drums hadn’t quieted. Grief hung heavy in the air like a storm cloud refusing to break. The weight of leadership was crushing, but she carried it, carried us, all the way to the night I was born.

The same night no child was ever supposed to be born.

Because it was The Celestial Festival night.

A rare, once-in-a-century phenomenon, when the spiritual and mortal realms blur. For a single night, the portal opens between the living and the dead, the gods and the wolves... and something else. Something older. Something divine. Or damned.

The old lore speaks of children born under that sky marked forever. A child of that night is either a blessing… or a curse.

There is no middle ground.

And the only way to know which?

Is if the mother survives.

Elara believed I was a blessing. She stood against every voice, every fear. The elders, the witches, the shamans—all warned her. They begged her to delay the birth by spell or sacred ritual. When that failed, they offered darker solutions that I should be taken from her before my first breath.

But my mother refused.

She chose me.

And so, I was born.

She didn’t die. No dark skies split open. No curse spilled forth. Her labor was swift. Gentle. Almost... sacred. For a moment, the pack rejoiced. They said I was touched by the moon. That I had brought light in a time of darkness.

But the hope didn’t last.

Exactly three weeks after my birth, my mother fell ill.

It started subtly at first. One evening, she was found outside, barefoot and naked, staring up at the stars with a strange smile on her lips. Sometimes, she would speak in perfect clarity except the words didn’t feel like hers.

Other times, she cried like a child. Rocked herself in corners. Whispered, “I want to go home… but I don’t know where home is anymore.”

Then came the visions.

She said the stars screamed. Said they were watching. That they remembered. She argued with shadows no one else could see, pleaded with ghosts that didn’t answer. When I cried, sometimes she would hum to soothe me.

Other times… she would growl.

The illness dragged on for years. Four long years.

At first, the pack held onto hope. They prayed. Lit candles. Burned herbs. But the whispers began. The same people who had once celebrated my arrival now avoided my gaze. They stopped seeing Elara’s daughter.

They started seeing the creature that brought madness to their Luna.

And I—just a child became the omen they feared.

The final stage of her sickness... I remember it too well. Too vividly.

It began with silence.

Not peaceful silence. The kind that thickens the air. That creeps into your lungs and settles like smoke. She would sit for hours on the cold chamber floor, her eyes wide and blank. Unblinking. As if she saw everything... and nothing.

She carved symbols into the stone walls using her fingernails. Deep, jagged marks that bled. No one knew what they meant. Not even the shamans dared translate them.

Then came the laughter.

Not hers. Not really. It was deeper—strange. Like it belonged to something inside her. It crawled out of her throat in fits and bursts. She would laugh, then sob, then scream like her soul was being torn apart. Some nights she curled up like a lost girl looking for a mother long gone.

She claimed the moonlight burned her skin. That it whispered secrets too terrible to carry.

And then, one night, one terrible, cold night, she looked at me, her eyes glassy and haunted, and smiled.

“Don’t trust the moon, Arya,” she whispered. “It remembers.”

Then she began to tear out her hair.

After that, she stopped speaking.

They locked her away.

But sometimes, even now, when the wind howls just right, I swear I still hear her. Not as the Luna she once was. Not even as my mother.

But as something else.

Something other.

After she was gone, Liam was made Alpha. The people pitied us. Said they would protect us.

They lied.

Liam changed. Or maybe… maybe he had always been that way. Maybe he had always seen me as the reason she unraveled. The cursed child. The one who broke her.

Our mother, whose reign was the most peaceful and successful in Hollerith history—was reduced to a footnote in stories whispered by firelight. A tragedy blamed on me.

Sometimes, I’d sit in the dark, asking the moon why I had been born. Why did I have to ruin everything?

The moon never answered.

By the time I turned five, Liam threw me into servitude. Said I needed discipline. That I had been “spoiled.” That I needed to earn my place.

No one questioned him. Most of the pack already hated me. The few who dared show me kindness were punished severely. So eventually, they stopped trying.

I became a ghost in my own home.

Unseen. Unheard. Unwanted.

***********

The guard outside the dining hall nodded stiffly. “He’s inside.”

Inside, Liam sat at the head of the long table. His plate untouched. His face… smiling.

I froze.

It wasn’t a sneer. Not a smirk. It was genuine. And that was the first time in twenty years since I had seen him smiling at me.

“Do you plan on standing there forever, Princess Arya?” The voice didn’t come from Liam, my brother.

Two men sat beside him. One was elderly, with sharp, hungry eyes. He stared at me like a predator sizing up his next meal.

“Good evening, Alpha Liam. Gentlemen,” I murmured, lowering my head in a small bow, no daring to make any mistakes.

But no one responded.

“Look at me,” the old man ordered. I obeyed, and instantly regretted it. His eyes roamed my body with open interest, without a shred of shame.

“There’s no need for formality,” he said with a smile. “I like her already.”

What?

Liam chuckled. “Alpha Roman, that’s a good one. I’m sure she’ll make a fine mate.”

Mate?

My stomach twisted. “What is going on?”

Liam finally spoke, his voice sharp with cruelty. “That’s your mate. Alpha Roman. Of the Crescent Moon Pack. You’ll be leaving with him.”

He sneered. “At least now you’re useful. Since you killed our mother with your miserable curse just like your miserable life.” He spat the words like poison, and they hit harder than any slap.

The room tilted. My breath caught.

But it wasn’t his venom that shook me. I’d grown used to it, familiar with the weight of his hatred.

No.

It was where he was sending me.

The Crescent Moon Pack. The same pack that murdered our father. That tore our lives apart.

“He killed our father, not only that but he already has nine mates!” I snapped, disgust twisting in my gut like a knife. “The Moon Goddess would never, he can’t be mine!”

“I refuse. I won’t go with him!”

The words came out too fast, burning my throat. And before I could stop myself, I spat on the floor at Roman’s feet.

The reaction was instant.

A hand struck me—fast, hard, brutal.

My head snapped to the side, pain erupting across my cheek like fire.

Roman had hit me.

“You don’t talk to me like you talk to your brother,” he said, voice ice-cold. “You’re nothing but a mad whore’s daughter.”

I blinked back the tears, my skin stinging, my pride bleeding.

And Liam?

He didn’t move. Didn’t flinch. Didn’t even blink.

He let him.

He stood there like a statue while Roman laid his hand on me. While the same man who destroyed our family claimed me like a prize.

I looked at Liam, desperate—for something. Anything.

Guilt. Regret. A flicker of doubt.

There was nothing.

Just emptiness.

He was giving me away. Handing me to the man who had destroyed our father, who had shattered our lives. And for what?

To rid himself of me. Like I was some broken toy.

A debt. A burden. A curse.

Something in me snapped.

I turned and ran. No hesitation. No thought—just instinct.

Tears blurred my vision. My lungs burned. My heart pounded like a war drum. My carefully laid plan everything I’d clung to shattered beneath my feet.

But through the pain, the terror, the betrayal… one truth cut through it all like steel:

I will not be that monster’s mate.

Even if it kills me.