The Red Moon Pack was never home. It was a battlefield I was born into—a place where wolves tore you apart with words instead of claws. Where blood didn’t mean love. Where water was thicker than blood and rank was everything.

And I was born an omega—the lowest, the least,the forgotten, the nothing in the pack. My father made sure I never forgot it. Beta Orion, a respected, feared, cold as winter steel.

To the pack, he was loyal and second-in-command.

To me, he was the man who spat my name like a curse.

“You’ll never be worth the food you eat,” he once said, throwing a broken plate near my feet. I was just eight. I had only asked for more soup.

The shards had cut into my ankle that day, but it was nothing compared to the way his words shredded my spirit.

That was the first time I learned silence was safer than need.

I believed him for too long.

Zora, my older sister, inherited his fire—only hers burned hotter,crueler, prettier and fairest.

The perfect daughter. The golden one. Everything I wasn’t.

She hated me. Not for being weak, but for existing at all. Her eyes said it every time she looked at me.

Like I was a stain on her reputation and for some reasons,I believed her.

“Clean yourself up, Octavia,” she’d say through gritted teeth, even when I was already spotless. “You’re embarrassing.”

When I turned eighteen and still didn’t show any sign of a mate bond, Zora saw her chance.

Her smile was soft when she spoke, but I’d learned by then that poison was often poured in honey.

“You’ll do this for the family,” she said, brushing my hair like I was a doll. “Alpha Remus needs a Luna. He’s old, but wealthy and powerful. And you, dear sister, are useless to us otherwise. Luckily,you won't be lacking anything as his Luna” she said with grinning evilly.

Remus? The dying alpha of the Boulder Fang Pack.

Wrinkled. Lecherous. A wolf with no bite but plenty of teeth left to show.

His touch made my skin crawl the moment we met, the way his eyes clung to me like wet cloth.

I begged my father not to make me do it.

Fell to my knees, wept but he didn’t even blink.

“Be grateful someone wants you,” he said, shoving me hard enough that my shoulder hit the wall.

I still have the bruise in my memory.

Day and night, I thought of ways to escape but I had nothing and nowhere to go, so I lied.

“I’m not a virgin,” I whispered to Remus during our formal meeting, my voice low, steady, eyes locked to his. “You won’t be able to mark me.”

Color drained from his face,his lustful eyes turned dark while he rained insults way deeper than a slap on me.

He rejected me on the spot—loudly, publicly, furiously.

I barely made it home before the beatings started.

My father’s fists. Zora’s insults. The pack’s judgment.

A chorus of punishment, a ritual of disgrace. A part of me wished I never told Remus that but it was too late.

I remember lying there, blood filling my mouth, my ribs aching with my face swelling—thinking this would be it. That maybe this was the end.

I welcomed it, accepting my fate.

Then—suddenly—he appeared.

Darius,The handsome Alpha.

Not just of Red Moon, but of the entire region’s alliances. A man of few words and even fewer weaknesses.

He wasn’t supposed to be there that night.

He rarely dealt with pack punishments directly. His presence was reserved for war councils, treaties, trials—not broken girls on bloodstained floors.

But somehow, he showed up.

Maybe he heard the noise. Maybe the Moon Goddess intervened. Maybe fate has a cruel sense of humor.

The door slammed open with a force that shook the walls.

A deep, primal and ancient growl ripped through the air like thunder.

Everything and everyone stilled.

Beta Orion’s hand froze mid-swing. Zora’s mouth fell open.

My body curled tighter instinctively, heart skittering, breath caught in my chest. I would prefer to be punished by everyone but not him, the Alpha.

Darius stepped into the room, shadows clinging to him like a second skin.

Eyes glowing molten gold. Aura like a storm breaking through bone.

He looked at me, not with pity, not with disgust but with possession.

And then he said, “She’s mine.” his eyes were dark and fixed on me.

The world stopped spinning. Something inside me cracked. Hope? Horror?

I wasn’t sure. All I knew was that every instinct in me screamed that this couldn’t be happening.

Not him, not like this, all I wanted was an escape.

He walked toward me slowly, like a predator who already knew his prey wouldn’t run.

My skin burned where his gaze touched it. My wolf—silent for years—stirred deep within me, confused and suddenly awake.

“No,” I whispered. “You’re wrong.”

But the bond didn’t lie.

It hummed beneath my skin, I could feel it binding, a cruel twist of destiny.

And when his hand brushed my bruised cheek gently but possessive, I felt it snap into place.

Like a chain around my soul. Darius, the most feared Alpha in the region is my mate?

And from the glint in his eyes, he knew it before I did.

“I’ll take her from here,” he said coldly, gaze flicking to my father like a dare.

No one spoke, not even Zora, not even my father.

For the first time in my life, I saw fear on her face.

Darius lifted me into his arms as if I weighed nothing. His scent—pine and thunder and something darker—wrapped around me, suffocating yet oddly grounding. As he carried me away from my family.

I didn’t feel rescued,I felt claimed. Like a prisoner dressed in silk.

And I wondered, as the cold night air kissed my face. Had I escaped one hell, only to enter another?