Henry's POV

As I tracked the rogue wolves with my soldiers, the faint scent of a mate drifted into my senses.

Leo, my wolf, stirred with excitement. "That scent feels familiar," he murmured within the depths of my mind.

I felt it too. A shiver coursed through my chest, making my heart thunder and my lips curl back to reveal the sharp edge of my canines. There was no doubt it was from Wendy. I could never forget her.

"I hate her with every fiber of my being," I growled inwardly, bitterness thick in my voice.

Leo chuckled in my mind. “Stop lying to yourself, Henry. You still love her. Now that she’s our mate, you’re excited, aren’t you?”

"Excitement? Hardly," I snapped, denying the fluttering chaos within me. Still, my body betrayed me as I turned and bolted in the direction of her scent.

Through the dense trees, a figure in white flashed across the undergrowth, running freely under the moonlight. My chest throbbed violently. After all these years, I was seeing her again.

Leo and I gave chase, but I caught the scent of other rogue wolves lurking nearby. I barked an order to the warriors, sending them after the remaining rogues. As for me, I kept running, following Wendy, my mate.

It was the night of the full moon. The wind roared through the trees, and it pulled memories back like a tide.

***

I was thirteen when my father left us. He had found his mate and abandoned my mother and me without a second thought.

I remember falling to my knees, begging him not to go, but his gaze held nothing but scorn and disgust.

He and his Luna expelled us from the pack. At that age, I didn’t yet have my wolf. I was defenseless, a liability for my mother. She did everything in her power to protect me, but it was never enough. The rogues came for us like rabid beasts let loose from hell. I remember being dragged like a rag doll, my body torn and bleeding, my leg shattered. My vision blurred with pain.

My screams echoed, not in defiance, but in dread. It should have been my end, but my mother, injured yet fierce, saved me. She fought through her own agony to yank me from the brink of death, forcing us onward in search of sanctuary.

We wandered from pack to pack, begging for shelter, only to be rejected again and again. Most Alphas turned us away. I started to believe the Moon Goddess had forsaken us.

Then Wendy appeared.

I remember her golden hair and the way she walked toward us without fear. She had just turned sixteen. She found me and my dying mother and begged her father to let us stay. She convinced the healer to treat us.

“It’s my birthday. Please let me do this one good thing,” she had said, like it was nothing.

Everyone praised her generosity, and for a moment, her grace extended to my mother and me.

Everyone adored her.

Including me.

My mother and I lived in the Omega quarters, doing the hardest physical labor to survive. I couldn’t help myself. My eyes followed her like the moon follows the tides. She trained every day, fierce and confident.

Wendy was the Alpha’s daughter, the center of attention, and her father was the most powerful among the packs in the area.

I was just a discarded child. I could only yearn from the mud, a boy with no standing nor dignity to call his own.

My feelings only grew, no matter how much I tried to hide them. I would gently caress every delicate rose I carefully tended, as tenderly as if I were touching her.

When my foolishness was exposed, her friends mocked me relentlessly. I knelt in shame, eyes to the ground, not even daring to meet her gaze.

Then she said it.

“You're a coward. My mate will be strong, brave, and powerful, not someone like you.”

My mother apologized on my behalf, coughing harshly beside me. Her health had long been deteriorating.

I was wrong. Completely and utterly wrong about her.

Wendy wasn’t kind. She was cruel.

When we were finally cast out from the pack’s edge, her warriors ambushed us. They didn’t even wait until we crossed the border.

Her warrior sneered at me. “You pathetic, abandoned mutt. How dare you think you could love the Alpha’s heir? Wendy was disgusted by you. That’s why she sent me to deal with you.”

“I’ll let you run for a while before I kill your mother. After that, I’ll rip open your chest with my claws.”

The world seemed to collapse around me. My chest burned with pain, my mother screaming for me to run. I couldn’t move. When he spoke Wendy’s name, it was like ice had seized my veins.

That was the moment I snapped.

I charged at him.

He knocked me down, pain exploding through my ribs. Still, I got up. I ran at him again. I heard my mother shouting desperately behind me.

“I’m not a coward,” I whispered to myself.

My mother managed to throw him off just long enough. I twisted the ring on my finger, a hidden silver spike popped out. I stabbed him with everything I had.

I still wear that ring. In all the sleepless nights since, touching it was the only way I could feel safe again.

We escaped that night. We became lone wolves once more. When I was seventeen, my mother died from illness.

After I came of age, I joined a new pack. Two years later, I challenged and killed the brutal alpha, claiming the title for myself.

In those broken and desperate years, I learned how to survive. I came to hate my father who abandoned us. I also hated Wendy, the girl who called me a coward, who humiliated me, who sent someone to hurt my mother.

***

Leo and I finally caught up to Wendy.

I had promised myself I would punish her like the criminal she was. When I finally saw her again, my heart clenched.

Her scent pulled me in like a drug.

“She’s beautiful, Henry,” Leo said dreamily.

My chest ached with the force of my heartbeat. I clenched my jaw.

That wasn’t right. I was supposed to hate her. I did hate her.

When I brought Wendy back to my villa in the human world, Leo whispered again.

“Henry, you should treat her better. If you don’t, you might regret it.”

I ignored him.

I had investigated her thoroughly after becoming Alpha. After her father’s death, she disappeared completely.

Now fate had brought us back together, but this time, the roles were reversed.

I would make her suffer. I would humiliate her the way she once humiliated me. I would keep her by my side, watch her struggle, and make her feel every ounce of the shame she forced on me.

“I promise you, you’ll regret it,” Leo muttered.

“Shut up,” I snapped at Leo. “I won’t regret anything. I won’t fall for Wendy. Not now. Not ever. Even if she’s my mate, I’ll only shame her. I’ll only make her pay.”

Still seething, I had the maid deliver her a letter.

However, she had the audacity not to show up.

“Maybe she didn’t even read your letter,” Leo mused. “Let’s be honest, her first time with you wasn’t exactly pleasant. You didn’t kiss or comfort her like a mate the next morning."

“Is that it? She’s angry with me?” I scoffed. “It doesn't matter. Let her be. I have plenty of ways to make her submit.”

Leo sighed, clearly satisfied with his mate. Wendy was stunning and full-bodied, her golden waves etched vividly in his mind.

All I could focus on was how she treated what happened between us like a deal to be made.

She had reduced herself to a commodity. I should have felt pleased by her boldness, but instead, a strange irritation welled up inside me.