Selene’s POV

“Do you ever wonder what it feels like… to be chosen for destruction?”

The voice lingered in my dream again, sharp and wicked, as if tugging directly at the marrow of my bones.

I jumped awake with a strangled gasp. My sheets clung to my damp skin, sweat slicking my forehead. My chest heaved like I had run for miles, and yet all I had done was sleep. No—dream. Which recently felt the same as drowning.

The room was silent, but silence no longer comforted me. It only left too much space for whispers I couldn’t ignore.

Chosen. Destroyer. Blood. Mate.

Words circled my ears like a curse.

By the time I got to Crescent Vale High the next morning, whispers clung to me everywhere I walked.

“Did you see Damian punch Alexander yesterday?”

“He laughed at it. Who laughs at a hit like that?”

“They said he called him brother.”

“No—what if it’s true?”

The word brother stuck like poison in the air. Damian had left the cafeteria the moment after the fight got broken by teachers, jaw clenched, eyes wild, his wolf barely contained. And Alexander? He’d walked out like he wasn’t bruised at all. Like the blood had been… welcomed.

And me? I’d been stuck in the middle. Like always.

Lizzy cleared her throat nervously, walking beside me at just the right pace to shield me from the cluster of eyes. “Selene…” she began softly, “don’t get involved. Please. You know what happens when you get too close to them.”

I wanted to tell her she was right. I wanted to lie and say I didn’t feel it—the way Alexander’s words had pierced through me, weaving into my nightmares like he had always belonged there. But how could I? When the same boy who split my lip two days ago was also the one I was apparently mated to?

The Moon Goddess must have hated me. There was no other explanation.

Lunchtime came too quickly, and though I tried to slip away into the library, I wasn’t fast enough. He was there.

Alexander.

Leaning casually against the hallway wall, like it was the easiest thing in the world to wait for me. His dark hair fell into his crimson-ringed eyes, his mouth still bruised from Damian’s hit—but the bloody smudge only added to the dangerous beauty of him.

He tilted his head, voice calm, sharp in its softness. “You’ve been dreaming, haven’t you?”

The tray in my hands nearly slipped. “What?”

“I can tell,” he said smoothly, pushing himself off the wall and stepping closer. “Your scent changes. Nightmares leave traces when you try to hide them. The bond—you’ve felt it. Heavy, like fire dragging across your chest.” He paused, studying me. “And in the dreams, you see him die.”

Every drop of blood in my body turned cold.

“How do you know that?!”

His lips curved, not a smile, but close enough. “Because, Selene Silas, the prophecy doesn’t lie. And whether you like it or not, we’re tangled in it—together.”

I staggered back a step, completely thrown. My wolf stiffened, growling softly in the back of my mind, but not in anger. In fear.

Don’t trust him. Don’t trust him.

But what terrified me wasn’t the warning. It was that part of me—the weakest, most desperate part—did trust him.

The rest of the day blurred. Amber cornered me once in the restroom with her sharp nails scratching warnings across my skin. Damian avoided me completely, his hazel eyes sliding away every time they threatened to meet mine. But the damage was already done. He’d said it out loud. Pathetic. Weak. Worthless.

And no amount of silence changed the fact that he’d known about the bond for years.

By the time classes ended, I had no strength left in me to defend myself.

I cut through the woods toward home, hoping the shortcut gave me enough of a head start before anyone else decided I was their entertainment for the evening. But halfway down the trail, the wind changed. I froze.

The scent hit first—smoke and something sharper, like steel dipped in blood.

Alexander.

“You shouldn’t walk here alone,” he said casually, stepping out from the trees, shadows trailing him like a crown. “Not after what you’ve started.”

“I didn’t start anything,” I spat before I could stop myself. My voice shook, breaking with the confession of how weak I was, but I continued anyway. “And I want nothing to do with you.”

His eyes locked on me. Red flickering once again. “You can’t want nothing, Selene. Prophecy doesn’t bow to want.”

The trees around us creaked. The wind thickened. I swore, for a second, I saw a shimmer of fire coil around his hand—and then blink, it was gone.

I shook my head, clutching my bag tighter. “Stay away from me.”

He tilted his head, voice low, almost whispered. “When the blood moon rises, Selene, you won’t be able to.”

The bond inside me pulsed violently at his words, my wolf howling frantic against my will. My knees nearly buckled from the intensity. I barely managed to run, tearing through the woods, half-blinded by tears.

That night, I tried to hold myself together. Sitting by my desk, scribbling mindlessly into a notebook, I repeated the same words like a prayer under my breath.

I am not cursed.

I am not chosen.

This is not real.

But my pen stilled when the notebook flipped open on its own. My breath hitched. The page turned blank—except for one single line that slashed across it in messy scrawl.

“Kill the Alpha, or be killed.”

The ink shimmered, blood-red against the paper. My pulse skyrocketed, my heart threatening to leap out of my throat.

Before I could scream, the lamp beside me flickered out.

In the pitch-black of her room, Selene hears it again—not from a dream this time, but curling thick into the silence: Alexander’s voice whispering inside her head—“Chosen.”