The pain spread like wildfire.
It wasn't just in Lyra's bones—it clawed at her spirit, threatened to tear her apart from the inside out. Her first shift had broken every rule she had clung to, every wall she built to keep her past hidden, buried.
She was fated to Damien Vale.
The name alone was a curse.
As she lay on the forest floor, gasping through the final stage of the transformation, the full weight of the Moon's Mark branded itself on her skin—hot, glowing silver across her shoulder blade in the shape of an intertwined crescent and claw. The mating sigil.
The mark of the Alpha.
She screamed—not from the pain, but from the betrayal.
"No… no, no, no…"
She hurried to her feet, her legs trembling from the shift, skin slick with sweat and pine needles. Her wolf still stirred beneath her flesh, restless and confused. Lyra touched the mark and flinched.
Damien. The name echoed again, not in her ears—but in her blood.
The mate bond had awakened.
"No," she growled, staggering through the trees, every nerve ablaze. "I won't let it take me. I won't be his." she vowed.
Branches whipped against her arms, pulling her skin as she ran, ignoring the pull in her chest that tried to drag her back. Her wolf whined inside her, torn between instinct and hatred. She knew what this meant—what every fated bond meant.
But she would never accept him.
Never him.
Damien Vale was the Alpha of Shadowclaw—the pack that had slaughtered her family in a power struggle a decade ago. She remembered the flames. The howls. The scent of blood and burning fur. Her mother's last scream.
She had survived because her father shielded her with his body. protecting her till his last breath.
She had sworn vengeance.
And now fate wanted her to belong to him?
Not a chance.
She reached the edge of the cliff overlooking the valley, where the moon bathed the world in silver. Her breaths came in shallow gasps. Her wolf trembled inside her.
She stared down at the flickering lights of the village far below—Shadowclaw territory.
He was there. She could feel him now.
The bond pulsed faintly, like a heartbeat inside her own.
Somewhere in that cursed stronghold, Damien Vale had felt it too. He knew. He would come.
She clenched her fists. Her wolf howled inside her, the sound silent in the real world, but deafening in her mind.
"I will never be yours," she whispered to the night.
But the moon didn't answer.
Let me know if you'd like it reformatted or expanded further!