NORA

I turned to walked out of the pack as I said,

"My baby, I'll come back to get you!"

That was the only thought I had when those gates closed behind me and the sound of them shutting echoed through the cold morning air and faded into nothing. I did not have a plan. Neither did I have a direction.

I did not have anything except the clothes on my back and a body that had given birth less than two days ago and had no business being out in this kind of cold.

The snow started coming down not long after I left the border. Slow at first, light flakes that melted the moment they touched my skin, and then heavier, thicker.

My feet were already numb inside my thin shoes and the cold was climbing up my legs and settling into my joints and making every step harder than the one before it.

My abdomen was still throbbing. That deep interior ache that came from being cut open and stitched back together was still very much present and the walking was not helping it.

Every time my foot hit the ground a jolt of pain moved through my lower body and I breathed through it and kept going because stopping meant sitting down in the snow and sitting down in the snow meant not getting back up.

I thought about my baby with every step.

I don't even know his name. I don't know if Kael had named him already or if Lena had or if they had done it together over his small head while I was lying unconscious in that hospital room.

I don't know what he looked like beyond the brief and blurry impression I had gotten in the chaos of the delivery room. I don't know if he was sleeping well or eating well or if anyone was holding him the way a baby needs to be held.

That not knowing was its own kind of pain that had nothing to do with the cold or the wound in my abdomen or the exhaustion pulling at every part of me.

I wiped the snow from my face and kept walking.

The trees grew denser the further I moved from the pack border. The path I had been following gradually disappeared under the snow and I was moving through open forest now, bare branches above me and thick white ground below and silence everywhere except for the sound of my own breathing and my own footsteps and the occasional crack of a branch somewhere in the dark of the trees.

I don't know whose territory I was moving into.

That thought occurred to me somewhere in the back of my mind but I pushed it aside because the alternative was turning back and turning back was not something I was capable of.

There was nothing behind me anymore. Whatever was ahead of me, no matter how uncertain or how dangerous, was the only direction that existed now.

One moment I was moving through the trees alone and the next something slammed into me from the left with enough force to knock me sideways into the snow. I hit the ground hard on my side and the impact tore through my abdomen like fire and I cried out before I could stop myself.

I rolled and pushed myself up and they were already circling me.

Three of them. Large wolves, grey and brown, their eyes fixed on me with the focused intensity of animals defending something they considered theirs.

Border wolves.

I understood immediately what had happened. I had crossed into their alpha's territory without permission and they had been sent to handle exactly this kind of intrusion.

"I am not a threat," I said, which was almost laughable given the state I was in. "I am just passing through. I have nowhere to go."

They did not respond to words. Neither,did they slow their circling.

The first one came at me and I dropped to one side and felt its teeth graze my arm as it passed.

The second came right behind it and I threw myself backward.I landed in the snow again and the pain in my abdomen exploded so violently that my vision went white at the edges.

I got back up.

I do not know how. My body had nothing left to give and the rational part of my mind was fully aware of that fact.

The thought of dying and not seeing my child pushed me back onto my feet and kept me there.

The same thing that had kept me walking through the snow for hours. The same thing that had made me hold my head up while walking through that crowd at the pack gates.

The same thoughts,that refused to go down quietly even when going down quietly would have been so much easier.

The third wolf circled wide and came from behind and I turned just in time and caught it with enough force to make it stumble and it fell back snarling.

They regrouped and came at me together this time.

I went down.

This time,I could not get back up.

My arms gave out when I tried and my abdomen was screaming and the snow beneath me was warm in the places where the wound had opened back up and I lay there with my cheek pressed against the cold ground and my breathing coming in short ragged pulls and I looked up at the three of them standing over me and I thought about my baby one more time.

I thought about holding him. Just once. Just long enough to let him know that I had wanted him. That none of what happened was because I had not wanted him.

My eyes were closing on their own.

The wolves went still.

Then they stepped back.

All three of them at once, and silence fell over the forest that was completely different from the silence that had been there before. It was Heavier. I could feel it,even through the fog of pain and exhaustion that was pulling me under.

Then a scent reached me before anything else did.It was Warm and deep and layered with something that cut straight through the cold and the pain and the fear and reached into the most hidden part of me and pulled.

I forced my eyes open one last time.

He was standing at the edge of the trees looking down at me with dark eyes that caught what little light existed in that grey morning and held it.

And then the word came. Rising up from somewhere so deep inside me I had not known it was there until this moment.

"Mate."

His lips parted.

"Mate."

And then the darkness took me completely.

RAPHAEL

I turned to one of my men and asked if they had found out anything about what had gone down with her in that forest. He shook his head slowly. A long breath left me.

"Get out of my sight. And before you do, dig into everything there is to know about her. I want to know how she ended up in that forest and who gave the order to have her killed." I said sternl, without looking away from the woman lying broken and still on that hospital bed.

My mother had pushed me past my limit again that evening.

The same argument that never went anywhere. She wanted me to pick a chosen mate. She said the moon goddess had not given me one and the pack could not keep waiting.

I had sat through every word of it and walked out the moment she was done because there was nothing left for me to say that I had not already said a hundred times before.

The forest was where I always went when the walls started closing in. Shifting and hunting was the only thing that had ever been able to reach into the noise inside my head and pull it out by the root.

After that conversation with my mother I needed it more than I usually did. I shifted and I ran and I let the trees swallow everything up around me.

Her scent found me before I found her.

It stopped me where I stood.It was so deep and immediate that my whole body responded to it before my mind could even catch up with what was happening.

My mate. She was somewhere close. Much closer than I had expected. And beneath that scent was something else threading through it, her fear, it was alive and urgent and it was pressing into me through the bond that had not even fully formed yet.

I tore through the trees in the direction the scent was pulling me, feeling the bond tighten with every step, her breathing reaching me through it like I had always been meant to hear. It was ragged and desperate and coming apart at the edges.

What I saw when I broke through the trees made my blood go cold and then immediately hot.

A man had her. He was throwing her into a tree and she hit it and crumpled and he was already moving over her again even as she lay there barely able to lift her head.

His mouth was going and his hands were reaching and he had not even slowed down.

My wolf lunged inside me with so much force that I took everything I had to hold him back long enough to stay upright.

Nobody comes into my territory and touches what belongs to me. Not a stranger.

Definitely,not someone who woke up this morning thinking they could walk into my land and put their hands on my mate and walk back out again.

"How dare you come into my territory and lay your hands on what is mine." I let the horror words leave my mouth as I moved through every one of them like a current.

The man who had been standing over her went down to the floor in a second , both hands pressed together in front of him with my whole body trembling.

"We had no intention of crossing your border. It was not planned. Please forgive us." He could barely hold the words together. He was shaking so hard.

His people dropped behind him doing the same thing.

"Damn it." I growled low, my eyes moving to her on the ground, taking in the state of her, the fear still sitting on her face even now as she looked up at me.

I had thought about making it slow. The sight of her down there took that thought away from me.

"Give my regards to whoever is waiting for you when you get there. And when you come back in your next life keep your hands off women." I sent them down one after the other after my last word and I did not stop until every one of them was flat on the ground and the only sound left in that forest was her breathing.

I growled at what they had done. At the state they had reduced her to.

She was completely powerless on that ground, her body barely holding on, and then I watched her lips part and what came out of them reached into something inside me that I had not known was there.

"Mate." It was barely a whisper. I said it back at the same moment and she closed her eyes and everything in her went still.

The panic that hit me was immediate,it's causes shivers to run down my spine as I went down beside her and got her into my arms and I came out of that forest running like I had never run in my life.

I couldn't believe what was happening, I finally found my mate after a long time and she was in a critical condition.

I had spent so long waiting.

And now she was in my arms and she was leaving at the same time and the idea of losing her before I could even get to keep her was something I couldn't handle .

Definitely not when , my pack depends on this .

"Daniel" I called his name through the mindlink with everything I had.

"Alpha, something is wrong, your breathing is all over the place, what has happened?" He responded immediately, already catching the state I was in.

"Have the hospital ready before I get there. Emergency patient coming in right now. Every piece of equipment you have, get it out." I used my alpha tone and he cut the link and moved.

I ran until the hospital came into view and Daniel came rushing out through the doors and lifted her from my arms and had her on the bed before I had fully stopped moving.

The look on his face when he saw her was not one that settled anything in me. He worked fast, syringes going in, wounds being cleaned, moving through her injuries with a speed and focus that told me everything about how serious it was without him opening his mouth once.

I was in a state of confusion,when my eyes found the wound on her lower abdomen.

It was deep and it was still bleeding and my wolf made a sound inside me that I never want to hear again.

Daniel stepped back when he was done and she lay there against the bed with old tears dried on her face and fresh ones finding their way out from beneath her closed eyes even while she slept.

"My baby. Give me my pup. I gave birth to him." These words broke out of her in pieces, it came from somewhere so deep inside her that I couldn't help, but wonder what she must have gone through to be in this state and what happened to her.

"My alpha, whatever she has been through has left her subconscious in a state of deep pain and hurts. The fear and the pain she is carrying are going to stay with her for a long time." Daniel spoke, carefully and I felt my heart drop inside my chest when he said these words.

"Is she going to pull through this?"I asked , as I tried to surge in my anger while glaring sympathetically at her.

"She will be fine provided the environment around her does not pile onto what she is already dealing with." Daniel gave me one last look and walked out.

I stayed and watched her wrestle with whatever was happening inside her own head and I felt every second of it myself.

****

I could not stop moving.

I paced through my study room with the anger in me refusing to settle no matter how many times I walked the same stretch of floor.

The questions kept turning over.

Who were those people? How did they end up in my forest? What had already been done to her before she ever reached my border and who the fuck gave an order hurt her?

That wound on her abdomen did not come from running through trees. It was a raw wound, and it's from a deep cut .

"We still have nothing on her. Nothing on her pack either." Damon,my beta came through the door and paused, his voice caused me to pause on my thoughts.

"They put their hands on her. They were going to take her life. Who does something like that and thinks there will be no answer for it." I rounded on him and he let out a long breath.

"She will tell you everything herself once she opens her eyes. You need to stop letting this eat you alive. She is going to come through this." He moved closer and looked at me steadily in the way that had always had an effect on me even when I did not want it to.

"There is also another thing." He paused for a moment. "The council. They are pushing for an urgent meeting. The chosen mate situation again."

"I already found her." I cut across him before he could get any further and he gave a slow nod.

"Pass the word along. There will be no chosen mate. Their Luna is already inside this pack right now and she will be presented to them when she is back on her feet."I commanded, without a single trace of remorse.

"You need to rest. You look like you have been running since you carried her in and wearing a path on this floor is not going to bring her around any sooner." He stated,choosing his words carefully.

"My mate is not dying." I turned on him the instant that word came out.

"Nobody used that word. I said rest." He did not move back. "She wakes up, we sit with her, we get every answer we need. But tearing yourself apart before any of that happens is not doing her any good."He advised, his words somehow surges deep into me .

"If you had not put every one of those men in the ground we would have our answers already." Damon said,under his breath and sighed.

"They tortured her. They were going to violate her." I held his gaze. "They got exactly what they deserved and I would do it again."

Damon kept his mouth closed after that.

Then the door opened and Daniel was standing in it and the expression on his face was not the same one he had been wearing all evening.

"My alpha." He took a breath. "She is awake."

NORA

There were people close by. I could pick up on their scent before anything else registered, their emotions pressing in on me from every side, their voices were faint,it's like they were coming from behind thick walls.

Whatever they were feeling was heavy enough that my body reacted to it even before my eyes opened.

I could feel their worry, their pain and hurt but surprisingly, I don't know who they are nor do I know where I am currently.

My body hits with surges of pain, the moment I move my hands.

I tried to move again,but all I got when I pushed through was more darkness.

I opened my mouth and nothing came out. I tried to reach for something, anything, just to show them I was still in here.

Nothing moved.

The blackness had me completely. There were no shapes, no light, no faces. Just voices floating somewhere above me that I could not get to no matter how hard I pushed.

"Why isn't she opening her eyes? What is going on with her? Doctor, talk to me." A deep masculine voice broke through the room.

And I tried to strain against whatever was holding me down, but I guess my body is too heavy to move. As much as I tried to understand what's going on, I don't have any ideas of what this is .

"Give her time. Right now she is in a coma." The doctor's response came through and the words landed somewhere in my chest.

Am I dying? Do they think I already have it? God, my pup. My baby. I cannot feel my child anywhere near me.

I was running. My body was on fire with pain and I was screaming and the people around me were not helping. They were laughing. Every face I could see belonged to someone who had spent years making sure I knew I was nothing. My feet kept going even as they shook under me.

I looked back and they were growning. The faster I ran the further behind I seemed to fall, like the ground was working against me, like no matter what I did they were always going to be closer than I could handle.

Then the ground disappeared from under me and I went down hard in a place so dark and so hidden I did not even know spaces like it existed.

I curled in on myself and shook and screamed for anyone and nothing came back.

"Mother. Father. Please." My voice cracked on every word and my legs would not stop trembling no matter how tightly I held myself.

"Running was pointless. We will finish what we came to do and send what is left of you back as a warning. Nobody is pulling you out of this." The voice that answered was male and it was full of something spiteful that even I couldn't understand.

I pressed myself further into the dark and prayed. I was not ready to go. Not like this. Not here. There was too much still unfinished and too many people who had walked away from what they did to me without any consequence at all. They took my pup. They threw me out like I was nothing. I was not done yet.

"Moon goddess, you move with the powerful and the chosen and you have left me behind at every turn. But I am telling you right now that I am not dying in this place." I whispered slowly with tears running down into my hair and their voices cutting through before I could finish.

"Track her scent. She could not have gone far. We are not walking out of here without her head. Alpha Kael and Lena will make sure we suffer if we come back empty handed."

So there it was. Kael and Lena. They already stripped everything from me and now they had sent people to make sure there was nothing left to strip.

I felt a surge of anger move through me at the thought of what they planned to do to me.

First they took my child, sent me out of the pack and now they want me dead, gone and forgotten?

"Moon goddess, I do not know if you have given up on me completely, but I'm not giving up on myself. Get me out of this darkness. Please." I said,as tears kept falling down from my eyes.

I was wallowing in the dark,when a light broke through and someone grabbed my hands and I screamed.

"No! Moon goddess!" My eyes flew open.

I was staring at a ceiling I did not recognise. A man in white clothes stood over me, his mouth moving slowly.

"You... you are... awa... awake..." He could barely get the words out properly. He stepped back from the bed and ran towards the door. "Alpha! She is awake!"

'Where exactly are we right now?' I pushed the question to my wolf, scanning the room again. Nothing about it was familiar. Not the walls. Not the smell. Not even the equipment surrounding me.

"Finally! Nora, you scared our mate half to death. He did not leave this place all night, not once, not for anything!" My wolf was going in my head, all worked up and loud.

What the hell happened to me? Where am I? This is not Kael's pack. This is not anywhere I have ever been before. And my pup. Damn it. My baby.

The thought hit me so hard that I was already moving before I had made the decision to move. I sat up and looked down at my hands and there were needles in them, tubes running from my skin to bags hanging beside the bed.

I pulled them out.

Both of them.

I hurriedly,stood to my feet and headed towards the door, without any hesitation and the blood running from my hands had not even registered yet when the doorway filled up.

He was just standing there.

I stopped when I saw him.

His build.

His eyes.

The way he glared at him,I couldn't help but stare, with my heart beating so fast.

Everything about him hit me at the same time and my wolf lost her mind completely, spinning and crying in my head like she had been waiting for exactly this moment and could not contain herself now that it had arrived.

"This is our mate, Nora. He stayed up all night just watching over you. Look at him." She would not stop.

The room was tense and quiet and he was staring at me and I was staring at him and I did not understand what was happening in my own chest.

"Your hands are bleeding." His voice came out deep and cold.

Slowly,he moved toward me and the doctor came rushing in from behind him at the same time.

"You should not be off that bed before I clear you. What the hell are you doing?" The doctor asked, a bit angry .

" It's okay, I will walk her back to the bed"The man, who happened to be my mate, mutters slowly.

His deep voice caused my wolf to spine .

My wolf had gone from spinning to full celebration in my head and I could not make her stop. I stood there and looked at this man and could not fully explain why my heart was doing what it was doing.

I watched him , walked up to me and picked me up,then carried me back to the bed like the decision had already been made and there was nothing to discuss about it.

He laid me down and the doctor came in and reinserted the cannula and the whole time this man stood beside the bed and kept his eyes on me with an expression that I could not understand. The way he looked at me I don't know if it's with care or coldness .

His eyes were a dark caramel.

His hair was neat and coiled close and his shoulders were broad and he was taking up space in the room without doing anything to take up space and I caught myself looking longer than I meant to and looked away.

"Luna, how are you feeling? Has anything improved?" The doctor asked, looking between me and his clipboard.

I blinked.

Luna.

"Hold on." I sat up and my eyes went straight to the small blade sitting on the table beside the bed. My hand was on it before I finished the thought and then I was on my feet again pointing it at the doctor,who put both hands up immediately.

"Who are you? Where am I? And why did you just call me Luna? This is not Kael's pack." My voice came out louder than I planned.

The man with the dark eyes sighed once again.

"You have been in this hospital for several days. I came across you in the forest and you were unconscious with people chasing after you. Put the knife down. He has not done anything to you and you are not healed enough to be doing this right now."He explained to me, coldly.

He chooses his words carefully, I was staring at him with desires, when it hit me hard that I had just lost my pup.

"My pup." The words left my mouth before everything else and the knife dropped and my legs went off,he was already there catching me before the floor came up.

"Take it easy. You need more rest before you go anywhere." He steadied me, his scent came off him close as I went completely still in his arms because I had smelled that before.

I don't think it's recent.

I couldn't place where and when in my memory. But somewhere. Somehow. That scent had been on me before and I did not know when or how or what it meant.

"We will find them. You just have to get better first and then tell me exactly what happened and how all of this started."