Kaelen POV

I paced the dark expanse of my study, my blood boiling beneath my skin. The masquerade gala was supposed to be a brief distraction, but instead, the Moon Goddess had played a sick, twisted joke on me. My Fated Mate—the woman whose scent had brought me to my knees in that penthouse—was Aidan's discarded, wolfless Omega.

I had left her there, disgusted by the cruel irony. But now, my Inner Wolf, Ragnarok, was tearing at the edges of my sanity, furious that I had abandoned what was ours.

Suddenly, the air shifted.

A scent drifted through the heavy oak doors. Moonlit lilies and a whisper of vanilla.

*MATE! SHE IS HERE! FIND HER! TAKE WHAT IS OURS!* Ragnarok roared, his possessive fury echoing so violently in my skull that my vision blurred with red.

She was inside my fortress.

My Lycan instincts warred with my paranoia. Paul Knight must have sent her. He had finally figured out a way to infiltrate my territory, using the one weakness I couldn't ignore. I shoved the study doors open, following the intoxicating trail down the cavernous, minimalist halls toward the kitchen.

The kitchen was a sterile expanse of black marble and brushed stainless steel, smelling faintly of bleach. But standing in the center of it, looking small and fragile under the harsh spotlights, was her.

"Who let you out?" I snarled, my voice a lethal baritone that made the silverware rattle. The fact that Caleb had deposited her in the secured bedroom was irrelevant; her presence here, free and unsupervised, screamed sabotage.

She jumped, her violet eyes wide with terror, but she forced her chin up. "I... I got out myself. I was hungry," she stammered, her voice trembling but defiant. "I am Luna Knight. I was brought here."

The title sounded like a mocking lie on her lips. A spy sent to humiliate me.

In a blur of Lycan speed, I crossed the room. My hand clamped around her slender throat, lifting her off her feet and slamming her against the freezing marble wall.

"Tell me who sent you!" I commanded, lacing my voice with the heavy, suffocating weight of the `Alpha's Command`.

Any normal wolf would have dropped to their knees, their will crushed. But her eyes remained clear, filled only with panic and pain. The command bounced off her completely. *Wolfless.* She had no Inner Wolf to submit to me.

As she clawed desperately at my unyielding grip, her gaze locked onto my face. She inhaled sharply, recognizing the scent of pine needles and cold steel from the penthouse. The realization hit her like a physical blow.

"You're... Kaelen Knight..." she choked out, her voice trembling. "But you're supposed to be... a cripple."

The word *cripple* sliced through my control like a silver blade.

My greatest secret. The deception I had maintained for centuries to protect my mother and slaughter my enemies, exposed to a wolfless girl who had just waltzed into my home. The threat level instantly shifted. She wasn't just an intruder anymore; she was a liability that had to be erased.

I dropped her. She collapsed onto the marble floor, gasping for air.

*"Jax. Corbin,"* I snapped through the `Mind-Link`. *"Kitchen. Now."*

Within seconds, my two elite Gammas materialized in the doorway, their eyes darting between me and the coughing girl on the floor.

*"Take her to the Wolf Run. Let the patrol decide her fate,"* I ordered coldly.

Ragnarok howled in agony, clawing at my chest to protect our Mate, but centuries of survival demanded her silence. Seraphina screamed as Jax and Corbin hauled her to her feet, begging and promising to keep my secret.

I looked down at her, my expression devoid of any mercy. "If you survive until sunrise, I will acknowledge you as my Luna."

They dragged her thrashing body out of the kitchen. Her terrified screams faded down the corridor, leaving a hollow silence in their wake.

Before I could even process the phantom pain in my chest, Caleb burst into the kitchen, his usual composed demeanor shattered.

"My King, stop! This is a mistake! It was your mother!" Caleb shouted, risking my wrath as he stepped directly into my space. He shoved a heavy parchment into my chest.

I snatched it. It was a `Mating` contract from the Stonehaven Pack. At the bottom, stamped in dark red wax, was my mother's private seal.

The air left my lungs. It wasn't Paul. It wasn't an assassination plot. It was my mother, orchestrating my life from her confinement, forcing a bride upon me without my consent.

A new, blinding rage ignited in my veins. I crushed the parchment in my fist, glaring at my Beta.

"You let her bring another man's filth into my house?!" I roared, the Lycan aura exploding from me, cracking the marble beneath my boots. "A wolfless girl who knows everything?!"

"She sensed her bloodline, Kaelen! She thought she was helping—"

"I don't care!" I cut him off, my chest heaving. She was Aidan's leftovers. She knew I wasn't crippled. And she had been forced upon me.

I turned my back on Caleb, staring out the reinforced glass window toward the dark tree line of the fortress grounds. I didn't reach out to the Gammas. I didn't rescind the order.

Seraphina POV

The marble floor of the corridor blurred beneath my dragging feet. Jax and Corbin, the two Gammas, hauled me forward with terrifying ease. My screams tore at my throat, but the fortress remained dead and silent. Kaelen Knight had condemned me.

They dragged me out into the freezing night air, toward a massive expanse of dense forest enclosed by towering black iron fences. The Wolf Run. The heavy metal gates groaned open.

Jax shoved me hard, sending me sprawling into the damp, freezing mud.

"The King's judgment stands," Corbin announced, his voice devoid of pity. "Survive until sunrise."

The heavy gates slammed shut behind me, the lock clicking with a sickening finality. Almost immediately, a chorus of deep, hungry howls erupted from the depths of the woods. The air was thick with the scent of wet earth, rotting leaves, and the aggressive, territorial musk of Dire Wolves.

Pure, blinding panic seized me. I scrambled to my feet and ran. Branches whipped my face, and jagged roots tore at my thin dress. I had no Inner Wolf to guide me, no enhanced speed to outrun the predators. I was just a piece of meat in a cage.

My lungs burned as I stumbled through the darkness until my hands hit rough, splintered wood. An abandoned patrol shack. I threw myself inside, slamming the flimsy door shut and curling into a tight ball in the corner. The shack reeked of mold and animal droppings, but it was a barrier. I clamped my hands over my mouth, sobbing silently as the heavy thud of massive paws circled the shack.

Hours bled into an agonizing eternity. The howling eventually faded into a tense silence, but the cold seeped into my bones.

Then, a voice cut through the thin wooden walls.

"The King offers you a choice, Luna."

I flinched. It was Caleb, the Beta. His voice was low, perfectly calm, and utterly terrifying.

"A car is waiting at the main gate," Caleb continued. "Return to Stonehaven Pack, and you will be spared. Refuse, and the patrol will be given free rein until sunrise."

Return to Stonehaven. Return to Alaric and Genevieve's beatings. Return to watch Naomi, the only mother I ever knew, be cast out to die in the woods because I failed.

A desperate, reckless courage flared in my chest, burning away the paralyzing fear. I couldn't go back. I wouldn't.

I pressed my back against the rotting wall and forced my trembling voice out into the dark. "Tell your King... I am Luna Knight. I'm not going anywhere."

Silence answered me. Caleb was gone. I spent the rest of the night shivering in the dirt, waiting for the wolves to tear the door down.

But they never came.

When the first gray light of dawn crept through the broken window, the shack door creaked open.

I scrambled backward, my heart hammering against my ribs. But it wasn’t a wolf.

Kaelen Knight sat in a sleek, custom-built wheelchair in the doorway. The morning light cast long shadows that sharpened the cruel lines of his face. **The scent of pine and steel flooded the shack—a visceral reminder of the hands that had choked me, the body that had moved with Lycan speed. *The cripple’s mask was back in place.***

I forced myself to stand, mud cracking on my skin. "I survived," I rasped, locking eyes with the predator playing invalid. "Acknowledge me as your Luna."

A cold smirk twisted his lips as he scanned my filth. "Then submit body and soul. Accept my Mark." He leaned back, the wheelchair groaning under his weight—**a calculated lie, like every word from his mouth.** "You’ll do all the work, of course. Broken Lycans can’t perform."

The hypocrisy burned. *After last night’s display of strength, this charade was an insult.** But Naomi’s face flashed before me—her survival hinged on enduring this.

"I accept," I whispered, tasting ash.

His jaw tightened. "Despicable." He spun the chair with violent precision. As he jolted over the threshold, his sweatpants pulled taut against his thigh—**revealing corded muscle flexing with predatory grace. *No atrophy. No weakness. Just another flaw in his performance.***

I didn’t freeze. My blood didn’t run cold. Instead, bitter clarity crystallized: *This man wields deception like a blade. And now I know where to grip the hilt.

"We’ll see about that," he threw over his shoulder, vanishing into the dawn.

Seraphina POV

The revelation of his flexing muscle still burned in my mind as Caleb escorted me from the freezing mud of the Wolf Run into a cold, minimalist sitting room inside the fortress.

Kaelen sat in his custom wheelchair behind a polished obsidian coffee table. The room was devoid of any personal touch, feeling more like an interrogation chamber. The air was suffocating, thick with his oppressive scent—pine needles before a violent storm, laced with the sharp tang of cold steel.

On the table lay the meager contents of my suitcase.

"Did you really think I wouldn't check the baggage of a traitor's leftover?" Kaelen's baritone voice sliced through the silence. He gestured coldly to a wooden box I had never seen before.

Caleb stepped forward and flipped the lid open. Inside lay a bundle of forbidden, heat-inducing herbs, a silver heart necklace engraved with the letter *A*, and several letters written in handwriting that perfectly mimicked Aidan's.

My blood ran cold. Cassandra. She had packed my bag before I was sent away.

"A wolfless whore," Kaelen sneered, his obsidian eyes filled with absolute disgust. "You planned to drug me, force a Lycan heir to secure your power, all while keeping my pathetic cousin's love letters close to your heart."

"That's not mine," I rasped, my throat still raw from screaming in the woods. "Cassandra must have—"

"Save your lies," Kaelen cut me off, his Lycan aura flaring so violently the glass on the table vibrated. "Your *Luna* title is nothing but a joke. A temporary label until I decide how to dispose of you."

I looked at the fake evidence, then at the monster in the wheelchair. There was no point in defending myself. In his eyes, I was already guilty. I swallowed my tears, wrapping myself in a shield of numb silence.

For the next few days, I was confined to my luxurious bedroom prison. I was a ghost haunting a beautifully furnished tomb.

Desperate for a lifeline, I managed to use the sleek landline phone on the nightstand to call the only person I trusted in the human world.

"Sera? Oh my god, are you okay?" Curtis's voice crackled through the receiver, frantic and tight.

"I'm trapped, Curtis," I whispered, tears finally spilling over my lashes. "But I still have the Bellbanks University fellowship. If I can just find a way to sneak out—"

"Sera... you haven't checked your email, have you?" Curtis interrupted, her voice breaking. "The university revoked your full scholarship and the researcher position yesterday."

The room spun. "What? Why?"

"Someone from the Stonehaven Pack made an anonymous report to the board," Curtis explained bitterly. "They claimed you have a history of severe mental instability and fabricated your academic records. The board didn't even give you a chance to appeal."

Cassandra. She wasn't just trying to ruin my forced marriage; she was salting the earth of my entire future. She had severed my only tie to the human world, destroying the one thing I had built with my own hands.

I couldn't breathe. The walls of the massive bedroom felt like they were closing in on me.

Clutching the cordless phone to my chest, I wandered out of the bedroom, my bare feet silent against the cold marble of the corridor. I didn't care if the guards saw me. I didn't care about anything anymore.

I reached the top of the grand staircase, staring down into the cavernous, silent hall below.

"He's a monster, Curtis..." I whispered into the phone, my voice trembling uncontrollably as I slowly descended the black marble steps. "A cruel, manipulative bastard. I have nothing left. Nowhere to run."

I reached the final step and looked up.

My heart stopped beating.

Standing by the massive, unlit fireplace, dressed in dark casual clothes, was Kaelen Knight.

*Standing.*

He wasn't in his wheelchair. His tall, broad-shouldered frame radiated an overwhelming, lethal power. His obsidian eyes were locked onto mine, dark and unfathomable. He had heard every single word.

I dropped the phone. It clattered against the marble floor, the sound echoing like a gunshot in the dead silence.

Kaelen didn't speak. He didn't need to. He simply stared at me for ten agonizing seconds, letting the sheer terror of his unmasked reality sink into my bones. The secret I thought I held over him was gone. It was no longer a shield; it was an open, terrifying threat.

Then, without a single word, Kaelen turned and walked away, his strides perfectly fluid and predatory.