Chapter 3
The night closed in around Willa.
Tossed out beyond Blackstone's borders, she was left to rot in a wasteland choked with wild wolfsbane.
The lethal poison seeped into her lungs, and a heavy numbness crawled through her limbs, dragging her vision into darkness.
Deep inside, her dormant wolf, Nyx, remained dead silent, offering her not a single whisper of strength.
Overhead, the cold moon shone down with indifference.
Willa collapsed onto the freezing grass as the distant, haunting howl of a rogue echoed through the dark.
*****
Time bled away, and Willa only realized she wasn't alone when the heavy crunch of footsteps drew near.
A massive wolf stepped through the withered grass, stopping right in front of her.
Its eyes glowed a rare, striking silver-gray in the dark.
Willa tried to lift her arm, but her fingers refused to twitch.
She thought this was how a rogue would die.
But the moment the wolf lowered its head and its nose brushed against her neck, a massive jolt of heat surged through her.
It felt like lightning striking her core, setting her entire body on fire.
Willa's eyes snapped open.
Her heart hammered against her ribs, and her blood roared through her veins.
Deep in her mind, Nyx, the wolf who had slept for years, suddenly roared to life.
"Mate. It's him. He's our mate!" Nyx howled, her voice overflowing with ecstatic joy. It was the wild happiness of reclaiming something she had long assumed was lost.
Willa's whole body trembled as a fierce power stirred beneath her skin, surging stronger with every heartbeat.
Under the downpour of moonlight, her fur transformed, shedding its muddy grey for a brilliant, shimmering silver that flowed like liquid light.
She was a silver wolf.
A legendary beast born once in a millennium, the closest creature to the Moon Goddess herself.
And she had spent her whole life completely blind to her own nature.
The massive silver-gray wolf stepped back, shifting smoothly into human form before her eyes.
He dropped to one knee, looking at Willa, his voice thick with excitement he could barely contain. "You're my mate. I've searched for you for so long."
He was Adrian Black, Alpha of the Silvermoon Pack.
Willa stared back, completely dazed as tears began to slip silently down her face.
They weren't tears of pain.
They were tears of understanding, the sudden clarity of a puzzle finally solved.
Now she understood why Cedric's public rejection hadn't hurt.
And why, despite everything she had sacrificed, Cedric had never truly seen her.
Severing a fated mating bond was supposed to cause such agonizing pain that death seemed like a mercy.
But she had felt absolutely nothing.
Because that supposed mating bond between her and Cedric had never existed in the first place.
The Moon Goddess had never paired them up.
Their connection was nothing more than an arranged political alliance, a convenient lie everyone, including Willa, had mistaken for fate.
She had spent years loving Cedric, bleeding for him, swallowing her pride, and wasting three years at the snowfield to prove her devotion.
Yet, she was never his fated mate.
"Can you stand?" Adrian asked softly. He offered his hand, palm up, waiting with quiet patience for her to take it.
There was no demand in his gesture, no trace of the heavy-handed arrogance she had grown used to.
For the first time, Willa felt a profound sense of safety, the certainty that someone was always there, waiting, ready to catch her if she fell.
She stared at his open palm, a smile touching her lips.
She had expected her exile to this wasteland to be the absolute end of her.
But the truth was far sweeter. She hadn't broken; she had simply been set free from a lie.
The mating bond had been an illusion from the very beginning.