Chapter 1

They broke my legs so I couldn't run, cut my tongue so I couldn't scream, and shipped me to the Blood Moon Pack as a "defective omega" for their unmated warriors—but the Alpha who opened my cage didn't touch me, he fell to his knees, and the most feared wolf in the continent whispered, "Mate. My mate. Who did this to you? I'll slaughter them all."

I thought I was dreaming.

Or dying. Probably dying.

The cage had been my world for three days—iron bars, dried blood, the stench of fear from the omegas who'd been shipped before me. Most didn't survive the journey. I'd heard the soldiers betting on how long I'd last.

"Crippled and mute," one had laughed. "The warriors will break her in a night."

I couldn't scream. Couldn't beg. Could only lie in my own filth and wait to die.

Then the cage door opened.

And he was there.

Kael Blackwood. The Blood Moon Alpha. The wolf they called the Continent's Butcher, the King Who Walks Alone, the Beast Without a Mate.

I'd heard the stories. Everyone had. Ten years ago, he'd been betrayed by his own family, cursed to lose his wolf, exiled to die in the wastelands. Instead, he'd built an army from rogues and outcasts, conquered the Blood Moon territory, and become the most feared Alpha in five hundred years.

They said he'd killed three hundred wolves with his bare hands.

They said his eyes were red because he'd bathed in so much blood.

They said no omega could survive a night in his bed.

And now he was kneeling in front of my cage, this monster from nightmares, and his hands were shaking.

"Mate."

The word tore from his throat like it hurt.

His wolf—I could see it surfacing, glowing behind his eyes, gold bleeding into crimson. But that was impossible. Everyone knew Kael Blackwood had no wolf. The curse had taken it.

"Who." His voice was barely human. "Who did this to you."

I opened my mouth to answer.

No sound came out.

Just the wet, horrible gurgle of a tongue that wasn't there anymore.

Something in his face shattered.

"Your tongue." He reached through the bars, and I flinched—couldn't help it, three days of soldiers kicking my cage had taught me what hands meant—but he didn't hit me. He touched my face like I was made of glass. "They cut out your tongue."

Tears streamed down my cheeks. I couldn't even nod. The pain in my legs was too much.

"And your legs." His eyes dropped. Saw the unnatural angles. "They broke your legs."

He stood up.

The soldiers behind him had gone very, very quiet.

"Who," Kael said without turning around, "loaded this omega onto my transport?"

Silence.

"I won't ask again."

A soldier stepped forward. Trembling. "Alpha, she was payment from the Silver Moon Pack. Their Alpha said she was a defective—"

The sound his neck made when Kael snapped it was like a branch breaking.

The body hit the ground.

"Anyone else want to call my mate defective?"

No one moved. No one breathed.

Kael reached into the cage and lifted me like I weighed nothing—careful, so careful with my broken legs, cradling me against his chest like I was precious.

Like I mattered.

"I'm going to find out who did this to you." His lips brushed my hair. "And I'm going to tear them apart with my teeth. I'm going to make them scream for years before I let them die. I'm going to—"

I pressed my hand against his chest.

He stopped.

Looked down at me.

And I mouthed the only word I could manage, the word that had been carved into my soul by eighteen years of being told I was nothing:

Why?

Why would he care? Why would anyone?

"Because you're mine." His wolf blazed in his eyes—fully awake now, after ten years of silence, roaring back to life. "You've always been mine. And no one—NO ONE—hurts what belongs to me."

He carried me out of the transport.

Into the blood-red moonlight of his kingdom.

And somewhere deep inside me, in the place where my wolf should have been but never was, something stirred.

---