When I finally get my breathing under control, my instincts take over. My bones snap, my muscles twist, my skin pulls. Fursprouts along my spine until it covers my entire body, and I pant into the cool night air.
The forest comes alive as my senses heighten, and I shake off the rust as I stretch my limbs. Gods, it feels good to be free again. As soon as Revyn completes his shift, we move as one, bounding across the field and breaking through the trees, hot on the heels of every other shifter in our year.
That bastard thinks he’s going to win this race, but he’s dead wrong. If anyone is going to spend a heat cycle alone, it’s not me—it’s the asshole who thinks he can humiliate me and get away with it.
Get ready, Alistair Dire.
This wild wolf is fucking coming for you.
Chapter 9
Alistair
I haveto get away from her. Put distance between us. Get her out of my head.
Fuck.
How can she not have a heat cycle? How can any shifter survive without one? It’s rare for males to go through a heat but more common for alphas if they go too long without completing a mating bond. My brother had one before he died, and if I’m not careful, this woman—burning so hot that she feels like wildfire in my veins—will pull me into one.
My mate doesn’t go into fucking heat.
The primal urge to bend her over my lap and prove that not only can she go into heat, but I can force her into one was so strong—so dangerous—that I had to leave.
I had to run.
A laugh cuts through my throat like jagged glass. Running from my mate was never supposed to happen. Alphas don’t run from anything! We fight and we fuck and figure shit out—together, with our mates.
How could my life have gone so horribly wrong in one single day?
I tear down the dirt path leading up to the mountain, my paws heavy as they pound against the frozen earth. I don’t care about the other first-year students trailing behind me or about this stupid run, not when I already know who my true mate is. But if what my father says is true, not only is she wild, but she’s a cold-blooded murderer. The first is regrettable, but the second?
Un-fucking-forgivable.
Viserys Dire was a compassionate alpha and an even better older brother. He would have been the change that our pack—and all of shifterkind—sorely needed, in a time when our species is on the verge of collapse. Ever since the rot appeared in the wilds, fewer shifters have been finding their mates, and without a mate, without offspring, bloodlines die out. Entire packs dissolve once their population dwindles. Even the Dire pack has been absorbing lost souls from the wilderness—a kindness that my father abhors as a show of weakness.
But with one heir dead and the other unmated among a litany of options, even he can’t deny the irrefutable fact that something is upsetting the natural balance of our world...ofeveryone’sworld.
We aren’t the only magical species suffering.
Tonight, however, I don’t give a damn about the rest of the world. I only care about my own.
If I can’t have her, if I can’tclaimher, the gods sent her to ruin me. I can still taste that hint of her desire calling to me like a siren’s song. I don’t even know what turned her on—my presence orhis—and that’s the worst fucking part.
They kissed right in front of me, in front ofeveryone, and the bond between them was palpable, stirring every fiber of my heart, my soul, into chaos. My mate may not have claimed him yet, but he’s definitely claimed her. It’s written all over his body—and hers. A bitter taste coats my tongue as I picture the scar on her neck. Revyn’s bite may not have settled into a mating bond,but the evidence is there for all to witness. Hetriedto mate with her, and the magic didn’t take.
I’m as grateful as I am furious.
Thinking of the two of them together—kissing, fucking, laughing—gods, I want to scream. When I approach a cliff’s edge, I skid to a halt and throw my head back with a howl that rattles my bones. The others respond in kind, more than a few wolves howling while others snort or whinny. A few birds chirp, and a wolf attempts to squawk in response. Cornelius huffs at me as he runs by, his fur as bright as sun-soaked wheat, and I know that the others are close behind.
But is my true mate?
As I pick up the pace and snap at Cornelius’s heels, I roll her name across my tongue.Sienna.Like the leaves of autumn or the topsoil in the valleys between the Dire pack’s mountains. I wonder what her parents were thinking when they named her—and if they loved each other. Were they fated, or were they chosen? The Dire line prioritizes true mates over chosen ones, making our Alphas and our pack the strongest of them all. It’s forbidden to mate another once you’ve found your fated...yet my father thinks that I have a choice.
I scoff aloud, earning Neels’s attention. He bumps my shoulder with his, slowing his pace as though he wants to talk. But I’m in no mood for words. I push my body to its limits, my muscles burning as I run faster and harder than I ever have before. My friend disappears in the shadows behind me as I climb the mountain one curve at a time, kicking rocks and ice in my wake and carving a path in the snow. Every year, the shifters make this run, and every year, the strongest Alpha-to-be wins the race to the top.
I will be no exception to tradition.
Something barrels over the side of the mountain, suddenly lunging through the air and slamming into my side. I lose mybalance and tumble into a snowbank, my jaw snapping as I lash out at my attacker. Whoever—or whatever—has made a grave mistake.
