The Abandoned She-Wolf

Alannie was born into a pack that never wanted her.

Her father taught her early what her place was: on the floor, out of sight, silent beneath his fists. The only things he ever gave her were scars, a name carved into the sole of her foot so the body could be identified once he was finished with it, and, in the end, a price tag. He sold her to a man the wolves of the underworld call Master, a trainer of fighters and a breaker of spirits. Under his rule Alannie learned to survive the only way she was allowed to: in the ring, tooth and claw, her rare white fur stained red while strangers placed their bets on how long she would last.

Then came the night they decided she was worth more dead than fighting. She walked out of that fire with nothing at all — no pack, no name worth keeping, no faith in her own kind — and became a rogue, a white ghost slipping through the winter woods, scavenging, hiding, wanting nothing more than to stay unseen.

But a rogue cannot outrun her past forever. Deep in the snow she finds a single white gardenia in bloom, her dead mother's favorite flower, placed where only she would ever find it. Someone knows exactly who she is and where she has been hiding. Her father's old cruelty has followed her north, and worse things are following close behind it.

Starved and half frozen, she strays onto the land of the Mountain Ridge pack — and comes face to face with its Alpha. Howard has spent years searching for his mate, and one breath of her scent tells him the search is over. Alannie knows better. In her experience, Alphas take, Alphas break, and mates are a pretty story told to keep the weak compliant. She prepares to run.

Howard never grabs and never demands. He hangs a blanket within her reach and keeps his back turned. He asks before he touches. He leaves notes on the nightstand telling her his house is hers, even when he is miles away, even when she cannot say his name without flinching. Piece by piece, against every instinct that kept her alive, Alannie begins to want things she never allowed herself to want: a full plate, a warm bed, a hand that stops the moment she asks it to. The pull between them burns slow and bright, all charged silence and trembling restraint, until the night the Moon Goddess leans closer and every wall she built starts to give.

Safety, though, has a price. The pack whispers that their new Luna is a murderer, and the whisperers are not wrong about what she was forced to do. Master wants his fighter back and is gathering rouges along the borders. Her father's shadow stretches across everything she is trying to build.

Every instinct screams at her to run. Staying means trusting a pack that may never accept what she is, loving a man the world seems determined to take from her, and standing to fight a war she never asked for. Running means surviving — the only thing she has ever been good at.

The abandoned she-wolf was never meant to get a happy ending. She is about to prove every last one of them wrong.