The Wildwoods Pack: Betrayal

The bonfire at the center of the festival grounds roared high enough to touch the stars, and the scent of roasted venison and wild sage hung thick in the night air. I stood near the flames with my mother's hand resting light on my shoulder, watching the entire Wildwood Pack gather beneath the full moon the way they had every year of my life. Only this year felt different. This year, my father's chair on the dais sat empty, and Jarrod stood where Marcus Whitewater should have stood.

My chest ached at the sight of it. Three months since the rogues tore through our borders and took my father from us, and the wound hadn't closed. It probably never would. But tonight wasn't supposed to be about grief. Tonight was supposed to be about the bond, the one everyone in the pack had whispered about since Jarrod and I were children running wild through the training yards together.

He stood tall on the platform, golden hair catching the moonlight, dressed in the ceremonial furs that had once belonged to my father. He looked like an Alpha. He looked like the boy I had loved since before I understood what loving someone meant.

Beside him sat Nadia.

She wore silk so thin it seemed to move on its own, and her violet eyes swept the crowd with a stillness that made the hair on my arms rise. She didn't smile. She didn't need to. Something about the way she watched everyone, the way her gaze lingered a beat too long on me, made my wolf go quiet and wary beneath my skin.

"She was with the rogues for a reason," my mother murmured beside me, though her voice carried no comfort, only caution. "Watch her tonight, Ashlin."

I didn't need the warning. I'd been watching her since the day the surviving scouts dragged her half-conscious body through our gates, since the day my father died getting her free. Something about her never sat right in my bones, though I could never explain why to anyone who asked.

The moon climbed higher, bathing the clearing in silver, and the crowd's murmuring dimmed into a held breath. This was the moment. The Full Moon Festival's true purpose beneath all the food and fire and dancing: the moment fated mates felt the bond snap into place beneath the total light of the moon.

Jarrod's eyes found mine across the flames.

The world narrowed to just the two of us, the way it always had. And then it happened.

Heat exploded through my chest, a golden thread yanking tight between my heart and his, so sudden and consuming that my knees buckled. I gasped, one hand flying to my chest as if I could hold the feeling inside my ribs before it escaped. My wolf surged forward, delighted, howling silently with a joy I hadn't let myself feel in months. Mate. Mate. Mate. For one perfect heartbeat, I saw him. Not the Alpha standing stiff and formal on that dais, but the boy who used to sneak me sweets from the kitchens, who promised me on our eleventh birthday that he'd always protect me, who held my hand through my father's worst nightmares about the border wars. His blue eyes softened, and something like recognition, something like love, flickered there.

"Ashlin," he breathed, and the sound of my name on his lips after that surge of warmth was the sweetest thing I'd ever heard.

Then Nadia moved.

She leaned close to him, her lips brushing the shell of his ear, and she whispered something I couldn't hear over the crackle of the fire. A single word, sibilant and low, more hiss than speech. I watched it land on him like a physical blow.

Jarrod's face changed.

The warmth in his eyes didn't fade slowly. It didn't dim like a dying ember. It slammed shut all at once, like a door bolted from the inside, and what replaced it was a coldness I had never seen on him in twenty-one years. His jaw tightened. His shoulders squared. The boy who had promised to protect me was gone, and in his place stood a stranger wearing his face.

My wolf whined, confused, still tugging at that golden thread even as the other end of it turned to ice.

"Jarrod?" My voice came out smaller than I intended, a plea disguised as a question.

He didn't answer. He looked at me the way a man looks at something distasteful stuck to the bottom of his boot, and my stomach dropped straight through the earth.

From beside Jarrod, Nadia's violet eyes met mine, and for the briefest moment, the stillness in them cracked into something like satisfaction. My wolf recoiled, every instinct screaming that whatever had just passed between Jarrod and that woman wasn't natural. It smelled wrong, felt wrong, twisted through the air like smoke that shouldn't exist. Magic. I didn't have proof, not the kind anyone would believe, but I knew it in my bones the way I knew my own name.

Across the clearing, I caught sight of Max standing near the edge of the dais, his amber eyes locked on his brother with a look I'd never seen him wear before. Not confusion. Not surprise. Something closer to dread, like a man watching a fire spread through a house he couldn't save.

He took a step toward Jarrod, then stopped himself, his hands curling into fists at his sides.

The crowd had gone utterly silent, hundreds of pack members watching the scene unfold with the same held breath I felt trapped in my own throat. This was supposed to be the moment they celebrated. Instead, it felt like the moment the ground opened beneath my feet.

"I, Jarrod Sterling, Alpha of the Wildwood Pack," Jarrod said, his voice carrying across the clearing, cold and clipped in a way that didn't sound like him at all. "Reject this bond."

The golden thread in my chest didn't just fade. It tore.

I felt the rejection rip through me physically, a wound deeper than any blade could carve, and I staggered back a step as the pain stole the breath from my lungs. Somewhere beyond the roaring in my ears, I heard my mother's sharp intake of breath, heard whispers erupting through the crowd like a wave breaking against rock.

Jarrod's blue eyes, once so familiar, stared down at me now with nothing but contempt, and beside him, Nadia smiled.