Chapter 3 The Wolf Without A Mark

• When I woke, it was still dark outside, but not the kind of dark that felt empty. This one hummed with breath and movement. Shadows shifted along the stone walls like they had eyes, and the fire still whispered in the hearth beside me.
• I sat up slowly.
• My ribs ached less, and my ankle, though stiff, was no longer throbbing. Niko’s salve had worked fast.
• I glanced around the chamber. No guards. No locks. Just cold stone, warm pelts, and the lingering scent of Ronan Vale.
• He hadn’t touched me beyond necessity. He hadn’t asked who I was or what I’d done to be exiled.
• But he was watching. I could feel it.
• And I had a feeling that whatever power he sensed in me, he wouldn’t leave it alone for long.
• I found him outside.
• Ronan stood at the edge of the Nightfang cliffs, looking down over a valley of black trees and ghost-colored mist. The rising sun had not yet cracked the sky, but it glowed faintly along the horizon. A bleeding bruise of purple and gold.
• He didn’t turn as I approached. He just said, “You move quietly for someone half-dead.”
• “I trained with Crescent warriors before they decided I wasn’t good enough.”
• “Hmm.” He folded his arms, the morning wind tousling his dark hair. “Tell me something, Lupita. Why did your pack throw you away?”
• I stiffened behind him. “Because my fated mate rejected me. Because I scared them.”
• “You didn’t answer the question.”
• I hesitated.
• How could I explain the way my blood sometimes hummed louder than my thoughts? How the stars had burned brighter the night before my wolf emerged? How the Crescent Elders looked at me with awe… then fear?
• “They think there’s something wrong with me,” I said finally. “Because I didn’t shift like the others. Because I touched the Moonfire and didn’t burn.”
• That made him turn.
• His eyes narrowed, jaw tense. “You touched Moonfire?”
• I nodded. “It was an accident. I was fifteen. One of the elders lit it for a winter ritual. I was curious, so I reached out… and nothing happened. No burns. No scars.”
• Ronan stared at me like I’d just grown wings. “Moonfire only obeys the Moonborn.”
• “I don’t know what that means.”
• He didn’t answer. Just turned back to the view, muscles tense beneath his dark shirt.
• “I’m not dangerous,” I added quietly.
• “That’s not what I’m worried about.” His voice was calm. Too calm. “I’m worried you don’t know what you are.”
• Later that morning, Eira summoned me to what the pack called the Hall of Blood and Bone, a long chamber carved into the mountain’s belly, lined with relics, battle armor, and etched names of fallen warriors.
• I didn’t belong here.
• But Ronan had ordered it.
• Eira stood beside a polished obsidian table, arms crossed, golden eyes sharp.
• “I want to see your shift,” she said.
• I flinched. “What?”
• “You want to stay here? Prove you’re not hiding something.”
• “My ankle”
• “Don’t insult me. Niko healed that days ago.”
• I blinked. “Days?”
• “You’ve been asleep for three full nights.”
• My mouth dried. I hadn’t realized… The salve. The exhaustion. The rejection. It must’ve knocked me under deeper than I thought.
• “I can’t shift on command,” I said. “Not anymore.”
• Eira stepped forward. “A wolf without control is a liability. I don’t trust liabilities.”
• “I didn’t ask for your trust.”
• She snarled. “No, you asked for Ronan’s. And he’s foolish enough to give it.”
• Before I could snap back, a voice echoed from behind us.
• “Enough.”
• Ronan entered the chamber like a storm, all calm fury and quiet steel. His eyes burned into Eira’s.
• “She’s not a soldier. She’s healing.”
• “She’s a risk.”
• “She’s under my protection.”
• The room fell silent.
• Eira’s lips thinned, but she bowed. “Yes, Alpha.”
• And then she left, boots echoing on stone.
• I let out a shaky breath. “You didn’t have to do that.”
• “Yes, I did,” he said, approaching slowly. “You’re not ready for this pack. But that doesn’t mean they get to tear you apart.”
• “You don’t know me.”
• “I know enough.”
• He paused a foot away, watching me. The space between us felt charged, like static before lightning.
• His gaze dropped to the bare patch of skin where my crescent mark had been burned off.
• “Does it still hurt?” he asked.
• “Yes,” I whispered. “But not the way it used to.”
• He reached out, slowly, and brushed his fingers across the scar.
• My breath caught. Mira stirred.
• “I’ve never seen a wolf without a mark,” he murmured.
• “You have now.”
• “I could give you one.”
• I looked up sharply. “What?”
• “A Nightfang mark. If you want it.”
• My throat tightened. “I’m not ready to belong to anyone again.”
• He nodded, expression unreadable. “Then I’ll wait.”
• He turned to leave but stopped at the door.
• “When you’re ready to remember who you are, Lupita, come find me. Until then, the forest is yours.”
• And with that, he disappeared into the shadows, leaving my heart hammering against a ribcage still bruised from rejection but no longer broken.
• That night, I sat alone beneath the moon, high on the cliffs above the pack.
• The stars were brighter here.
• Mira sat in the back of my mind, watching the sky with me.
• Do you feel it? She whispered.
• “Feel what?”
• The pull. The shift. The… change.
• I did.
• It was small. A flicker. But something in me was waking up. Something I’d buried the night Kai looked me in the eyes and threw me away.
• And now, here under a strange sky, in a stranger’s territory—I felt it rising.
• Not rage.
• Not revenge.
• But rebirth.
• The moon didn’t lie.
• She had never gotten it wrong.
• I had just been looking for the light in the wrong wolf.
• And somewhere deep in the den below, I knew Ronan Vale had felt it too.