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CHAPTER ONE

ZURI

“He’s here,” my coworkers whispered among each other, peering behind the doorframe and into Caelfall’s most popular restaurant at the most feared man in town.

Alpha Stone had supposedly come all the way from Durnbone to find his fated mate.

A prophecy spoken long, long ago had promised that once he mated her, they’d be the most powerful couple in all of existence.

In this space and this time, they would burn the forests to the ground, dine on the richest wine and the finest steaks, and have men and women falling to their knees in fear.

La-de-da-de-da.

Something like that.

All I knew was that I wanted to stay far away from him and his packmates. Elders had told me and my sister one too many horror stories about how his father and grandfather had ruled this land years ago.

But after the recent war of the wolves, his family had lost it all. Now, he planned to get it back. And I sorta felt sorry for the woman who’d be mated to him. I wouldn’t be able to handle the hatred in his soulless eyes, the torture I’d have to witness.

Plus, I heard he was sick in the head … during sex.

“Zuri!” Sophia, my manager, called. “You’re assigned to his table. Get out there.”

Me?! Why has she chosen me of all people? That is usually Eshe’s table!

“Can you, um”—I gulped and readjusted the button on my shirt—“get Eshe to do it?”

“Come on, Zuri,” Sophia said, nudging me. “It’s just a table, and besides … I bet he’ll leave a nice tip for you. I heard he’s rolling in money back in Durnbone, has the largest pack house anyone has ever seen.”

I opened and shut my mouth, nerves bubbling up inside me. “Please, I don’t want to.”

“Get out of my way,” Eshe said from behind me, shoving me to the side.

“I’ll do it.” She retied her black apron around her petite figure, and then she pushed out her perky tits and plastered the fakest smile on her face.

“It’s not like he’d actually want to see you. He’s here to find a mate, not a?—”

“Eshe!” Sophia growled as if she knew what was about to leave my sister’s mouth.

Eshe walked out the door and hurried toward Alpha Stone’s table.

“Don’t listen to her,” Sophia said, offering me a smile. “She’s a bitch.” She poked me in the shoulder. “But you need to have some more confidence in yourself. I had you at his table so you could maybe …”

“Maybe what?” I asked. “Have someone in this town look at me the same way they look at Eshe and not …” My throat closed, and I couldn’t even finish the sentence out loud.

Everyone here looked at me with disgust. Like I was some vile fiend.

Even though I could keep up with my pack during runs, even though I was strong on the training field, people—who were supposed to have my back—couldn’t get over the way that I looked. It didn’t matter what they said. I could see it in their eyes.

In their passive glances.

“You know …” She smiled. “Maybe.”

If she knew how rude Eshe was, part of me wondered why she didn’t just fire Eshe, but that was the stupid, selfish side of me.

A side that I would never allow to come out because I feared losing my job.

Eshe stayed in her position because she made the restaurant a lot of money and even more in tips.

Not because she was nice to the customers, but because my sister was beautiful.

In every single way that I’d never be.

A bell rang behind me, signaling that an order was ready. Deciding that I couldn’t hide from the pack of rebels for much longer, I grabbed a tray of drinks for another table and hurried out into the rowdy main hall.

The thick scent of lavender drifted through my nose.

And while I wanted to keep myself small and hidden as much as I could—that had always proven to be hard for me because I was a bigger, taller girl who was clumsy as shit—I couldn’t stop myself from following the scent with my eyes and locking gazes with Stone from across the room.

My wolf, who I had buried deep inside to protect, suddenly awoke. “Mate.”

Black tattoos covered every inch of his arms and neck, curling around his strong jaw and crawling into the fade of his modern mullet. Heat exploded in my core. His eyes were as dark as the midnight sky during a new moon, so vicious that they seized me by the damn throat.

My wolf raged against my insides, begging me to drop the tray and walk over to him, talk to him, claim him so she could be happy again. But I … I couldn’t. My gaze shifted to Eshe, who placed her hand on his shoulder.

Jealousy and pain cut through my heart. I couldn’t talk to him because I … because I would never be as beautiful as Eshe, would never have hair as silky, a straight smile, an uncrooked nose.

Caught in a panic, I tripped over a chair leg, and the tray slipped from my hand. Drinks flew in the air and splattered all over Alpha Connor, a visiting alpha, and the other high-ranking warrior wolves of the Stonehelm Pack.

“Oh my Goddess!” I shrieked, grabbing a napkin from the table and wiping it against his stained white shirt.

Goddess, why was I so freaking clumsy?! Last time I had bumped into Connor, he had nearly killed me for nicking his leather shoe. Now this?!

“I’m so sorry!”

I bowed my head and continued to attempt to clean his clothes with a pathetic napkin, hoping that he showed mercy on me. But … how could he? He was in the middle of dinner while one of the strongest alphas was in town.

Connor would want to show off, to assert his dominance.

Like I expected, Alpha Connor seized me by the throat, yanked me away from him, and pushed me back. “Get off me, you filthy omega.” He grabbed his full glass of New Moon Shine, dumped it all over my head, and shoved me to the ground. “Lick it up like the ugly?—”

Before Alpha Connor could finish his sentence, Alpha Stone was suddenly at my side, his dark eyes suddenly golden pools.

He snatched Connor by the neck, slammed him up against the wall, and ripped out his throat in one fluid motion, as if he had done it a thousand times before.

I stared in horror at the ripped spinal cord hanging from Stone’s blood-covered fist.

“If anyone else wants to make a comment, you can suffer the same fate too,” he growled through his vicious canines at the corpse. Then, he lifted his gaze to the other men around the table. “Nobody talks to my mate that way.”