Elena's POV
The forest thinned, and the familiar scent of the Darkmoon borders reached me. My paws slowed instinctively. I had nowhere else to go.
No pack would welcome a runaway wolf, no friend to hide me, no sanctuary beyond the trees. I slowed to a careful trot, letting the earth and the wind guide me.
I raised my head, catching sight of the faint signs of the territory ahead, and at last shifted back, limbs trembling, fur retracting into skin, bones settling painfully into human form.
Relief should have followed, but it did not. The moment I stepped into sight of the border, the air seemed to shimmer with hostility.
Pain exploded in my chest. A searing heat, sharp and precise. Wolfspain. My lungs burned, my vision blurred, my legs buckled.
The ground seemed to rise up to meet me as silver cuffs snapped around my wrists, tight and cold, biting into skin like iron teeth.
I screamed, collapsing to my knees, trembling, rage and fear fighting in equal measure. My wolf flared in terror and fury, clawing at the pain, but I was trapped.
A shadow detached from the trees. He emerged silently, impossibly calm, a dark silhouette with a smile curling at the edges of his lips.
While ordering his warriors not to look at me. I could see in his eyes the jealousy as his warriors have seen my naked body.
My long hair covering my breasts. Curled up on the ground made it hard to see anything, but still he was burning with rage and desire to take me there right on the spot.
Kael.
My pulse thudded with raw, desperate anger. "You cannot escape me," he said, voice low, dark, certain.
"You are mine, Elena. Always." I spat at him. Every ounce of me burned with defiance. I refused him.
I would never kneel, never submit, never belong to him. He stepped closer, each stride deliberate, eyes fixed on me with that same possessive hunger I had felt before, but sharper, darker.
"I will take you," he whispered, almost to himself, and then to me, "I wisharpee you to Ironfang, and you will learn your place.
You will be mine again, and there is no one to save you." I struggled against the cuffs, silver biting, blood rising, my body shaking with furious defiance.
I did not speak. Words were useless. I did not need them. My wolf wanted to rip him apart, wanted to vanish into the forest and leave him nothing.
But he stepped closer, unafraid of my fury, and the sheer certainty in his eyes made my blood turn cold. Covering my body with his jacket.
He picked me up from the ground. He could order anyone to do it, but only the image of someone touching what's his, made his blood boil.
I could feel it like a leash around my mind, the promise of control, of inevitability. He did not speak another word before dragging me from the border.
My feet barely touched the ground as he carried me to his waiting riders, the shadows of Ironfang looming ahead.
When the gates rose before us, dark and looming, he placed me on the ground and I stumbled, trying to regain my footing, trying to anchor myself in the world I still owned.
But he did not release me. Not for a single breath. He stepped close, lips brushing my ear, cold as steel. "I will break your upcoming mate ceremony," he promised.
"I will take you, Elena. You will be my mate. You will bow. You will belong to me." I froze, horror and fury burning in my chest. I would never bow. I would never accept him.
I straightened as best I could, fists clenching, nails scraping against the cuffs, teeth gritted. "Never," I hissed. He smirked, eyes glinting, and simply tightened his grip on my arm, leading me into the fortress of Ironfang.
There was a room prepared, separate from everyone, isolated, dark, cold. My wolf snorted inside me at the smell of oppression, the scent of control, but I would not yield.
He shut the door behind us. "This is where you will learn your place," he whispered, and I could see the promise of punishment in the curve of his lips.
"And yet," he added, voice low and deadly, "I will take you as my mate. Every time you fight me, every time you resist, I will break you piece by piece until you have no choice but to accept me. "
My blood ran hot with rage. Every nerve in my body screamed to fight. I would not give him victory. I would not allow him to claim me without a battle, and I would never bow.
I lunged the moment he tried to press closer, trying to break the grip of the cuffs, trying to make him stumble.
He barely moved, calm, unshaken, and the terror of it twisted in my gut. But even as he approached again, commanding me with his presence, I reached deep, deep into my wolf.
My claws, my strength, my blood and old power surged inside me. I felt the bond he tried to enforce begin to splinter.
He could command me, demand me, tempt me—but he could not bind the wolf who had survived death, rejection, and awakening. I hissed and spat at him.
"I will never be yours," I growled, the words echoing like the threat of my teeth.
He paused, eyes narrowing, and the corner of his lips curved in that dark, possessive way, as if amused and challenged all at once.
I could feel his desire to dominate, to claim, to force, to make me kneel, pulsing like a dark tide. I refused it. Every ounce of me refused it. And in that refusal, I felt power blossom.
Every scream, every defiance, every step against him was a strike against his control.
And I realized something terrible and beautiful: even if he tried to break me, he would never succeed fully. I would never bow. Not today. Not ever.
He stood right infront of me. He came downt , ripping my jaw with force to make me look into his eyes. With a smile on his lips he kissed my cheek „ you will break, became mine"
A smile curled up my lips which stunned him for a second.
„I Elena Blackwood of the Bloodmoon pack, reject you as my mate, as my alpha as anything"
He snap with rage hitting me which made me fall to the ground. Pulling my hair, he made me stand in front of him forcing me to look at him again.
„You can't get away from me, you will beg me to make you mine". He kissed me with force and rage, making me pushing away from him with hatred.
And the wolf inside me coiled and surged with every moment he came closer, ready to strike, ready to fight, ready to escape if I could, ready to survive, ready to reclaim what he thought he could take.
The dark promise in his eyes met my own blazing defiance, and in that silence, the room felt like a battlefield, and I was already winning in ways he could not yet understand.