### **Chapter 1: The Bite**
The forest swallowed Leah Carter whole.
Rain lashed against her face as she pushed through the dense undergrowth, her flashlight beam cutting through the darkness like a knife. Somewhere in these woods, her little brother was lost.
"Ethan!" Her voice was hoarse from shouting. "Answer me, damn it!"
Only the wind howled back.
Leah wiped rainwater from her eyes and checked her phone again—still no signal. Sheriff Dawson had warned her not to go into Blackwood Forest alone, especially not at night. But when Ethan hadn't come home from his stupid dare, she hadn't waited for the search party.
A twig snapped behind her.
Leah spun, her flashlight catching the glint of yellow eyes in the dark.
Not a wolf.
Not a man.
Something in between.
The creature crouched low, its matted fur slick with rain. Saliva dripped from its bared fangs, and in its jaws—
Leah's stomach lurched.
A scrap of blue fabric.
Ethan's jacket.
"No." The word tore from her throat.
The werewolf lunged.
Pain exploded in her shoulder as claws ripped through flesh. She screamed, falling backward into the mud. The beast loomed over her, its breath hot and rancid against her face.
Then—
**BANG.**
The werewolf snarled as a bullet grazed its flank. Another shot rang out, and the creature fled into the trees.
Leah gasped as strong hands hauled her upright. Her rescuer was a gaunt man with cold eyes and a rifle slung over his shoulder.
"Are you insane?" he growled. "Running into these woods at night?"
"That thing took my brother!" Leah clutched her bleeding shoulder. The wound burned like fire.
The man's nostrils flared as he leaned closer. Then his face darkened.
"Damn it." He grabbed her wrist. "You've been bitten."
"What?"
"By tomorrow's moonrise," he said, his voice grim, "you'll be one of them."
---
### **Chapter 2: The First Shift**
Leah's skin was on fire.
She writhed on the floor of Jason Vales' cabin, her muscles twisting beneath her flesh like live wires. Sweat drenched her body, and every breath felt like swallowing glass.
"It hurts—" she choked out.
Jason crouched beside her, his expression unreadable. "First shift always does."
The moon rose higher, its silver light seeping through the cracks in the curtains. Leah's bones cracked.
She screamed.
Her spine arched, her fingers curled into claws. The world blurred—smells sharpened, sounds amplified. The forest called to her, a primal song in her blood.
When the pain finally stopped, Leah looked down.
Paws. Fur.
A monster.
Jason exhaled. "Welcome to the pack."
---
### **Chapter 3: The Alpha's Game**
The Blackwood Pack was ruled by blood.
Leah learned that quickly.
Alpha Kieran's territory stretched across the forest, and his word was law. When he summoned her, she had no choice but to obey.
"You're the new one," he rumbled, his golden eyes gleaming. "The bitten girl."
Leah kept her head low, her wolf instincts screaming at her to submit. But her human mind burned with one thought:
*Where is Ethan?*
Kieran smirked, as if reading her mind. "Your brother is alive."
Leah's breath caught.
"For now."
---
### **Chapter 4: The Hunt**
The full moon turned men into beasts.
Leah ran with the pack, her paws pounding against the earth. The hunt was a frenzy of teeth and claws, of deer screaming as the wolves brought them down.
But Leah didn't want deer.
She wanted answers.
When the others were distracted, she broke away, following a scent she knew too well—Ethan's.
It led her to a cave, its entrance hidden by thick vines. Inside, a boy huddled in the dark.
"Ethan!" She shifted back, her voice raw.
His eyes widened. "Leah? What—what *are* you?"
She didn't have time to answer.
A snarl echoed behind her.
Kieran stood in the entrance, his massive wolf form blocking the light.
"Mine," he growled.
---
### **Chapter 5: The Blood Moon**
The final battle began at midnight.
Jason had warned her—Kieran would never let Ethan go. The boy had seen too much.
Leah had one choice: fight.
The clearing was bathed in moonlight as the two wolves circled each other. The pack watched, their eyes glowing in the dark.
Kieran struck first.
Leah barely dodged, his fangs grazing her side. She lunged, her claws raking across his muzzle. Blood splattered the grass.
It wasn't enough.
Kieran was stronger, faster. He pinned her down, his jaws closing around her throat—
Then a gunshot rang out.
Kieran howled as silver burned through his flesh. Jason stood at the edge of the clearing, rifle raised.
"Run!" he shouted.
Leah didn't hesitate. She grabbed Ethan and fled into the trees.
Behind them, the forest erupted into chaos.
---
### **Chapter 6: The Silver Pact**
Jason's cabin reeked of wolfsbane and gunpowder. Leah pressed a bloodied towel to her side where Kieran's claws had torn through flesh. Ethan huddled by the fireplace, his knuckles white around the silver pendant Jason had forced into his hand.
"You missed." Leah glared at the rifle propped against the wall. "You had one shot at Kieran's heart."
Jason slammed a jar of black salve onto the table. "And you had one job—stay hidden until the blood moon passed." He grabbed her chin, forcing her to meet his amber-flecked eyes. "Now the whole pack knows you're a traitor."
Ethan's voice cracked. "Why does he want me dead?"
"Not dead." Jason peeled back Leah's bandage, making her hiss. "Sacrificed. Kieran's power wanes every decade unless he spills a human's blood under the red moon." His fingers lingered too long on her wound. "Your brother's the perfect candidate—innocent, family-tied... and bait to control *you*."
Leah's canines elongated at the word *control*. The wolf in her chest snarled.
Jason smirked. "There she is."
---
### **Chapter 7: The Howling Caves**
They fled north at dawn, toward the limestone caves where Jason claimed the first werewolf had been born. Ethan trailed behind, his sneakers slipping on wet rock.
"You're telling me this... *curse* started here?" He eyed the claw marks gouged into the walls.
"Not a curse." Jason lit a torch, revealing ancient murals—wolves hunting men, men becoming wolves. "A bargain. The first alpha traded his humanity to protect his tribe from invaders." His gaze slid to Leah. "Power always costs something."
A howl echoed through the tunnels. Close.
Leah's spine stiffened. "Kieran's trackers."
Jason doused the flame. "Then it's time you learned to fight like a real wolf." In the sudden dark, his teeth gleamed sharp. "No more running."
---
### **Chapter 8: The Broken Chain**
Training was torture.
Jason made her shift repeatedly until her bones felt like shattered glass. He taught her to weaponize the pain—to let fury fuel her wolf form. When she pinned him for the third time, his throat bared beneath her fangs, he laughed breathlessly.
"Again."
Ethan watched from a boulder, turning Jason's silver knife over in his hands. "Why help us? You're one of them."
Jason went very still. "Kieran killed my sister during his last ritual." He rolled up his sleeve, revealing a brand—a broken chain. "I was his beta... until I wasn't."
Leah's human hands trembled. The wolf understood vengeance.
---
### **Chapter 9: The Blood Moon Rises**
The night of the ritual reeked of copper and thunderstorms.
Kieran's pack circled the stone altar where Ethan lay bound, his wrists dripping onto the carved wolf effigy. Torches cast monstrous shadows as the alpha raised his ceremonial dagger—
Leah struck from the treeline.
Her wolf form crashed into Kieran, sending the blade skittering across stone. The pack descended into chaos, fur and fangs flashing under the crimson moon.
Jason fought beside her, his silver bullets finding their marks. But Kieran was ancient, his strength unnatural. He snapped Jason's femur with a single bite.
"Pathetic." Kieran spat out blood. "You'll watch them die, traitor."
Leah's vision tunneled. She remembered the cave murals—the first alpha's sacrifice.
A bargain.
Power for blood.
She lunged.
---
### **Chapter 10: The New Alpha**
Kieran's heart tasted like rotten honey.
Leah stood over his corpse, the pack's submission howls vibrating through her bones. Ethan clung to Jason, both bleeding but alive.
The ritual was incomplete. The power unclaimed.
Jason crawled toward her, his eyes wide. "Leah... you have to *finish it*."
She understood. The pack needed an alpha. The forest demanded balance.
With Kieran's dagger, she sliced her palm and pressed it to the altar. The earth itself shuddered.
Ethan whispered, "What did you do?"
Leah's new pack knelt around her as the moon faded to silver.
"What was necessary."
### **Chapter 11: The Weight of the Crown**
The scent of pine and blood clung to Leah's fur as she stood atop Blackwood Ridge, her pack howling beneath the swollen moon. Three months had passed since she tore out Kieran's throat, yet the forest still whispered his name.
Jason limped up beside her, his silver-kissed wounds glinting in the moonlight. "The eastern border's secure. The rogues won't challenge us again."
Leah shifted back to human form, her bare feet pressing into the damp earth. "They will. Eventually." Power thrummed under her skin, the alpha's curse—no, *gift*—coiling in her veins. "Kieran ruled through fear. I won't make the same mistake."
A twig snapped behind them. Ethan emerged from the shadows, his eyes flickering gold.
Leah's stomach clenched.
Her brother shouldn't have been able to sneak up on an alpha.
---
### **Chapter 12: The First Hunt**
Ethan's transformation was nothing like Leah's.
Where hers had been agony, his was eerily silent. One moment he stood at the edge of the clearing, jaw clenched. The next—
A midnight-black wolf panted where her brother had been.
Jason inhaled sharply. "That's not possible."
Leah knew why. New wolves always struggled with their first shift, their bodies fighting the change. But Ethan…
He'd done it in seconds.
Her brother's wolf form tilted its head, intelligent amber eyes locking onto hers. Then he lunged into the forest, his howl shaking the trees.
Leah gave chase without thinking.
By the time she caught him, a deer carcass lay at his paws, its throat torn clean out.
Ethan licked his bloody muzzle and grinned with too-sharp teeth.
"Guess I'm a natural."
---
### **Chapter 13: The Blood Debt**
The nightmares started in week four.
Leah would wake gasping, the phantom taste of Kieran's heart still coating her tongue. But worse than the dreams were the *urges*—the way her claws itched to carve into living flesh, the way her wolf whispered that Ethan's blood would taste sweeter than any deer's.
Jason found her one dawn, fingers buried in the soil where she'd uprooted an entire oak sapling.
"It's the alpha madness," he said quietly. "Kieran fought it by sacrificing humans. You'll have to find another way."
Leah bared her teeth. "I'm not him."
Jason's smile didn't reach his eyes. "Not yet."
That night, Leah dreamt of a crimson river and a wolf with Ethan's face begging her to *drink*.
---
### **Chapter 14: The Witch's Bargain**
The crone's hut stank of dried herbs and rotting meat.
Leah kept Ethan outside despite his protests, the witch's warning ringing in her ears: *"The boy reeks of old magic. Best he stays far from my kind."*
Now the ancient woman stirred a bubbling cauldron, her milky eyes tracking Leah's every twitch. "The first alpha's blood runs strong in you, girl. Strong enough to break the curse… or complete it."
Leah's pulse roared. "What curse?"
The witch's grin revealed blackened gums. "The bargain was never just *power for blood*. It was *power through blood*—through kin." She tossed a handful of bones into the fire. "Kieran sacrificed his daughter to keep his strength. Who will you sacrifice, alpha?"
The flames erupted, forming a perfect wolf's skull that melted into Ethan's screaming face.
Leah fled.
---
### **Chapter 15: The Last Howl**
The blood moon returned on the winter solstice.
Leah stood at the ritual stone, Ethan bound before her just as he'd been under Kieran. The pack circled them, their eyes glowing like embers in the dark.
Jason gripped her shoulder. "There's another way."
Leah shook him off. She'd spent months searching for one—consulting witches, poring over ancient texts, even begging the forest itself for mercy.
There was no other way.
Ethan smiled up at her, his wrists already bleeding where the silver chains bit into flesh. "It's okay," he whispered. "I remember now. I *chose* this."
The truth slammed into Leah like a bullet:
Ethan had never been her brother.
He was the forest's offering—a spirit born in human skin to test each new alpha.
Kieran had failed.
Leah raised the dagger.
And brought it down on the chains.
---
### **Epilogue: The Wild Crown**
The pack thrived under the twin alphas.
Leah ruled the hunt, her howls shaking the mountains. Ethan—no, *Aeron*—commanded the shadows, his laughter echoing through trees that bent to his will.
Jason remained at their side, his silver scars a map of their battles. Some nights, when the moon hung low, Leah would catch him watching Aeron with something like reverence.
The humans told stories, of course. Of a black wolf and a golden-eyed boy who led the wild hunt. Of travelers who entered Blackwood Forest and emerged changed.
Leah didn't mind the legends.
Let them whisper.
Let them fear.
The forest remembered its true rulers.
**[END]**
---