😍Click to continue reading<The Messenger>🔞
To punish werewolves for rejecting fated mates at will, the Moon Goddess took away our sacred ability to recognize our mates at sight and spelled the curse that each pair of chosen mates could only have one child. But every hundred years, she would designate a Messenger — a wolf of destiny who could see the red thread connecting fated mates. That was her last act of gentleness. And I... was the new Messenger. Yet no one believed this. “Oh, the tiny runt wolf’s pathetic trick to save face.” The pack members laughed at me. “We’re fated mates? No, thanks, I don’t want an ironboard,” Nick sneered with cruel arrogance. “Stop humiliating me!” Dad slapped me and locked me in my bedroom. “In two weeks, you'll be sent to the North for a mating ceremony with the wild packs. That's your last use as my daughter.” And that was the moment I decided this bloodline didn’t deserve to continue. I stood at the border, head held high, and declared, “I, Iva Rhys, the Messenger of the Moon Goddess, reject Nick Blackthorn as my fated mate and sever all ties with the Silvercrest Pack.” Nick collapsed instantly. Pack members cried out for the gift they’d lost. And the werewolf King roared in fury at the power slipping through his fingers. Yet none of them could catch me. The runt they despised just became their worst regret. --- I The Girl Who Woke Before Dawn Iva woke to the sharp, merciless ring of her alarm at four in the morning, the sound drilling through the quiet darkness of her room, and for a brief, foolish second she wished she could slam the pillow over her head and pretend she wasn’t the Gamma’s daughter, pretend she wasn’t expected to be the first one training, pretend she wasn’t the constant disappointment her father treated like an unavoidable burden. “Come on, Iva, move,” she told herself as she swung her legs out of bed, blinking against the cold air that nipped at her bare arms. “It’s not like lying here will magically make him proud of you.” She dressed quickly—black l
