THE STOLEN WHITE WOLF

YVONNE POV

The silver chain around my wrists burned deeper into my skin as Duncan Thorn forced me against the filthy mattress.

My wolf snarled inside me, but the sound was weak and distant. The wolfsbane Lillian Reed had slipped into my drink had spread through my body, weakening Nyx, my wolf and making my muscles heavy. Even breathing required more strength than it should have.

Duncan lowered his face towards the exposed side of my neck. His canines had lengthened, and his dirty yellow eyes were fixed on my marking gland.

"Stop fighting," he growled. "Once I mark you, you'll belong to me."

I turned my face away before his teeth could touch me. "I would rather die."

His laugh made my stomach turn. "You might change your mind when you realise no one is coming to save you."

The locked door did little to hide Lillian's voice from the other side. "Make sure the mark is deep enough for the Everstead wolves to smell it. They will arrive after sunrise, so it must be done before then."

Duncan glanced towards the door impatiently. "I know what I'm doing."

"And don't kill her," Lillian added. "A dead girl will create questions. A marked one will only look like a rogue who lied about being an Alpha's daughter."

Her footsteps moved away from the door.

A cold understanding washed over me. This was not only about Duncan or Lillian's desire to control me. She was trying to stop me from leaving with the Everstead delegation.

Three days earlier, a healer from the Werewolf Council had visited the market near our settlement. She noticed the crescent-shaped mark below my collarbone and asked to test my blood. The moment three drops touched her moonstone, it blazed with a brilliant white light, and every wolf in the market fell silent.

The healer said it was the sign of the White Wolf bloodline, a rare lineage blessed by the Moon Goddess and unseen for almost a century. It could only have awakened in a direct descendant of Everstead's ruling Alpha family.

According to pack law, the appearance of a White Wolf placed me ahead of every other descendant in the line of succession. I would still have to prove that I could lead, but no one, not even the daughter currently carrying the Chase name, could be confirmed as Alpha before I was allowed to challenge her.

The discovery explained the white wolf I had been forced to hide since my first shift. Lillian had always claimed that Nyx's colour made me unnatural and that hunters would skin me alive if anyone saw her. I had believed she was protecting me. Now I knew she had only been hiding what I was.

By the following evening, a letter bearing the Everstead seal had arrived. Alpha Aldric Chase had ordered a Council escort to collect me at sunrise. The daughter he had raised, Jacinda Chase, had failed the blood ritual required of every Everstead heir, and the Council's investigation had led them to me.

Lillian had cried when I showed her the letter. She held me tightly and claimed she had always known I was meant for something greater. That same night, she poured wolfsbane into my tea.

Like a fool, I had allowed myself to believe her tears were real. I had spent most of my life trying to earn a kind word from her, so when she finally embraced me, I did not question it. I drank the tea she gave me and fell asleep imagining what it might feel like to have two families who wanted me.

Duncan tore the shoulder of my dress, exposing more of my neck. Panic tightened my chest when his claws scraped my skin, and Nyx pushed desperately against the poison separating us.

'Let me out,' she growled.

'The wolfsbane is too strong.' I replied.

'Then kill him without me.'

I stopped fighting and allowed my body to go limp beneath him.

Duncan noticed the change and smiled. "Finally decided to behave?"

"The silver is making me numb," I said. "If you want me conscious when you mark me, release one hand."

Suspicion crossed his face, but it did not last. Duncan was cruel and proud. He would want me awake when he forced his mark onto my neck. He would want to watch me realise that I could no longer escape him.

He unlocked the cuff around my right wrist and tossed it aside. "Better?"

"Much."

Immediately I drove my thumb into his injured left eye.

Duncan roared and jerked backwards. Before he could recover, I wrapped the loose chain around his neck and pulled with all the strength I had left. Smoke rose as the silver burned his skin, filling the room with the sickening smell of burnt flesh.

He struck me across the face, but I tightened the chain and threw my weight to the side. We crashed from the mattress onto the wooden floor, with Duncan landing partly beneath me.

I tried to stand, but he caught my ankle and dragged me back down. His claws tore my upper arm as he rolled over me and closed one hand around my throat.

"You should have accepted the easy way," he snarled. "Now I'm going to make you beg."

Black spots crowded my vision. Beside my head, one of the silver nails that had secured the chain to the bed frame had come loose during our struggle. I stretched towards it while Duncan's grip tightened.

My fingertips finally touched the metal. I tore it from the rotten wood and drove it beneath his jaw.

His grip vanished, and Duncan staggered away, choking as blood darkened his shirt. I forced myself upright, wrapped the chain around his throat and pulled him backwards into the wall. His claws scraped across the wood before falling to his sides, and when I finally released him, he collapsed without moving.

For several seconds, I remained against the wall, struggling to breathe. My neck throbbed, and blood ran from the wound on my arm, but Duncan was dead.

I touched the unbroken skin over my marking gland and released the breath trapped inside my chest. He had not succeeded. Whatever waited for me in Everstead, I would face it as myself, not as a rogue's unwilling mate.

I felt no guilt. Rogues survived by making sure their enemies could not attack twice.

I searched his pockets and found a folding knife and the keys to my cuffs. My letter from Everstead lay on the table beside the empty wolfsbane bottle. I folded it carefully and pushed it inside my dress.

Voices drifted through the thin wall separating the room from the front of the cabin.

"You gave her too much wolfsbane," Holloway the Butcher complained. "What if she cannot stand when the witnesses arrive?"

"She only needs to be alive," Lillian replied. "Once they find her carrying Duncan's mark, Everstead will have no choice but to leave her here."

I moved closer to the wall and held my breath.

"What if they still take her?" Holloway the Butcher asked.

"The Pack Accord is clear. An heir bonded to a rogue outside pack law cannot compete for an Alpha position. Jacinda will remain Everstead's only recognised heir, and once she becomes Alpha, we will finally control that pack through her."

Holloway the Butcher released a nervous breath. "Sometimes I still cannot believe how you had managed to exchange them inside the pack hospital."

My fingers tightened around Duncan's knife.

"Luna Weston was unconscious, and everyone was distracted by the rogue attack," Lillian said. "I placed our daughter beside her and carried theirs away. No one suspected anything."

"And then you brought an Alpha's daughter here."

"Killing her might have alerted her father through the bloodline bond. Keeping her hidden among rogues was safer. Who would ever search for the missing White Wolf here?"

My chest tightened until every breath became painful.

They had known. Every time Lillian called me worthless, she had known whose blood flowed through my veins. Every winter Holloway the Butcher sent me into the forest hungry while Jacinda lived behind guarded borders, they had known which one of us truly belonged there.

They had not merely stolen my family and name. They had spent twenty-one years preparing their daughter to take control of my pack.

Memories I had once dismissed returned with clarity: Lillian forcing me to hide whenever travelling pack wolves entered the settlement, Holloway the Butcher beating me after a merchant saw Nyx's my wolf white fur, and both of them refusing to tell me where I had been born. None of it had been protection. They had been terrified that someone would recognise me.

Nyx became still inside me as a colder feeling replaced her anger. 'We will take it back.'

I pressed my hand over the Everstead letter. I did not intend to return to the pack and beg Alpha Aldric to love me. If Everstead was mine by blood, I would reclaim my position as its heir and become its next Alpha.

Outside, Lillian told Holloway the Butcher she was going to bring the Pack leader and several witnesses. She wanted them to catch Duncan and me together before the Everstead escort arrived. Her footsteps soon disappeared, leaving Holloway behind to guard the cabin.

I looked at Duncan's body, then deliberately kicked the empty wolfsbane bottle across the room. It struck the wall and shattered.

"What happened in there?" Holloway demanded.

I gave him no answer, and the door opened moments later. Holloway entered with a hunting knife, but he stopped when he saw Duncan lying on the floor.

"What did you do?"

"He tried to mark me."

"He was supposed to mark you!" Holloway shouted. "Do you understand what you have ruined?"

"Jacinda's chance to keep pretending she is Alpha Aldric's daughter?"

The colour drained from his face. His gaze moved towards the door as he considered whether he could keep me quiet until Lillian returned.

"You heard us," he said.

"I heard everything."

Holloway raised the knife. "Then we should have killed you when you were a baby."

He rushed towards me. I moved behind the table as he swung, but the blade still sliced across my waist. Before he could strike again, I kicked the table into his knees and slashed Duncan's knife across his thigh.

Holloway the Butcher roared as his eyes turned yellow. Dark fur spread along his arms, and his claws lengthened as he began a partial shift.

"Let us see what Alpha blood can do without your wolf," he snarled.

He attacked again, driving me into the bed frame. Pain shot through my injured arm as he grabbed my hair and exposed my throat.

Then something powerful broke through the wolfsbane. Heat rushed along my arms, turning my claws white as Nyx's strength briefly joined mine.

Holloway stared at them in disbelief. "The White Wolf."

I caught his wrist and squeezed until the bones broke. His scream shook the cabin, but I did not release him. I forced him to his knees and wrapped Duncan's silver chain around his throat.

"You kept me alive because you feared what my death would reveal," I said. "That mistake will cost your daughter everything."

I pulled until his body stopped fighting and dropped beside Duncan's.

The cabin became silent. I was exhausted and bleeding, but there was still work to do before Lillian returned.

I wiped my fingerprints from Holloway hunting knife and placed it in Duncan's hand. Then I wrapped Holloway fingers around the silver chain, making it appear as though the two men had killed each other. Lillian's red scarf lay on the chair where she had left it after bringing me to the cabin. I dragged it through Duncan's blood and tucked one end beneath his body.

By the time I finished, the scene told a different story than I intended to create. Holloway had discovered his mate's affair with Duncan, and the confrontation had ended with both men dead.

Voices sounded outside before I could decide whether everything looked convincing. Lillian was returning with the Pack leader and the same wolves she intended to use against me.

I sat beside the broken bed and allowed the tears I had been holding back to fill my eyes. My torn dress, bruised throat and bleeding arm would complete the picture.