Aria's pov
The pain was unlike anything Aria had ever imagined.
It started as a tremor deep in her bones, a vibration that seemed to originate from her very marrow. She'd been walking back from the library, arms full of ancient texts about late-blooming wolves, when the first wave hit. The books tumbled from her grasp, pages fluttering like wounded birds as she dropped to her knees on the dormitory lawn.
"No, no, not here," she gasped, even as part of her thrilled with desperate hope. Finally.
Her skin felt too tight, stretched over a body that suddenly wanted to be something else entirely. Fire raced through her veins, and she could hear her heartbeat—impossibly loud, impossibly fast—thundering in her ears like war drums. Around her, students stopped and stared. She caught fragments of their whispered conversations, heard her name passed from mouth to mouth with varying degrees of concern and cruel amusement.
Then the world exploded into silver light.
It burst from her skin like a star going nova, brilliant and blinding. She heard screams—or maybe that was her own voice, raw and transforming into something between human and animal. Her bones sang with agony as they reshaped themselves. Muscles tore and reformed. Her senses detonated outward in a cascade of overwhelming input.
*Breathe,* some instinct whispered. *Let go. Stop fighting.*
The moment she surrendered to it, everything changed.
Her hands met grass that now felt like individual silk threads against newly sensitive pads. The evening air carried a thousand scents she'd never noticed—pine sap and earth, fear-sweat from the watching students, the metallic tang of the coming night. Her vision sharpened until she could see individual leaves trembling on trees fifty yards away.
And her wolf—*her wolf*—rose up inside her like a creature made of moonlight and wild joy.
Aria threw back her head and howled. The sound that emerged was pure and powerful, echoing across the academy grounds with an authority that made her human mind reel. This wasn't the uncertain, powerless girl who'd been mocked for eighteen years. This was something ancient and magnificent, something that had been waiting all this time to be born.
She stood on four legs, silver fur rippling in the breeze, and felt *complete* for the first time in her life.
But then she felt something else.
It hit her like a physical blow—a pull, a magnetic force that seemed to hook directly into her chest and *tug*. The sensation was so intense it nearly brought her back to her knees. Every instinct in her newly awakened wolf screamed at her to follow it, to find the source of this overwhelming need.
The bond. The mate bond she'd read about in countless books, heard whispered about in dormitory conversations. She'd thought it was supposed to be gentle, a gradual recognition. This felt like being caught in a riptide, like gravity itself had shifted to point in a single direction.
Her wolf moved before her human mind could fully process what was happening. She bounded across the lawn, students scattering out of her path. The silver light still clung to her fur like stardust, leaving a faint trail in her wake. She didn't know where she was going, only that she had to get *there*, had to find *him*—
Him?
She rounded the corner of the main building and skidded to a halt.
Dante stood alone near the ancient oak tree that marked the boundary between the academy grounds and the forest beyond. Even in her wolf form, she recognized him instantly—the dark heir, the untouchable prince of Blackmoon Academy. He stood perfectly still, his head turned toward her, and in the moonlight, his eyes gleamed with an amber fire that matched the burning sensation in her chest.
For a moment, neither of them moved.
Aria's wolf whined low in her throat, a sound of recognition and longing that she couldn't control. The bond between them pulsed like a living thing, golden threads of fate that only she could see, stretching from her heart to his. They glowed in the darkness, beautiful and terrible and absolutely undeniable.
Dante's expression was shock—pure, unfiltered shock that cracked through his usual mask of cold control. His hands clenched and unclenched at his sides. Even from twenty feet away, she could see the tension in his shoulders, the rapid rise and fall of his chest.
"No," he said, and the single word cut through the night like a blade. "No. This is impossible."
But his eyes told a different story. They were fixed on her with an intensity that made her wolf preen even as her human mind tried desperately to understand what was happening. The future Alpha of the Nightshade Pack, the most powerful young wolf in generations, destined to lead thousands—
Was her mate.
The girl who'd only just found her wolf, who'd been nobody and nothing for eighteen years, was bound by fate to someone so far above her station that the very idea seemed like a cosmic joke.
Aria tried to shift back to human form, to speak, to explain—but her wolf was too new, too wild, and she didn't yet know how to control the transformation. She stood there in her silver wolf form, trembling with the effort of holding herself back from running straight to him, from pressing her muzzle against his hand and claiming what every instinct in her body screamed was hers.
Dante took a step back, and the movement sent a spike of pain through her chest.
"Stay back," he said, his voice rough and strained. "Don't—" He closed his eyes, jaw clenched so tight she could hear his teeth grinding together. "We need to reject this bond. Tonight. Before anyone else finds out."
The words should have devastated her. Part of her knew that. But her wolf snarled, hackles rising, refusing to accept them. The silver light around her flared brighter, responding to her emotional turmoil.
When Dante opened his eyes again, she saw the war raging inside him reflected in those amber depths. The bond pulled at them both, inexorable as the tide. She could feel what he was feeling through that connection—shock, yes, but also desire, possessiveness, and underneath it all, terror at what this meant for his carefully planned future.
"Aria," he said, and hearing her name in his voice made her wolf keen with desperate need. "I know you can understand me. Shift back. We need to talk about this."
She wanted to. She *tried* to. But her wolf, awakened after eighteen years of silence, refused to relinquish control. Not now. Not when she'd finally found what she'd been waiting for her entire life.
Not when her mate stood before her, fighting the same bond she wanted to surrender to completely.
The night stretched between them, heavy with unspoken words and impossible choices. In the distance, Aria could hear voices calling her name, probably instructors coming to investigate the commotion. Soon they'd be surrounded by witnesses, and whatever happened next would become public knowledge.
The clock was ticking on their secret.
And neither of them knew what to do with a fate neither had asked for.