All my life was ordinary.
And I liked it that way.
In a pack as large as ours, ordinary was a kind of shelter. It meant you woke before dawn to the same bell. It meant you ate with the others, shoulder to shoulder, steam rising from bowls and breath alike. It meant you had a name, but it was rarely called across a room. You had a face, but it blurred easily into the crowd.
I was never important enough to be remembered, and never unimportant enough to be ignored. I lived in the middle space. A space where I was useful, but replaceable. I was safe.
Some days I delivered missives between patrols and the council, sealed orders pressed into my hands, findings gathered from scouts and sent where they were needed most. I was trusted with maps marked in careful ink, with old letters pulled from archives, with fragments of history and intelligence that mattered. Other days I trained with the soldiers, shield arm aching, knuckles bruised, lungs burning as we ran drills until the earth blurred beneath us. Sometimes I stood watch along the outer wall. Sometimes I was sent to retrieve materials the pack needed, records misplaced, supplies forgotten, knowledge buried and waiting to be found. Important enough to be trusted with access, but otherwise a no one, head down, mind quiet.
I had no rank, no title, no special distinction. Just another wolf.
It was easy to get lost in the shuffle, and I had learned early how to make myself smaller. How to step aside when high ranking wolves passed, when authority moved through the halls and you felt it before you saw it. How to lower my gaze without resentment. How to exist without demanding space.
Predictable and steady and, most importantly, normal. That was the shape of my life, and it suited me.
The pack itself was old and sprawling, built outward rather than upward, its halls stretching wide across the valley floor and into the surrounding woods. Long buildings connected by covered walkways formed a maze of stone and timber, meant to hold generations rather than impress them. Torches burned low and constant, their smoke staining beams and ceilings dark. The air always smelled faintly of iron and pine and wolf. Boots echoed along packed earth and stone at all hours. There was always movement, always noise.
And yet, somehow, I had carved out a quiet place within it.
I had friends, though none close enough to notice if I disappeared for a day or two. I trained beside the same wolves year after year, grew stronger with them, bled with them, laughed with them on good nights and drank too much on bad ones. I shared stories around the fire and silence on long watches.
I was content.
Mate bonds existed, of course. Everyone knew that. They were the great equalizer and the great disruption. The one thing no amount of discipline or hierarchy could fully control.
They were never planned. Never scheduled. Never earned.
They didn't wait for age or rank or readiness. They didn't care if you were strong or weak, noble or forgettable. They struck when they chose, and when they did, everything else rearranged itself around that single, brutal truth.
Some wolves met their mates young, barely grown, the bond snapping into place the moment their eyes met. Others lived decades before it found them. There were stories of wolves who trained together for years, fought side by side, shared blood and meals and laughter, only for the bond to awaken long after familiarity had dulled into something like habit.
That was supposed to make it easier, I suppose. Being mated to a person you already knew and cared for seemed like the best version of the bond snapping into place.
I never gave it much thought. The bond would come or it would not. Either way, I would still wake with the bell. Still do my duties. Still be Lena, unremarkable and intact.
I should have known better.
Kade and I had grown up together, in the loose sense that a pack raises its young collectively. We had trained beside one another as adolescents, sparring in the dirt until our arms shook, racing through the trees until our legs gave out. We'd shared water skins and bruises and the easy camaraderie of youth.
At times we had been friends. Not close, not confessional, but familiar and comfortable. The kind of friendship that comes from proximity and time but got left behind as we got older.
He had always been striking, even then. Taller than most, broader in the shoulders, with a presence that seemed to darken a room simply by occupying it. His hair was dark, thick, perpetually falling into his eyes no matter how tightly he tied it back. His gaze was sharp and steady, the kind that made other wolves straighten without knowing why.
As we grew older, that presence only sharpened.
By the time I was fully grown, so was he, and there was no denying it anymore. Kade was terrifyingly handsome in a way that felt dangerous rather than inviting. Everything about him was neater now, more deliberate. His hair was kept shorter, no longer the wild, untamed fall it had been in youth, and the sharpness of age had polished him rather than dulled him. His features were carved and severe, jaw strong, mouth firm, eyes pale and unreadable. He looked as though he had been built from shadow and stone, forged for war and command.
The kind of man songs were written about. The kind of man mothers warned their daughters about. The kind of man who drew attention simply by breathing.
Who wouldn't swoon for him? Who wouldn't imagine themselves bonded to him?
My younger self had certainly blushed at a few fleeting thoughts of him, the harmless sort that came with growing up alongside someone so undeniably striking. But once our training ended and we each took our own paths within the pack, I had stopped imagining him in any way that mattered. Our lives no longer crossed often, and whatever might have existed in youth had been left there, undisturbed and unexamined.
That morning had begun like any other. I had delivered a message to the eastern patrol, accepted a nod in return, and turned back toward the inner halls with nothing on my mind beyond the ache in my calves and whether there would be bread left by the time I reached the kitchens.
The corridors were crowded, wolves moving in every direction, voices echoing, torches flickering against stone. I kept to the side, as I always did, slipping past larger bodies, avoiding collisions out of habit rather than effort.
I felt him before I saw him.
It was not a gradual awareness. It was not a slow realization or a gentle pull. It was a violent, internal snap, like something deep inside my chest had been wrenched into place with brutal finality.
Heat flooded my veins. My breath stuttered. My vision blurred at the edges as my heart slammed against my ribs, too fast and too loud. Every instinct screamed at once, confusion tangling with recognition, fear braided tightly with something dangerously close to longing.
Mate.
The word hit like a blow.
I saw it register in him too.
Kade stopped mid step, his body locking as though he had struck an invisible wall. His eyes widened, just barely, the only crack in that unyielding control. His jaw clenched. I felt it like an echo in my own bones, the bond flaring brighter, tighter, suffocating in its sudden intimacy.
For a heartbeat, neither of us moved.
Then his expression shuttered.
Whatever he felt, he buried it with ruthless efficiency. His gaze hardened, flicking over me with something like disbelief, then calculation. He did not reach for me. He did not speak.
He bowed his head, just slightly, a gesture so subtle it could have been mistaken for nothing at all, then stepped past me and continued down the hall as if the world had not just cracked open between us.
I stood there, frozen, lungs burning, hands trembling at my sides.
Whispers followed in his wake.
I barely heard them.
The rest of the day passed in fragments. I completed my duties in a haze, muscles moving on instinct while my mind reeled. Finding your mate was supposed to be exhilarating, joyful even. Heart racing in wonder, not dread.
That was what the stories said.
But nothing about this felt like joy.
Because my mate was not just terrifyingly handsome. He was'nt just powerful. He wasn't just a man who could command a room without raising his voice.
My mate was the Alpha.
And an ordinary life had just slipped through my fingers forever.