I sometimes lose track of time watching the waves with my pencil hovering over half-finished designs. The rhythm of the water soothes something broken within me.
I’d always wanted to go to the beach since I was a child, but my family couldn’t afford it.
“One day, when I’m bigger and have money,” I promised my mother, “I’ll take you to see the ocean.”
She had smiled with a split lip. “I’d like that, little pup.”
We never had the chance.
My father was a gambling addict who racked up mountains of debt and drank himself to forget his mistakes. When he was drunk, he would mercilessly beat my mother. My mother would have died at his hands if I hadn’t called the pack enforcers several times.
I remember the first time I called for assistance. I was ten years old and hiding in the closet with my mother’s old flip phone clutched in trembling hands.
“Pack enforcement,” a gruff voice replied.
“Please,” I whispered, afraid my father would hear. “He’s hurting my mum again. There’s so much blood.”
When they arrived, my father had changed into his charming persona. “Just a misunderstanding,” he said, his arm around my mother’s shoulders. Her eyes were downcast, and her wolf was submissive despite being a naturally dominant female.
The enforcers fled, and that night, he broke her arm for “embarrassing him.”
But luck never lasts forever. One day after study hall, I returned home to find my mother in a pool of blood, barely breathing. My father had disappeared.
“Mom?” I’d dropped my backpack and rushed to her side. “Mom!”
Her eyes fluttered open; Amelia, who had once been bright, was now dulled by pain. “Run,” she whispered. “He’ll be back.”
I immediately summoned the pack enforcers to track him down, but he appeared to have vanished from the world entirely, never to be seen again.
My mother did not survive the night. Her final words to me were, “Don’t let anyone own you. Not like he owned me.”
My birth family’s trauma branded itself on my soul like a hot iron, torturing me for over a decade of sleepless nights.
I hated myself for not being strong enough to protect my mother and take her out of that situation. Even more, I despised the fact that she loved my father so much that she stayed by his side despite the abuse, which eventually claimed her life.
When I was 16, I discovered her diary. Inside was what she had written: “I stay because my wolf chose him, and a wolf never chooses wrong. The pain must be my fault.”
That night, under a crescent moon, I burned the diary and vowed never to let my wolf make my decisions for me.
These experiences made me unable to trust love. I refused intimate connections with anyone, erecting barriers that no one could overcome–until Dylan appeared and changed everything.
Dylan had only recently taken over as leader of the Silvermoon Pack. Our wolves recognised each other as fated mates the moment we locked gazes across a crowded marketplace.
The pull was immediate and overwhelming. My wolf howled and scratched beneath my skin, desperate to be closer to him.
But I remembered my vow. I remembered my mother.
