Adeline’s pov~
I was an orphan from the day I knew. The Crestwood pack took me in, but honestly, they treated me just like trash. From the age of ten, my only duty was to work for them as a maid at their mansion, working to the bone to repay their "kindness" for taking me in. And I did. I worked until my hands bled.
The twin Alphas, Lucas and Logan of the Crestwood pack, hated me. They hated me from the day I entered their territory. According to everyone, I was just a wolfless omega, or a rogue waiting to happen.
I continued my job as a maid, enduring the quiet cruelty, until the day their long-lost sister, Chloe, was found. When she returned, everything changed. The chores turned into pure violence.
Everyone in the pack loved Chloe. The twins absolutely doted on her. She loved their attention, and to gain even more of it, she quickly realised how much they hated me. She used her tactics to pull me into violence, beating me, stomping on me, and hitting me just to get that silly attention from them. They would pamper her, treating her like glass, while I lay there bleeding on the floorboards I had just scrubbed. Chloe was just one year younger than me. I barely survived her cruelty.
And then, the day arrived. My eighteenth birthday. It was the dream day most girls spent years wishing for, the day they finally find their mate. That night, the scent hit me—a strong, overwhelming scent that filled my lungs.
I found out I was mated to the twin Alphas.
It hit me like a physical blow. But the true horror was finding out they already knew. They had known I was their mate all along, from the very day I entered the pack. Yet, they had hidden it. They didn’t reveal a thing simply because they hated me for being lame and simple—for not being bright, colourful, and cute enough to get attention like Chloe.
On my eighteenth birthday, they made their announcement in front of everyone.
"A wolfless omega has no place by my side," Lucas sneered, his voice cutting through the crowd. "I, Alpha Lucas, reject you as my mate."
"And I, Alpha Logan, second the rejection," Logan added, his eyes full of pure disdain. "Our Luna will be Chloe when she turns eighteen next year. Pack your rags and get out of our territory before sunrise, rogue."
The night my twin Alpha mates rejected me, they called me a wolfless omega, a mistake, a burden unworthy of becoming their Luna.
They thought they had broken me when they threw me out into the dark. They thought I was nothing. But as I pulled the hood of my oversized black sweatshirt down in the dim light of the academy bathroom, staring at the fresh purple bruises Zyran’s men had left on my face, a cold, hard smile touched my split lip.
Lucas and Logan had tried to destroy me. Chloe had tried to break me. And now, the Four Kings of this academy thought they could play the exact same game.
They were all wrong. I didn’t care about their rejections, their titles, or their power. I was going to find out what happened to my real family; I was going to awaken whatever was sleeping inside me, and then I was going to leave this place in ashes.
Biting back a gasp as my bruised ribs flared with pain, I unlocked the bathroom door and stepped out into the dark, ready for whatever tomorrow brought.
The cold forest floor that night was supposed to be my grave.
When I stumbled out of the Crestwood pack territory, I was bleeding and half-dead. My wolf had only just woken up, stirred to life by the heavy, overwhelming scent of my fated mates. But she was already so weak, so fragile. When the twins spat out their rejections, the sheer psychological and physical trauma was more than her newborn spirit could bear. The bond snapped, and it felt like something inside me withered away. I didn’t know if she was permanently damaged, or if she had vanished completely; all I knew was that the rejection left me hollowed out, my body burning with a deep, agonising weakness that made every step a battle against gravity.
I dragged myself through the dark woods by sheer force of will, my vision blurred, my lungs screaming. I just wanted to crawl into a bush and let the shadows take me.
But then, the sound of low, menacing growls cut through the trees.
I crept closer, using the thick brush for cover. Through the leaves, I saw a lone rogue wolf, its jaws snapping, cornering an elderly woman against a massive oak tree. She was terrified, pressed against the bark with nowhere to run.
Physically, I was running on empty. My muscles were trembling, and my wolf was silent, offering no strength. But mentally? Mentally, I was a brick wall. Years of surviving the twins’ cruelty and Chloe’s vicious traps had taught me how to think fast under pressure. I wasn’t going to just stand there and watch a woman get slaughtered.
Using the environment instead of brute force, I grabbed a heavy, jagged branch and crept up behind the rogue. I didn’t try to fight it fair. When it lunged for the woman, I drove the sharp end of the branch directly into the back of its neck with every single ounce of weight I had left, using the momentum to throw the beast off balance. It yelped, thrashing wildly, but the sudden, aggressive distraction gave us just enough time. I grabbed the woman’s arm, pulling her into a dense, thorny ravine I had spotted earlier.
When the danger passed, I collapsed against the dirt, my vision turning black at the edges. The elderly woman rushed to my side, her hands surprisingly warm as she checked my pulse.
"You saved me," she whispered, her voice carrying a strange, regal authority despite the dirt on her clothes. "Who are you, child? Which pack do you belong to?"
Through cracked lips and shallow breaths, the truth spilt out. I had nothing left to lose, so I told her everything—the maid chores, the violence, Chloe’s manipulation, and the twin Alphas who had rejected me and thrown me out to die because I was a "lame, wolfless burden."
The woman listened in absolute silence, her expression hardening into something fiercely protective. When I finished, she took my hands in hers.
"I am the Dowager Luna of the Dravenmoor pack," she said softly, introducing herself as Raven’s grandmother.
She took me in, bringing me to a safe house far from the Crestwood borders. She examined me thoroughly and quickly realised the truth about my condition. My wolf wasn’t entirely gone, but she was profoundly defective—half-dead and deeply scarred from the rejection trauma. In the supernatural world, a wolf in that state was a walking target. Any passing predator would smell my vulnerability and tear me apart just for sport.
To keep me safe, the Dowager Luna used an ancient, high-level spell. She placed a heavy silver pendant around my neck—the very one I wore beneath my hoodie to this day.
"This will act as a shield, Adeline," she had told me, her eyes dead serious. "It completely cloaks the scent of your broken, half-dead wolf. To the rest of the world, you will smell like a total void. A blank slate. No one will ever be able to sniff out your weakness."
It was a gift meant to protect me from the wolves outside. But now, standing in the academy bathroom, I realised the irony. The very void that was supposed to keep me safe was the exact "anomaly" that had turned Keiran, Zyran, Blake, and Raven into my hunters.
I tucked the pendant securely beneath my thick black hoodie, letting the cold metal rest against my chest. Keiran’s grandmother had given me a chance and hidden my broken pieces. I wouldn’t let her down by breaking now. Zyran thought he could use lowlife omegas to ruin me, but he didn’t know the first thing about what I had already survived.