Reborn To Leave The Wolf Who Broke My Heart

Nine years after I became Beta Lincoln Shaw's shadow guard, I decided it was time to break free.

I slipped into a rundown apothecary in the south end of town, trading ten silver coins for a single death-faking pill. The shopkeeper, a grizzled old wolf with eyes like chipped flint, explained it'd make my pulse fade over days, stop my breathing by the seventh, and then-three days later-I'd wake up. A clean escape.

I swallowed the pill, its bitter edge coating my throat, and headed back to the Shaw estate. Snow dusted my shoulders, the cold biting deep. It reminded me of that winter nine years ago, when I was just a pup of seven, starving in a famine that tore through the pack lands. To keep my little sister Julia alive, I sold myself to a trader for five silver coins. But bandits hit our caravan, slaughtering every pup in sight. I crawled out, battered and bleeding, collapsing in the snow to die.

That's when Lincoln's carriage rolled up.

He was only sixteen then, but already a force, his power rippling through the great pack like a storm. He loomed over me, his black cloak snapping in the wind, staring down at the broken she-wolf pup I was.

"Want to live?" His voice was sharp as ice.

I nodded, desperate, clinging to hope.

"From now on, your life belongs to me."

He gave me a bowl of steaming porridge, a warm coat, and a dagger. Over the next nine years, he forged me into his sharpest blade-a shadow guard who killed without a trace.

I don't know when my feelings for him started to shift. Maybe it was the time I came back from a mission half-dead, and he stayed by my side for three sleepless nights. Or when he taught me to write, his warm breath brushing my ear. Or maybe it was that reckless night at the banquet last year, when someone spiked his drink, and he pinned me against the study's screen, all fire and chaos.

After that night, he never spoke of it. Neither did I. Every few nights, he'd come to my room-sometimes tender as a summer breeze, sometimes wild as a beast. He never promised me anything, and I never asked. He was a Beta, ruthless and cold, never swayed by emotion. I had no claim on him, but I'd never seen him show his heart to anyone else either.

Until he carried a she-wolf back to the estate.

I stood on the porch, and the moment I saw her face, my blood turned to ice. It was Julia. My sister. The one I thought the famine had claimed years ago.

Turns out, those five silver coins kept her alive for half a year before a wealthy merchant took her in. But then bandits struck again, wiping out her adoptive family. Only she survived-because Lincoln saved her.

The sobbing pup I remembered was gone. Now, she was a radiant she-wolf, throwing herself into