After Six Alphas Called Me Cheap, I Took Their Pack

Blood welled on my thumb. Another thorn sliced through my skin as I reached into the dense thicket.

"Add a new column to the spreadsheet," I muttered to myself, wiping the crimson drop on my jeans. "Column D. Emotional toll."

My body felt like a patchwork quilt of ownership. Kade's forced rhythm thumped against my collarbone. Leo’s purple bruise burned hot on my left wrist. Every inch of my skin hummed with foreign energy.

I snapped the stem of a large rose. White petals, bleeding into bright pink edges.

"Those flowers are for the dead."

I spun around, dropping the bloom.

Mason sat perched on the high stone wall of the garden. He kicked his legs back and forth, entirely unbothered by the sheer drop behind him.

"You sneak up on people just like your brothers," I said, rubbing my scarred wrist.

"I didn't sneak," Mason replied. "You were just too busy talking to yourself."

He hopped down from the masonry. He didn't land with a heavy thud. His sneakers barely made a sound on the gravel.

Cradled against his chest was a porcelain doll. Its painted face was mapped with spiderweb cracks. One glass eye stared straight ahead. The other seemed to swivel, locking directly onto my face.

"Stop pointing that thing at me," I demanded.

Mason tilted his head. "She likes you."

"It's a piece of ceramic."

"Everything here is alive, Ava." Mason stepped closer, gesturing to the sprawling hedge. "Even the roses. They grow from people."

I took a step back. "Excuse me?"

"The soil." He kicked a clump of dark dirt. "It feeds on what we bury. The old Luna planted the first seeds. Now, they bloom for the ones who never came back."

He closed the distance between us. I tried to retreat, but my spine hit the thorny bushes.

Mason reached out. His cold fingertips grazed my cheek. He smelled like attic dust and old lace.

"You aren't dead yet," he whispered, examining my face like a rare insect pinned to a board.

"I plan to keep it that way."

"But you will be someday." Mason smiled. A completely hollow, terrifyingly sweet curve of his lips. "That's why I keep them."

He held the cracked doll up to my eye level.

"They don't die," he explained. "They don't leave. They just stay forever."

"I'm not a doll, Mason."

"Not yet." He grabbed my uninjured right hand. His grip was iron. "Come on. I want to show you her garden."

"Let go of me!" I yanked my arm, but he dragged me effortlessly into the towering black maze.

The thorns didn't shift or attack him. They parted like obedient servants, clearing a direct path to the far edge of the estate.

We spilled out of the labyrinth onto a barren patch of earth. No grass. No flowers. Just three jagged slabs of black marble jutting from the frost-covered ground.

The family graveyard.

Mason dragged me to the center stone. He finally released my hand and dropped to his knees.

I rubbed my knuckles, reading the carved letters.

*ELARA BLACKWOOD.*

*BELOVED, FORGOTTEN.*

"Who puts 'forgotten' on a tombstone?" I asked, staring at the brutal inscription.

"Our father," Mason answered. He set the porcelain doll gently at the base of the marble block.

"Why?"

"Because she chose the moon over us." Mason traced the letters with a filthy fingernail. "That's what he told us. She ran into the woods and never came back."

"I'm sorry," I offered, unsure of what else to say to a volatile werewolf.

"I waited by the front door." Mason didn't look at me. "Every single day. For a whole year. I sat on the rug until my legs went numb."

"You were a kid."

"Do you know what I learned, Ava?"

He stood up. The sweet, hollow smile was gone. Tears spilled over his lower lashes, tracking through the dirt on his cheeks. He laughed, a broken, jagged sound that scraped against my eardrums.

"Only the people you keep are the ones who don't leave," Mason stated.

He lunged forward.

Both of his hands clamped onto my shoulders. His fingers dug painfully into my collarbones. He shoved me backward until my calves hit the cold marble of his mother's grave.

"Let me keep you," he begged, his voice cracking.

He buried his face in the crook of my neck. His hot breath washed over my skin.

I squeezed my eyes shut. I braced for the agonizing pierce of teeth. I waited for him to claim his piece of the map, just like Kade and Leo.

The bite never came.

Above us, the thick morning clouds finally broke. A beam of pale, daytime moonlight sliced through the gray sky.

The silver light hit my face.

*SNAP.*

The metallic tether buried deep inside my ribs violently vibrated. It wasn't a forced rhythm like Kade's. It wasn't a cold numbing pressure like Leo's.

This was a massive, seismic shockwave erupting directly from my own blood.

My chest heaved. I gasped for air, but my lungs wouldn't expand.

Mason jerked his head up.

His chest collided with mine. A shock of static electricity arched between our shirts.

*Thump-thump.*

My heart hammered against my sternum.

*Thump-thump.*

Mason's chest echoed the exact same rhythm.

He didn't bite me. He didn't even break my skin. The moon simply reached down and touched me.

"What did you do?" Mason stammered.

He stumbled backward, dropping his hands from my shoulders as if my shirt had caught fire.

"I didn't do anything!" I yelled, clutching my chest.

The resonance hummed louder, vibrating through my veins. It felt like a locked door inside my DNA was being violently kicked open.

Mason's pupils dilated until his eyes were entirely black. He stared at my chest, tracking the impossible, synchronized drumming.

"What is that?" his voice trembled.

I stared down at my trembling hands. The veins under my skin glowed with a faint, terrifying silver tint.

I didn't have an answer for him. But the journal's vanishing words flashed through my mind.

*Anchor Bloodline.*

Tomorrow was the true full moon. The Pack would run. The brothers would hunt.

And whatever monster was currently waking up inside my blood was preparing to answer their call.

A low, guttural growl echoed from the edge of the graveyard.

I whipped my head toward the sound.

Silas stepped out of the black thorns. His red eyes locked onto me, burning with a lethal, unhinged fury.

And he was staring directly at the silver glow pulsing in my veins.