📖 The Story Continues
The story doesn't end here.Continue reading the full story adaptation below and discover what happens next.
Fated to My Forbidden Alpha – Episode 8
Selene woke on her eighteenth birthday to a room she barely recognized. Paper moons hung unevenly across one wall, three small gifts waited beside a frosted cake, and candles stood ready on the table. The kitchen servants had decorated after she fell asleep, offering a quiet kindness no one in the Alpha wing would notice.
Warm gloves, a blue ribbon, and a secondhand book proved someone had paid attention to her. She wanted to feel only gratitude, but fear stood between her and the little celebration. Eighteen was the threshold every young werewolf anticipated; for Selene, it threatened to prove that nothing lived beneath her human skin.
Morning passed without a shift. No bones broke, senses sharpened, or animal voice announced itself. Selene touched one paper moon and wondered whether the forest had been nothing more than hope pretending to become real.
Warmth spread through her chest before disappointment could settle. It moved with deliberate tenderness, like a hand reaching through darkness. Then a female voice spoke inside her mind with unmistakable affection. Selene, it’s me.
She rose so quickly that the bed scraped the floor. The voice introduced herself as Lyla, Selene’s wolf, and unfolded through her consciousness with the intimacy of someone returning home. Selene glimpsed silver fur beneath an open moon, ancient magic around a guarded heart, and claws powerful enough to split earth.
“My wolf?” Selene sank onto the bed with one hand over her racing heart. Lyla explained that she had always been there, waiting until Selene could hear her. Every insult about being defective loosened at once, and tears blurred the little cake as laughter escaped through them.
Lyla wrapped warmth around her joy but warned that another truth could not wait. Selene asked about their mate, frightened by a blessing pack stories described as perfect. She had learned too well that sacred language did not guarantee kindness.
Their mate was inside Blood Moon. Selene’s mind raced through warriors and servants until Lyla spoke the name that stopped every thought: Jackson Richford. The Alpha who ordered her around, permitted her humiliation, and looked at her as though she were an inconvenience was the man fate had chosen.
Selene rejected the possibility, but Lyla explained that a bond recognized what fate forged rather than measuring character. She had sensed Jackson years earlier, before Selene’s awakening made the connection mutual. More painfully, Jackson had sensed it too and deliberately hidden the truth.
Old contradictions rearranged themselves. His attention, unexplained interventions, questions about her birthday, and possessive anger had never been proof of secret kindness. Jackson protected the bond as his private problem while leaving Selene’s dignity undefended.
“He knew and still treated me that way?” Any hope that a mate might offer belonging curdled into disgust. Selene said the Moon Goddess could not force her to love a man who chose cruelty. Lyla agreed that fate created a connection, not an obligation to surrender free will.
Relief lasted only until Lyla revealed Jackson intended to reject them. Ritual rejection could wound both wolf and human, sometimes damaging a wolf’s ability to shift forever. Selene had survived being called unworthy all her life, yet knowing her fated mate agreed opened the same wound at its deepest point.
She crossed to the small mirror. Silver circled her pupils while the frightened servant in the glass acquired an unfamiliar steadiness. “Will we survive?” she asked. Lyla answered without hesitation: Jackson was not the source of their strength, and losing his acceptance would not erase who they were.
A firm knock struck the door. Selene’s newly sharpened hearing caught the heavy heartbeat outside before Jackson called her name and ordered her to open. Fear moved through her, but Lyla’s presence held it from becoming obedience. Do not bow, the wolf murmured.
Jackson filled the narrow entrance in formal clothes. Cedar, smoke, and restrained power crowded Selene’s senses as the awakened bond pulled painfully between them. Recognition crossed his face before he said, “You have your wolf.”
“Her name is Lyla, and she told me what you hid.” Selene lifted her chin. Jackson did not deny being her mate. His wolf surged toward her with possession, while the man restraining it remained cold enough to pretend the bond meant nothing.
Selene accused him of watching the pack call her defective when one truth could have stopped them. Shame flickered in his eyes, then vanished beneath resolve. “Knowing would not have changed your place here,” he said, separating the sacred idea of a mate from the suffering woman standing before him.
Lyla growled as silver heat entered Selene’s veins. Jackson forced his answering wolf down and announced that he would not accept the bond. After the engagement obligations ended that night, he intended to reject Selene formally.
Pain tightened her chest, but she denied him the collapse he expected. “You don’t get to decide whether I break.” Tears brightened her eyes while Lyla strengthened her voice. “I may be your mate, but I am not yours to degrade, hide, or discard. Not now. Not ever.”
Selene closed the door on the Alpha who had decided her worth before she could speak. Jackson’s wolf slammed against its restraints on the other side. By nightfall, Alexander Kane would arrive carrying a second bond neither of them understood—and Jackson’s planned rejection would no longer wound only the two souls he believed he controlled.
