The screeching noise ripped through the quiet evening air, violently snapping Violet out of her romantic fantasy. It wasn't the sound of an animal—it was the grating, metallic protest of the old cabin's hinges being forced open against decades of rust.
"William! Don't be so rough, you'll break it!" A feminine voice, bright and slightly breathless, cut through the darkness.
"And waste a perfectly dramatic entrance? Never," a male voice replied, laced with a smooth, arrogant confidence that made Violet's inner guard snap instantly to attention.
Violet froze. This was not the polite knock of a neighbor. These were trespassers. She had spent an entire day cleaning this cabin, reclaiming it from the wilderness, and now two entitled strangers were violating her sanctuary.
She instinctively crouched low behind the heavy, newly placed cabinet near the entrance.
Why are you hiding? a voice screamed inside her head. This is your land. Get up and throw them out!
But the instinct to hide was older, deeper, and forged in the heat of constant domestic tension. Do not come out till I call you. That had been the first, most fundamental rule of her childhood. Years of keeping herself small and invisible during her stepmother's inevitable relationship crises had wired a self-preservation response she couldn't override. She was cornered, and the only escape was camouflage.
The door burst inward, sending a cloud of dried dust and a sliver of bright moonlight across the rough wooden floor.
The man stepped in first. He was tall, ridiculously broad at the shoulder, wearing a white t-shirt that looked criminally thin for the Dakota evening. His hair was dark and swept back, emphasizing angular, predatory cheekbones. He radiated an energy of effortless, self-aware superiority.
"See? Perfectly intact," he said, gesturing to the door with a casual flick of his wrist.
"You're terrible, William Wolf," the girl laughed, following him inside. She was petite, with a long swing of chestnut hair and dressed in expensive, form-fitting hiking gear that seemed utterly out of place on an impromptu cabin raid. "I told you, this place is probably occupied now. We should have gone to the river directly."
William Wolf? Violet silently repeated the name. She'd heard it. The name of the golden boy, the town's reigning prince, the object of every girl's devotion and every boy's envy. He was even more striking in person than the whispers suggested.
"The cabin is part of the property, Amara. The Darkwoods are new to town; they won't even know this back lot exists," William scoffed, his eyes briefly sweeping the room.
Violet held her breath, shrinking her body until she felt as thin as the shadows pooling beneath the cabinet.
William took two steps toward the center of the room, his movements fluid and powerful, like a large, well-fed predator. He stopped precisely where the light from the broken window caught him, silhouetting his form. He smelled faintly of pine and something else—something warm, metallic, and ancient. It was the scent of power, completely unlike the synthetic colognes worn by her stepmother's past partners.
"Besides," he murmured, his voice dropping to a low, intimate rumble that seemed to physically vibrate the floorboards beneath Violet's feet, "I needed a few minutes away from the noise. And you look entirely too delicious to wait."
Before Amara could reply, William reached out, cupping her face and pulling her into a bruising kiss.
The sound of their contact—the wet, unrestrained intimacy—hit Violet like a physical blow. She slammed her hands over her ears, her face burning crimson, her heart hammering a frantic rhythm against her ribs. She was a voyeur, forced into witnessing this primal exhibition.
But something far stranger, far more terrifying than embarrassment began to happen.
It was in the air, a thick, palpable current generated by their escalating passion. Violet's sensitive skin, already humming from the remnants of her own recent transformation, began to prickle, then ache. A strange, insistent energy started pooling in the pit of her stomach, swirling and coiling like a serpent waking from a long sleep.
Desire. It was a pure, white-hot, electric need that demanded immediate satisfaction.
Amara let out a muffled moan, and the sound was like a tuning fork hitting Violet's very core. Her breath hitched. The need wasn't just to look away; it was an agonizing, primal yearning to substitute herself, to consume that energy they were generating. Her hybrid nature, the nascent Succubus blood from her unknown mother, was awakening, feeding on the raw, open lust in the room.
Violet gritted her teeth, tears stinging her eyes from the sheer, physical pressure of the uncontrolled craving. It felt like being submerged in boiling water—it hurt, it consumed, and it threatened to drown her.
William suddenly lifted Amara off her feet, pressing her against the wall in a shadowed corner. Amara wrapped her legs around his waist, their breathing growing ragged.
Stop it! Stop it now! Violet inwardly shrieked, desperately trying to reassert mental control over her treacherous body. But her fingers curled into claws, tearing small gouges in the wooden floor. She could feel a strange, hot pressure building behind her eyes—the familiar warning sign of the Wolf rising.
The wolf, the wild, untamed thing that had ripped Stan's throat out, was drawn not by fear, but by the raw, open display of mating. It saw a challenge, an alpha asserting dominance over territory that was currently hers. The succubus demanded the energy; the wolf demanded the right to the energy.
In a desperate, final attempt to quell the agonizing surge of lust-fueled anger, Violet squeezed her eyes shut, fighting the golden flare she knew was coming.
It was too late.
In the shadows, William let out a low, guttural growl, not of pleasure, but of a sudden, deep recognition. His mouth lifted from Amara's, his head tilting toward the cabinet.
He had caught her scent. Not the scent of a girl in a hoodie, but something wilder, deeper, more intensely animalistic than anything he had ever encountered. It was the smell of the Fae Wolf, rare and intoxicating, laced with a seductive, unearthly sweetness. It was the smell of his mate.
Amara, blinded by her own passion, murmured a confused protest.
But William was no longer with her. His golden eyes, now glowing brightly in the dark corner, were locked onto the cabinet. His entire body went rigid, vibrating with an almost painful recognition.
Violet, unable to hold the transformation any longer, exploded from behind the cabinet.
A blinding, silent burst of white light filled the small room, instantly scattering the shadows. The transition was agonizingly fast, ripping her clothes—the shapeless corduroys and hoodie—to shreds, leaving them scattered on the floor like discarded autumn leaves.
In the center of the room stood a wolf, sleek and massive, its coat a stunning, unreal shade of shadow-grey that seemed to absorb and distort the moonlight. It was not a wolf of the woods; it was a creature of myth, its eyes flashing with the frantic, terrified gold of a newly birthed killer.
Amara screamed—a high, piercing sound of pure terror—and scrambled off William, diving for the door and fleeing into the cold night without looking back.
William, however, did not move. He stood, breathing heavily, his own golden eyes widening as his body automatically shifted. His powerful muscles bulged, tearing the thin white shirt, his spine elongating, his hands clawing, until he, too, stood as a massive, dark-furred Silver Wolf—a Winter Moon Alpha.
The two creatures stood inches apart in the tiny solarium, bathed in the sickly yellow glow of the broken glass and the cold white light of the moon.
Violet's terror was instantly replaced by an overriding, feral command. The scent of him—the metallic, ancient power—was the source of her energy surge, and the beast in her knew only one response to such power. Submission and possession.
She lunged, not in attack, but in an aggressive, desperate urge to claim. William met her. The collision was not a fight but a frantic, desperate mating. The air crackled with their combined power, a silent scream of primal energy. The frenzy lasted only a few desperate moments, a blinding confluence of instinct and raw magic, leaving the polished stone floor and the scent of pine and dirt scattered with the powerful, undeniable scent of two newly bonded mates.
Violet woke, not in the solarium, but a few meters away in the overgrown grass of the yard.
The cold rain had started, washing over her skin. She was naked, shivering, and covered in mud, but the agonizing pressure in her core was gone, replaced by a deep, bone-weary exhaustion.
Oh, my god.
The horror was immediate, complete, and paralyzing. She remembered the rush of heat, the unbearable need, the blinding white light, and the frantic, animalistic movements—and she remembered who had been standing there.
She scrambled to her feet, spotting the pile of shredded cloth near the cabin door. She quickly gathered the largest, least ruined pieces of her hoodie and jeans, wrapping them around herself.
She crept to the solarium entrance. The air inside was dense and heavy, smelling strongly of wolf musk and the coppery tang of blood—though neither she nor William appeared to be physically wounded. The transformation had been violent, but confined.
Lying completely still on the dusty floor, amidst the scattered remnants of her clothes and Amara's abandoned jacket, was William Wolf. He was back in his human form, completely naked, utterly spent, and passed out cold. His chest rose and fell in slow, deep breaths, but he was completely oblivious to his surroundings.
She looked at his impossibly handsome face—a face she had just, in her wolf form, dominated and mated with.
A wave of crushing shame and cold dread washed over her. She was not a romantic girl painting a fantasy anymore; she was a dangerous, out-of-control monster who had sexually assaulted a stranger in a fit of supernatural frenzy.
The wolf. It is taking over.
She couldn't stay. She couldn't face him when he woke up, not with the memory of the sheer, primal savagery that had just occurred. She crept away, avoiding the spots where her clothes had landed, and fled toward the back door of the main house.
Her stepmother, Wynona, was working two shifts tonight. She would be gone until the first grey light of morning. Violet had hours to process the catastrophe.
She rushed to the bathroom, scrubbing the dried dirt and the remnants of the strange, exhilarating scent from her skin until it was raw.
As she collapsed on her bed, fully dressed in her stepmother's oversized bathrobe, the horror slowly crystallized into clarity. She was not like other girls. She was not just a werewolf. The intense lust that had triggered the entire event felt like a separate, malevolent entity—a force she had to cage.
Men are best enjoyed in limited time. That cynical mantra, gleaned from watching Wynona's endless string of failed relationships, echoed in her mind. She would not be Wynona, perpetually chasing validation and succumbing to her base needs. She would control this.
She dragged her laptop onto the bed. The screen glowed, illuminating her intensely focused face.
She began typing, her fingers flying across the keys with a desperate urgency.
"Werewolf control techniques."
"Wolfsbane effects on shifters."
"Suppressing hybrid magical urges."
The articles she found were cryptic, scattered, and often contradictory, a mix of folklore and ancient, half-forgotten truths. But one remedy was consistent: Wolfsbane.
"Aconitum napellus... The great inhibitor. A repellent of the highest order to all lycanthropes. It doesn't kill them, but it keeps them confined, their natural power suppressed to a manageable trickle."
Perfect.
Violet immediately opened a seed distributor's website. She didn't buy a single packet; she bought every bulk quantity she could find.
She calculated the perimeter of the entire Southside Mansion yard, including the back hill and the cabin. She ordered enough Wolfsbane seeds—the most potent variety—to plant a dense, double-layered fence around their entire property.
The wolf... will stay in the woods. Or it will stay caged.
She refused to be defined by a biological imperative, especially one that resulted in sexual violence and chaos. This cabin, this new life, was supposed to be a new start. It would not be ruined by an untamed, feral force she carried within her.
She closed the laptop just as a low rumble of thunder sounded, shaking the windowpanes. The storm was coming, washing the woods clean, and erasing the physical evidence of what had transpired. But the scent, the memory, the bond—that was already woven into the fabric of her being.
Violet Darkwood was now irrevocably tied to the golden wolf prince of Deadwood, and she had no idea how she was going to survive the consequences. Her double life had just begun, but the truth was already dangerously exposed.