The Deaf Luna: Marked By My Destroyer

Sickness had clung to Iris since the day she was born. Born smaller and weaker than the other werewolf pups, fragility was all she had ever known.

Her early years were a constant battle just to keep food down. Her own body was a traitor, prone to fevers that struck without warning.

At sixteen, she still hadn't managed to shift. Her mind was too frail to hold the change. At seventeen, while other she-wolves dreamed of meeting their mate, the very idea felt like a fantasy meant for someone else.

And to compound it all, she was deaf.

She could read lips, but only when the person she was speaking to faced her directly. Otherwise, she was sealed off from the world.

If not for her father, the Alpha of the Blue Moon Pack, she might as well have not existed at all.

She spent her days cloistered away from the others, with a private tutor assigned to teach her what little she could grasp.

By twenty, nothing had changed.

A shout erupted behind her. Iris, huddled on the icy floor of her cell, gave no reaction. She kept her head bowed.

The man swore, his irritation palpable even without sound, and then the lock turned. He remembered she couldn't hear. He stalked toward her and seized her arm, his grip anything but gentle, hauling her to her feet.

A grimace of pain twisted her features as she looked up at him, terror flaring in her chest.

Her pack had been crushed. She was now a prisoner of war.

The Alpha's daughter... That was the only reason she had been kept alive.

The man gripped her elbow and dragged her from the cell without a shred of care. She had been left to rot in this filth for over a week.

Though she couldn't hear, she read his lips easily: The Alpha wanted to see her.

Ice flooded her veins. A tremor started in her hands.

She had always been terrified of pain.

She stumbled repeatedly, her weak legs struggling to keep pace with the guard, who refused to slow. Her legs threatened to give out.

When they reached the room, recognition jolted through her. She knew this place. It was the Alpha's office.

She had only set foot in here twice in her life. Her father had hated seeing her here. In his eyes, her weakness was a source of shame.

The guard bowed slightly before shoving her to her knees with a sharp blow to the back of her legs.

In front of her stood Cane.

He was once a slave in this very pack. For ten years, he had lived under their domination. Iris's father had destroyed his pack, the Howling Wolves. Every last one of them had been forced into servitude. Including him.

Cane Nortern. An Alpha's son, reduced to something less than nothing.

His world had shattered when he was twenty-two.

But now, the tables had turned.

He had claimed his revenge.

The Blue Moon Pack was no more. The Howling Wolf Pack had risen from the ashes. And now, only one thing remained: to make the daughter of the man who stole everything from him pay.

"You can leave."

The guard left without a word, the door clicking shut behind him.

Iris was left alone. Alone with him.

She risked a glance upward, and the air left her lungs.

Cane was huge. Taller than her father, more imposing than her brother. He completely dwarfed her, and in his dark gaze, she saw only one thing: pure, bottomless hatred.

She tried to back away.

But he was faster.

His hand clamped down on her shoulder, the force brutal. Pain shot through her, sharp and immediate, as if her bones were about to splinter.

He said something.

She didn't understand.

She hadn't seen his lips.

A choked sound of pain escaped her.

Cane's cold expression twisted into fury.

He dragged her to the bed and threw her down onto the mattress.

Tears streamed down Iris's face, but her cries were silent. Her body trembled uncontrollably.

A jagged scar dominated his face. It sliced down from his right eye, across the bridge of his nose, and ended on his left cheek. An ugly brand, a permanent reminder of his years of slavery in this very pack.

He pinned her arms above her head, then seized her chin, forcing her to face him.

She had no choice.

She had to look at him to understand.

His eyes burned with rage.

She read the words forming on his lips.

He would make her suffer.

He would make her endure everything her father had put him through.

A chill seeped into her bones.

Her lips trembled.

"Why me...?"

Her voice was a ghost of a whisper.

Cane tightened his grip on her chin, forcing a grimace from her.

"Why me?"

She held his gaze through the pain, forced to watch, to understand.

"Why not... why not take it out on my father...?"

The question hung in the air.

The answer in his eyes was already a death sentence.

Iris struggled to find her voice, but the question finally broke free. "Why not take it out on my father instead of me?"

She didn't understand why she was being made to pay for a crime she hadn't committed. The injustice of it all was a suffocating weight.

"That's the same question I asked myself. Why me? Why my people?"

Cane didn't shout. His voice remained low, almost unnervingly calm.

Iris couldn't hear him, but the raw power radiating from him was enough to freeze her blood. She didn't dare meet his eyes. She kept her gaze locked on his lips, desperate to decipher his words.

"Your father destroyed my pack. He slaughtered my family-my parents, my sister, my brother. He forced my people into servitude. And me... he let me live. Ten years of submitting. Obeying. Crawling. So you tell me... why me?"

Tears blurred her vision. Fear held her paralyzed, but somewhere deep inside, something fractured. She understood. And in that understanding, she felt a sliver of his agony.

None of this was fair. Not for him. Not for her.

"Please..."

Her plea dissolved into a choked sob as his hand closed brutally over her breast. She had never been touched like this. She may not have been her father's favorite, but no one had ever dared to treat her this way.

"Please?" A sneer twisted Cane's lips. "I begged just like that, hundreds of times. Do you know what your father told me? He said, 'Beg all you want. Power means doing whatever you please.'"

Pain, sharp and blinding, tore through her as he twisted his fingers, pinching her flesh cruelly. A raw scream tore from Iris's throat, a sound she couldn't suppress.

"Stop your crying. We're just getting started."

Through the blur of her tears, she read the words on his lips-a truth that sank a deeper terror into her soul.

"The day your father died... Was the day you became my property. My slave. And I, your master."

This was only the beginning.

A low growl rumbled in Cane's chest. Her tears only seemed to fuel his rage. With a rough shove, he flipped her onto her stomach and forced her to her knees. He shoved her face into the pillow and began tearing at her clothes.

He had seen this before. Too many times. Her father used to do this to the women of his pack... and had forced him to watch.

He positioned himself behind her. He needed her to understand. He needed her to feel even a fraction of what he and his people had been forced to endure.