The Witch and Her Four Dangerous Alphas

Chapter 1: Chapter 01: I am Selene Moonveil, The War Criminal

Mate.

My hand stilled midair, the dagger hovering inches from my chest, my grip slackening as if the air had been pulled from my lungs. I blinked once. Twice. But the monster looming above me didn’t disappear.

Neither did the word, Mate.

I’d never heard anything sound more terrifying.

But the same word repeated in my head, like confirming that it was all real. Like a secret my body had known long before my mind could name it.

His muzzle brushed against my neck—slowly, deliberately—and I went still. The dagger trembled in my grip, caught between instinct and something else I didn’t want to name.

He inhaled, a long, dragging breath, like he was trying to memorize the pieces of me I no longer knew how to hold together.

Then he growled. He said it again like he was savoring the taste of the word on his tongue.

And still... all I felt was dread.

This wasn’t a fairy tale. This wasn’t fate wrapped in warmth and comfort.

I tightened my grip on the dagger, but he was too focused on my scent that he did not even notice the dagger clutched in my hand.

"Get off me," I said with my shaking voice.

He didn’t move. So I screamed at the top of my lungs.

"Get OFF ME! YOU Bastard!"

"I hate you," I said, my voice shaking with each breath. "I hate all of you. You ruined me."

I lifted the dagger and turned it—not toward him, but toward myself. Pressed the tip to the soft skin of my throat.

His eyes went wide. He growled with warning at my face... I could feel the shock and hurt behind his eyes.

So when he stepped closer, hand reaching for mine with pleading eyes, I didn’t flinch.

Instead, I drove the dagger forward—straight into his chest, just inches away from the frantic beat of his heart.

His mouth fell open in shock, a strangled sound leaving his throat like he could not believe what I did to him.

I met his gaze with a cold voice. "I told you, you don’t get to have me."

Soon, I was surrounded by three more towering wolves, who shouted in unison, Mate.

my only reaction

like wild rage, "and I swear on the graves of

****

One week earlier...

Selene’s POV

smelled

was all that remained of my home, just smoke and ruin drifting through the air like a cruel memory that

the rough, jagged path that led toward the gates. Every step sent another jolt of pain through my swollen ankles. My legs trembled beneath me, barely holding me upright, my skin raw and streaked with grime, blood, and dried tears. The filth had long since crusted over my pale skin. I couldn’t tell what

cuffs bit into my wrists, crusted red where they had rubbed the skin raw. A heavy chain wrapped tightly around my waist, binding me to the others behind me. There were only five of us now, five noble daughters who had survived the fall of our pack. Warriors, elders, ranked wolves... all of them were gone.

been left

But not me.

Selene Moonveil, the daughter

pack to its knees in war. And now his enemies had returned,

mouth. I could barely see through my right eye; the skin around it was bruised and swollen shut. My collarbone throbbed where the chain had scraped through the top layers of skin. Every breath I

am only seventeen. I hadn’t even

enemy territory, chained and marked like a prisoner of

when I was yanked forward. I

A war criminal.

kept echoing in my head, twisting around my thoughts until I couldn’t tell what was real

I didn’t kill anyone.

didn’t even fight

I was barely thirteen.

They think I did.

can’t

stopped. They stabbed at me from the inside, louder than the guards’ insults, heavier than the

back to the present. I stumbled and nearly

speak. My throat was too dry. My tongue was thick and heavy in my mouth, and I tasted blood every time I tried to swallow. The other girls, noble daughters like me...kept their eyes on the ground. They didn’t

none of them were

They weren’t beaten.

I was.

my head only once, just as the tall black gates groaned open before us.

Silver Dawn Pack,

in temperature, but in spirit. Everything was dark and precise, the pathways paved with perfect stone, the walls tall and fortified like a fortress carved from

us from every direction. Warriors along the battlements. She-wolves behind shuttered windows. Even pups peeked out from behind the legs of stronger wolves, their

soft and cutting

"That’s her."

"The alpha’s brat."

one who slit our people’s

she