Wrapped in my Enemy's Arms
When Ayla is dragged from her school into the heart of a strange wolf territory, she expects torture-or death. Instead, she meets Alpha Kael: a man as dangerous as he is breathtaking, and a secret buried beneath his skin. His blood awakened an ancient orb-and in one night, Kael became the vessel of a living curse.
Now the orb stirs again, its power latching onto Ayla. The mark she wears, her mother's ring, links her to the prophecy whispered by the Moon goddess messenger:
"When the moon bleeds and the cursed wolf kneels, love shall either heal the wound... or end the world."
As darkness spreads through the pack and the curse consumes Kael's soul, Ayla must decide whether to save him-or destroy him before the prophecy destroys them both.
But fate has a cruel sense of humor...
Because to break the curse, the moon goddess demands the one thing neither of them is willing to give up.
Their hearts.
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Chapter 6
Ayla's POV
"I'm sorry... I-I shouldn't be here."
I swivel on my heels, intending to flee, but a large hand clamps around my wrist, bringing me to a halt mid-step.
Alpha Kael pulls me closer, my body slamming into his solid, rock-hard frame.
Heat surges through me and my wolf purrs and stirs within me, releasing a sharp wave of desire rushing all through my body.
No, not now. I plead silently to the wolf within me. That's when it hits me. The pull I've been feeling, that irresistible tug in my chest and gut-it's coming from him. Alpha Kael.
"I know you feel it too," he murmurs, his deep voice vibrating through my core. One hand presses against my waist, keeping me tethered to him, while the other grazes my temple in a gesture that feels tender and possessive.
Tender? Why would I think this man is tender? There's nothing tender about him.
If he thinks I'm going to surrender to this bond, he's absolutely mistaken. I would never-ever-be with a man like him.
"I don't know what you're talking about."
I deny the existence of the magnetic force between us even when my pulse is hammering and my heart is beating so fast-betraying my lies.
Kael doesn't argue. He only smiles, a slow, knowing smile before releasing me from his grasp.
"The goddess must be testing me right now,"
he says under his breath, his tone laced with amusement.
Before I can respond, he turns, strides to the edge of the pool, and dives in. The splash wets me instantly leaving my clothes glued to my body and revealing my underwear.
Kael turns and this time, his eyes doesn't meet mine but they roam my body hungrily-but all I could focus on is how his toned muscles glistened under the bright moon.
He takes one more glance at me, and I swear I see a coy smile form on his lips.
goddess, please... this is a mistake. He possibly can't be my mate.
Since I've stepped foot into this territory, it's been hell for me, and now this-
"Undressing me with your eyes is rude," Kael calls out lazily, snapping me out of my reverie.
"Likewise." I drawled, rolling my eyes at him before stepping out hurriedly. goddess knows what will happen if I stay here one minute longer.
Kael's POV
"I never knew you to be the shy type-Riian. If you want her, talk to her." My voice is flat and void of any emotion as I speak.
Riian's jaw tenses.
"But Alpha, she's a Sayer... it's forbidden," he says.
There it is again. The ancient law that has kept wolves and Sayers apart for centuries.
I should agree with him and remind him of the consequences of what is going to happen if he ever crosses that line.
"Forbidden doesn't mean you stop wanting something."
I don't know where the words came from. But I say it.
The look Riian gives me is sharp and confusing, like he's wondering why the leader of a wolf pack would utter such a statement.
If only he knew the dilemma the goddess put around me.
My mind drifts to Ayla for a moment. The way she trained alone this morning, her eyes burned with something unlike what I've seen.
I held myself back last night at the pool-barely. I know it's just the mate bond that's making me feel this way. But-she's so different.
Other mates I've had accepted the bond in less than a day-but her, she hasn't accepted it, and it's eating me alive. I keep trying so hard, every second and minute I spend with her around, to hold in the urge to feel her skin against mine-but she's not for me.
"Kael."
"Kael."
Elder Moren's voice snaps me back.
He approaches me slowly, leaning heavily on his worn walking stick.
Elder Moren never leaves his abode unless something was very wrong. Riian understands this and excuses us both.
He settles on the bench beside me and pats the empty space, urging me to sit.
"The new girl-She's dangerous, and I see calamity tied around her but..."
I already know Ayla is dangerous, but calamity... that's a new one.
"I'm listening, Elder," I say, straightening.
"There's a solution. You must sever the bond between you."
I should have done it already. But every time I imagine cutting that bond, something clenches painfully in my chest. There's something else about her I can't explain yet... something I need to understand.
"She's my mate, Elder. I can't sever a bond without hurting her."
I'm surprised by my own hypocrisy. A week ago, I considered sacrificing her to break my curse. Now I'm hesitating to even harm her.
"She's a Sayer, Kael!" Elder Moren snaps.
"It is forbidden! A wolf and a Sayer can never be together!"
I've never seen him this angry.
I need answers.
Ayla summoned the Messenger.
She's not just any Sayer.
"If it's so forbidden, then why did the goddess bind us?" I counter.
Elder Moren sighs before his tone softens.
"She tests all leaders. Strength alone doesn't make a king, Kael. Wisdom. Restraint. Obedience to ancient law-those matter too." He fixes me with a grave look.
"You cannot bond with that girl. She will bring calamity upon you and the pack."
My jaw tightens.
"I'll do what I must. But I'm still the Alpha. My word is final."
"I'm not bonding with her," I continue. "I only need her blood to break the curse. After that... I'll send her away."
But as soon as the words leave my mouth-
I smell her.
Ayla.
Her scent spikes... then disappears instantly.
She heard us.
Shit.
She wasn't supposed to hear that, but I force myself to act like nothing happened.
"Kael, sending her away won't solve anything," Elder Moren says coldly. "You must end her. Sayers were never meant for this world."
The words hit harder than I expect.
End her?
My mate?
For the first time in years, I feel a real connection to someone even though it's not a connection I want but can't help it. The ancient laws say she has to die.
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7.5
For five years, I was locked away in the freezing royal dungeon, starved and used as a bloody plaything by the kingdom's sadistic Cabinet Minister, Brandt Fischer.
He tortured me daily for one twisted reason: I simply looked like someone else.
When he visited my cell to casually announce my father's execution and drag a silver dagger across my neck, he expected me to beg.
Instead, I laughed, sank my teeth directly into his carotid artery, and was violently thrown against a jagged stone wall to my death.
As my skull cracked and my blood stained the moss, I thought about my so-called family. The moment Brandt had demanded me, my father, the Duke, handed me over without a single hesitation to save his own political career.
I was nothing but a disposable pawn, left to rot in the dark while the monsters who ruined my life thrived.
I died suffocating on my own blood and absolute, destructive vengeance.
Then, I opened my eyes.
I was lying in my silk-sheeted bed, reborn as my fifteen-year-old self.
Today was the exact day Lord Daryl Langley, the God of War, would be ambushed and crippled—the event that allowed Brandt to seize ultimate power.
I immediately stole a horse, rode to the palace gates, and threw myself directly in front of Daryl's moving carriage.
"I just didn't want to see a hero die like a slaughtered pig."
I didn't care if I had to shatter my own ankle to hijack his convoy. This time, I was going to save the general, and he would become the blade I use to slaughter them all.
9.0
Isolde woke up in a freezing, ruined stone house with a splitting headache and only five percent of her life signs remaining.
Before she could even process the mechanical system voice in her head, a flood of violent memories slammed into her.
She had transmigrated into the body of a cruel noblewoman who mercilessly tortured her beastmen husbands with a barbed whip.
And right now, she was lying in a pool of her own blood, having been shoved against the stone floor by one of them.
Outside the rickety door, her husbands were coldly discussing her death.
"Just go in and finish her. One stab, and we're free."
"If she hit her head and died on her own, then it's an accident. We walk out of here as free males."
To test if she was faking her sudden amnesia, the snake beastman Dangelo even ground his heavy military boot into her injured hand, waiting for her to snap so he could legally end her.
She was poisoned, freezing, and entirely at the mercy of the men who deeply despised her.
She was bearing the deadly consequences of a monster she never was, with a red system warning of imminent death flashing in her mind.
But they didn't know the new Isolde had awakened a survival system and Life Magic.
She swore a blood oath to the Beast God to buy herself three months of time.
Then, she turned her sights to the dying wolf beastman chained in the shed, deciding to pull him back from hell to become her very first shield.
7.2
The Royal Pack’s glowing moonstone token rested in my palm.
Before I could even process the miracle of my rebirth, my half-sister Alyssa snatched it right out of my hand.
"This destiny is mine, little sister. Enjoy your cursed Alpha," she sneered.
My family easily caved to her whining. They forced me to take her place and marry Alpha Kaelen, a man they called an insane, crippled monster with three feral adopted sons. They laughed, expecting his beast to tear me apart before the honeymoon was over.
Alyssa thought she was stealing my crown. She didn't know she had just stolen my death sentence.
In my previous life, that exact token had made me the Alpha King’s Luna. But I was just a convenient, disposable meat shield for his true human mate. I died agonizingly, choking on poison meant for her, while the King didn't even blink.
I lowered my head, forcing my shoulders to tremble as if holding back terrified sobs. I played the part of the pathetic, wolfless Omega they all believed me to be.
But beneath my fake tears, I felt a profound relief.
I remembered the Kaelen from my past life. He wasn't a monster. He was powerful, agonizingly lonely, and slowly destroyed by a dark magic no one understood.
I wisely accepted the marriage pact and walked right into his freezing manor.
I know exactly who cursed him. And this time, I will save him, protect his boys, and make his entire pack mine.
7.9
Estrella Ward gave five years of her life to her husband, draining her trust fund to save him from bankruptcy and raising his son as her own.
But one night, she woke up in a freezing hotel room, drugged, with a stranger's bite marks on her skin.
Her husband burst through the door with cameras, his vicious family, and her ten-year-old stepson, publicly framing her as a cheating whore.
The horrifying truth soon surfaced: her husband had drugged her himself, selling her body to his Wall Street boss to secure a senior partnership.
Estrella fought back with hidden security footage, blackmailing him into submission after discovering she was pregnant with his boss's child.
But fate dealt a cruel blow. She was diagnosed with aggressive, terminal breast cancer.
She refused to abort the baby to keep her leverage, but the cancer spread too fast.
She died alone in a cold hospital room, her vengeance unfinished, while her husband and his cruel family celebrated.
They thought they had successfully buried her and her secrets forever, escaping unpunished for destroying her life.
But when she gasped for air and opened her eyes again, she wasn't in a cold grave.
She was in a sterile hospital bed, looking at the perfectly manicured hands of Brooklyn Thompson—the notorious, empty-headed socialite everyone despised.
Estrella's soul had survived the abyss.
"You're going to pay for every drop of blood."
She clenched her new fists, the fire of her vengeance burning brighter than ever.
9.6
Antoinette stood on the manicured church lawn, the blinding summer sun stabbing her eyes. The funeral service for her parents had just ended.
A hand wrapped around her trembling shoulder, carrying the sharp, cloying scent of Fabian Cash's cologne. It was the exact same cologne her fiancé wore the night he locked her in a burning house to die in her previous life.
Now, wearing a mask of sorrowful devotion, Fabian tried to drag her to his car to control her parents' massive life insurance payout.
When she shoved him away in pure nausea, his mother Eleanor immediately shrieked to the crowd, deploying her usual guilt trip.
"She's lost her mind! The girl has completely snapped!"
The townspeople whispered and pointed fingers, watching Fabian play the victim as he tightened his bruising grip on her wrist, claiming she was hysterical and needed to be locked away.
Antoinette stared at the mother and son who had conspired to steal her family's estate and end her life. The rage inside her felt like battery acid pumping through her veins.
They didn't care if she lived or died; they only cared about the money. How could she let them strip her of everything again?
She didn't hesitate. She swung with every bit of strength she possessed, slapping Fabian across the face in front of the entire town.
"The engagement is over," she announced coldly.
Then, she turned her back on her greedy ex-fiancé and walked straight toward the terrifyingly powerful billionaire Hiram Graves, ready to let the world burn.
9.4
I was lying in a sterile hospital room, dying of cancer, with only a fake infertility report to keep me company.
Right before my heart monitor flatlined, a stranger walked in and handed me a medical file.
He told me that my fiancé, Garret, had zero sperm viability. The baby my adoptive sister, Beryl, was carrying wasn't his.
When Beryl got pregnant years ago, my adoptive parents forced me to break my engagement and take the blame for being barren.
I was discarded by Garret, mocked by Beryl's triumphant smiles, and kicked out of the house.
I was left to rot alone in a hospital bed while they lived the perfect life stolen from me.
My entire existence had been a cage built on a single, disgusting lie.
The anger burned away my despair. Why was I the only one who didn't know?
Why did I let them use me as a maid and a shield for their filthy secrets?
As the darkness swallowed me, I prayed for just one more chance.
I opened my eyes to the sound of my adoptive mother yelling my name.
The calendar on the wall read March 15, 2019—the exact day they forced me to give up Garret.
This time, I didn't cry or beg.
"You want Beryl to have Garret? Fine," I told my shocked adoptive parents. "But I want a cash buyout, and we are legally severing this adoption."
Then, I set my sights on Douglass Ward—the stranger from the hospital room.