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 7
Kael's POV
"Thank you for the words of wisdom, Elder. I'll see you soon," I murmured before rising to my feet.
No one disobeyed the Elders. Their words had shaped the pack for generations. Even previous Alphas of this pack never defied them.
Yet today, an elder's words felt like chains tightened around my throat.
A few days ago, my only focus was breaking the curse that had poisoned me for a decade and was threatening to destroy me. I had a plan-clean, simple, and unquestionable.
But now?
I'm bonded to someone from that very lineage that haunts me, and it's eating my bones like acid.
Kiara's warning echoed in my mind. "Ayla will acquire her full powers soon."
And last night, I sensed it-the subtle but unmistakable scent of a fully awakened wolf radiating off her skin.
She turned twenty-one today.
A sudden pain tore through my chest, sharp and suffocating. My vision wavered as a wave of raw emotion slammed into me-sadness.
Not mine, it was hers. Did Ayla accept the bond?
Why am I feeling her emotions... or is there something else wrong with me?
Since the moment I first saw her, she had cracked something open inside me-something I thought was long dead. My emotions, which I used to control with a single breath.
Maybe Elder Moren was right.
If I wanted to survive, I needed to sever the bond.
I exhaled and made my way down the corridor toward Ayla's room. The closer I got, the stronger the heaviness inside me grew-like walking straight into a storm of her pain.
I knocked once, twice, then halfway through the third time... The door creaked open just enough for her to peer out. Her eyes were swollen and red, her cheeks damp as if she'd been crying for hours. She tried to hide behind her hair, but I caught on quickly.
"What do you want from me now?" she muttered, voice hoarse.
"It's your birthday," I replied evenly. "And I thought I should monitor your condition now that you're twenty-one."
Her jaw clenched, but I continued, unbothered.
"I don't want a wolf who can't control herself wandering around my territory."
She scoffed, the sound brittle and short. Her eyes flashed with hurt before she slammed the door in my face. The impact rattled down the hallway-and through my chest.
"She's giving you a hard time, isn't she?" Kiara's voice drifted from behind me.
She wasn't close, but she knew I would hear her.
I didn't turn or say a word.
The problem was that her pain was now mine... and I had no idea what that meant for either of us.
Kiara remained behind me, silent, which made me annoyed. She's probably whipping up more prophetic messages for me and my mysterious mate.
The bond tugged at me again, but this time it wasn't sadness. It was hard, unrelenting, and filled with strong wolf energy.
A pulsing ache throbbed tight in my chest again, dragging me a step closer to her door. I forced my body to stay still, locking my muscles in place.
This wasn't me-it was the damn bond, manipulating me and pushing my instincts toward her direction.
"Kael," Kiara said softly, "you're pulling toward her. You know what that means."
"It means nothing," I snapped before I could stop myself.
Kiara's eyebrow lifted. "You're denying it."
"I'm stating a fact," I growled. "I'm an Alpha and the leader of this pack! I don't get pulled anywhere."
But even as I said it, the ache intensified-Ayla's emotions rippled through me, wanting me to tear down the door and make her accept the mate bond between us fully.
Kiara stepped closer. "Something's wrong with her."
"I didn't feel anything," I cut in sharply.
Kiara's lips curved into a knowing, irritating smile. "You feel her. You're just too stubborn to admit it."
I didn't respond, because any word from my mouth would prove her right.
Then-
A flare of energy burst from behind Ayla's door, causing both Kiara and me to stagger backwards.
Ayla.
Kiara's eyes widened the second another wave of energy pulsed from behind the door. She rushed in front of me, panic written all over her face.
"I have to see what's happening with her," she said breathlessly. "This isn't a normal awakening."
She turned toward the door and pounded her fist against it.
"Ayla, it's Kiara. I need you to open the door so I can help you!"
Nothing.
Kiara struck the door harder. "Ayla, Ay-"
"Stand aside," I ordered.
Kiara stepped back instantly.
I moved several steps away from the door, braced myself, then slammed into it. The wood splintered, and the door burst open.
The sight of Ayla in my presence knocked the air out of me. She lay on the floor, her body convulsing violently, her fingers clawing at the ground as if she were fighting something inside her. Her breath was ragged and her eyes unfocused.
"She's turning," Kiara whispered, horrified. "Kael... she's turning too early. She needs you. She needs you now."
"Do something!" Kiara yelled.
My jaws tightened, pain shooting up to my temples. I didn't want to care or touch her-and I didn't want the bond pulling my every instinct toward her like a puppet.
But my feet moved before my mind caught up. I dropped to my knees beside her and gathered her shaking arms into my own. The moment my hands touched her, her trembling grew harsher-like her wolf felt mine and didn't know whether to fight or surrender.
Ayla gasped, arched, and fell onto all fours. Her head snapped upward, and she released a sharp cry.
Her back cracked first, then her fingers. Her bones began twisting and shifting... she was turning too fast. If she continued like this, she could get hurt.
"Ayla," I growled softly before letting my wolf instincts take over, just enough to push my presence and dominance out to calm her.
Her bones began reversing. Her breath slowed, and she was finally turning back to her normal human form.
By the time she was normal again, her clothes had torn around her like shredded paper. I sighed and turned to take my leave, because if I stared for a second longer-especially now that she was half-naked-I fear control might not be on the list of things I'd do to her.
"You should be fine now. Get dressed and-"
I didn't finish because Ayla's hands suddenly fisted the front of my shirt, and her lips crashed into mine.
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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.