The Alpha's Fated Outcast: Rise Of The Moonsinger.

Lyla

I followed Nathan to the back of the Alpha house down a narrow corridor I'd never explored before.

The pack house was large, with wings and passages I'd never had reason to visit. This section felt older somehow, filled with the musty scent of wood and old paper.

"How much further?" I asked in a whisper. There was something about this place that demanded reverence.

"We're here," Nathan replied, stopping before a metal door. Different symbols and ancient runes were carved on the frame. I recognized some from old pack text, while others felt completely foreign to me.

Nathan produced a heavy iron key from his pocket. It looked ancient, the metal dark with age. The lock clicked open with surprising ease, as if it had been regularly used despite its appearance.

"After you," Nathan said, gesturing for me to enter first.

I hesitated for just a moment before stepping inside.

The moment I stepped into my father's private study, what I saw made me freeze in my tracks.

The room was dimly lit, and the scent of old parchment and cedarwood lingered in the air. My eyes widened as they landed on the wall before me—covered in photographs, clippings, and detailed analysis.

It seemed as if I had just walked into an investigation room. My picture was at the center of the investigation board. In the other spaces on the walls were pictures of me at different stages of my life.

Some were from childhood, and others seemed recent. There was even a picture of me on my college graduation day. Nanny—my mother's face appeared beside mine in most pictures, but they were mostly from when I was younger.

A large idea board on a stand dominated one side of the room as if the one on the wall wasn't enough. It was filled with meticulous notes, diagrams, and calculations. The words "Moonsingers" were scrawled across the board in bold ink, underlined multiple times.

My chest tightened as I stepped closer. I reached out to touch one of the pages pinned to the board, trying to fight the nostalgia that had suddenly seized me.

"My father did all of this?" I managed to ask.

Nathan pushed away from the wall and came to stand beside me. "I think to a greater extent, but I'm sure he must have had help. When he was still here, he would end our training early with an excuse that he wanted time alone, and then he would disappear to the back-of-the-pack house. I always imagined he was coming here with your mother…"

My face colored with embarrassment. "Don't say that!"

"Say what?" he huffed. "It's true. They used to fuck around the pack like rabbit because of course they couldn't do it in the pack house. Your mother wasn't pure, Lyla. You have to come to terms with that and stop being uptight."

I had a ready reply, but I decided ignoring him was better. I traced my hand on the other materials on the board. Most of them were information about past Moonsingers. They had detailed notes on their powers, limitations, and fates, including how they died. Coincidentally, my name was there.

A cold shiver ran down my spine, and I turned to Nathan.

"But my father was already dead before I was officially announced as a Moonsinger. How did he know I was one?"

Nathan shrugged, completely unfazed. "I have no idea."

I didn't want to push him more, so I turned and moved to the wall. My fingers started tracing the lines connecting different names and places. There were several mentions of the Northern Forest and several question marks at the end of each mention.

Then, something caught my attention – a section detailing the Auréans. My heart stopped beating for a second.

There were lines connecting them to Neriah, the first recorded Moonsinger. Her name was circled multiple times, alongside references to other Moonsingers, I think in a comparison of similarity of ability and purpose.

What was also surprising was that, at the beginning of the wall, my father had been researching pheromones, looking for a solution, and in the process, he traced me back to Neriah. There was even detailed documentation about my birth and the things that happened on that day, and most of them were things that had never been told.

At the bottom of that information was a yellow paper pinned to the corner. It was a short passage of something, and it was written in faded ink. I bent down to read it.

"When the moon bleeds red and wolves bow to none, she will rise – the last of her kind, blood of Neriah, vessel of the goddess. Neither wolf nor human but something more, she will bring either salvation or destruction. The choice will be hers alone to make."

Below it, in my father's distinctive handwriting, was written, "Lyla might be the Moonsinger, the other prophecy, and this prophecy speaks of it. All signs point to her."

I straightened and took a step back. I was stunned and nostalgic at the same time. This side of my father – this obsessive researcher, this man who had documented my entire existence – was completely unknown to me. If I had know this part of thim, that he had tried so hard to be present, maybe…Maybe I would have loved him more and wouldn't have felt so abandoned.

I shook my head to clear my thoughts and went back to scanning the other documents I saw there. A heading caught my attention, and I drew closer to look at it. It said, 'How to kill the Dark One.' It looked recent.

I removed the pin, held it to the wall, and flipped it open. True enough, there was only enough write-up on the first page; the rest were blank. This must have been what he was working on before his death.

I was so lost in everything that I almost forgot that Nathan was in the room with me, and I didn't notice the aura that had suddenly seeped into the room's atmosphere.

When I finally raised my head, Nathan was watching me with an eerie expression that I immediately recognized. He had stared at me like that during the Harvest Moon Festival, when everyone had bowed and he alone had remained standing.

Fear crawled up my spine, but I forced myself to step toward him. Something about his presence felt different—darker. His aura made the hair on my arms stand on end.

I stopped directly in front of him. He remained silent, but his eyes never left mine, as if he was searching my soul for something.

"Nathan," I whispered his name. I wondered if the blackness of his pupils was because of his wolf and not something else.

He didn't say a word to me. He just kept staring.

Gathering courage, I raised my hand to his cheek. The contact sent a jolt through me, but I maintained composure and began humming a healing tone I'd learned recently. It was a tone used to calm Feral wolves.

As I crooned, Nathan's expression remained the same. He kept watching me intently; if anything, the only changes I noticed were his muscles tensing and maybe his lips curling into a smirk.

Before I could react, he flipped me in one fluid motion. Pressing me hard against the wall he had been leaning on. I shivered inwardly when my back hit the cold wall.

"What do you think you're doing?" he murmured with a voice filled with amusement. "Do I look like a Feral to you?"

He pressed me harder against the wall; his grip was firm but not painful. Yet.

With one hand, he captured my wrists and pinned them above my head, while the other hand tilted my chin up, forcing me to look at him.

His next words sent literal chills through me.

"I guess the rumors have reached you then."

I didn't respond. I didn't know what rumors he was talking about.

"The rumors about me working hand in hand with the Dark One. Right?" he murmured, his face inches from mine.

"Let me go," I said quietly, fighting to keep my voice normal despite the terror and rage building inside me.

He nuzzled my face with his nose, moaning silently as our skin touched.

"No."

That did it for me. In one sweeping motion, I pushed him away. The force of my power sent him stumbling backward. I pushed away from the wall, brushing imaginary lint from my body.

"When I tell you to let me go… for your own good, do it," I heaved, meeting his gaze.

"I'm not on your side because of how fearful or powerful you are," I continued, my voice taking on a chilly tone that surprised even me. "Of the two of us, I am more powerful and if it wasn't for this damned blood oath which you forced me to take and…"

I froze.

Nathan had a satisfied smirk on his lips, and that was when I realized what I had just done.

"Shit!"