The trees open into a clearing you've never seen before, though you grew up half a mile from this forest. Firelight. Dozens of people kneeling in concentric rings around a stone altar, faces upturned to a moon so full and low it looks close enough to touch.
Then the wind shifts, carrying your scent into the clearing, and every head turns at once.
A man rises from the center of the circle — tall, dark-haired, a scar cutting through one eyebrow, eyes the exact color of a storm not yet arrived. He goes rigid like he's been struck. His pupils flood gold.
“*Mine.*”
The word isn't spoken so much as it detonates through the clearing. Gasps ripple outward. Someone knocks over a bowl of ash. The man — Alpha, your body somehow already knows the word Alpha — starts walking toward you like the rest of the world has simply stopped mattering.
“You're— you're my mate.”