Cameron stokes's Arc

Chapter 1 of 8

Cameron Stokes had told the whole village she was mate to the alpha king, and not one soul believed her. She stood at the edge of the night market with her chin high, selling bundles of white moon flowers that glowed faint in the dark. The old women traded looks. A boy laughed into his sleeve. She wrapped another cluster with shaking hands and pretended not to hear. The truth was worse than their mockery. She had never met the alpha king. She only knew him the way she knew her own pulse, a tug in her chest toward a pack that ruled every other pack, far past the eastern wilds. No map marked the road. No one she asked would make the crossing. Her claim was a rumor she could not prove, and every passing day it grew thinner. She touched the pendant at her throat, a raven feather cut from silver, the one thing her mother left her. "Find the one who waits," her mother had said before the fever took her. Cameron had carried those words for years with nowhere to put them. A man stopped at her table. He was tall, blond, maybe a few years older, with green eyes that did not laugh like the others. He lifted one of the moon flower clusters and turned it in the lamplight. "These only grow past the eastern ridge," he said. "Deep in. Most folk never see one." Cameron stared. "You've been east." "I've been most places." He set the flowers down and looked at her throat. His eyes caught on the silver feather and held there a beat too long. Something shifted in his face, quick, then gone. "That's a long way for a pretty story. People say you claim the alpha king." Heat climbed her neck. "It isn't a story." "No," he said slowly. "Maybe not." He studied her like he was reading something she couldn't see. "Asher Thornwood. I guide people through the wilds. For a price." Her heart slammed. "You know the way to his pack." "I know every mile of it." Asher leaned closer. "The question is whether you'd survive the walk. It's not a road. It's three weeks of wolf country, and the things out there don't care whose mate you say you are." Cameron pulled the bundles of moon flowers into her bag. She had sold nothing worth keeping. She had nothing worth losing. "I'll pay what I have," she said. "When do we leave?" A slow smile touched his mouth. "Dawn. Pack light. Trust me when I tell you to run." He walked off before she could ask what from. Cameron pressed the silver feather to her chest and breathed. For the first time, the rumor had a road. She did not know she was following a wolf.