He rejected me in front of three hundred wolves. The Alpha King was watching. I was eighteen, holding a tray of wine, when Derek Blackwood told the whole Silverpine pack that I was not his mate. He was the boy who promised me forever when we were seven. He was the future alpha. He was supposed to be mine. Then he walked into the Moon Ceremony with another girl on his arm and said the two words a wolf can never take back. I refuse you. Mates are chosen by the goddess. Nobody warns you what a rejection does to the body. Something tears out of you, and the tearing does not stop when the words do. I found that out on my knees in the frost, with three hundred wolves laughing and my sister turning her face away. And out in the dark at the edge of the clearing, a stranger with gold eyes watched all of it. He did not look away. Not during the laughing. Not during what came after. There are rules about the Alpha King. He does not leave his mountains. He does not kneel. He has not been seen in this valley in a hundred years. I broke the first rule without meaning to. Every wolf in that clearing broke the second one the moment he tilted his head and said two words of his own. So. They exiled me before the frost melted. They should have asked him first.