Rejected by My Alpha, I Chose the Lycan King

On the ceremony platform, I pressed my thumb over the seam I had repaired that morning and waited for my wolf to answer. Behind me, someone moved a chair. The scrape carried through Black Moon's main hall, and I heard a woman whisper into her neighbor's ear. I kept my eyes on the empty space beside the Alpha. If I looked back, I would start counting the people who expected me to fail. The cuff caught against my wrist. I had gone back over that seam until the needle holes blurred together, trying to make the repair disappear. I wanted Damon to notice me before he noticed anything wrong with me. Now a stray thread had worked loose, and I tucked it inside before lowering my hand. Still no voice. No answering presence. I tried again, listening past the movement of people taking their seats. This was my coming-of-age ceremony. I had made it onto the platform. I wanted to leave it with my name spoken plainly, without the pause people put before it when they remembered I had no wolf. Then something pulled beneath my ribs. I turned toward Damon. He stood near the front of the hall, speaking to one of the men beside him. His mouth stopped halfway through a word. The pull tightened, so sudden and certain in its direction that I took a step toward him. The man followed Damon's gaze and moved aside. For once, I had an unobstructed view of him. Damon looked directly at me, and the connection drew taut between us. I could feel where he stood with my eyes closed. I shut them for a moment, hardly daring to test it, then opened them again. He was still looking. My mate. The thought arrived whole. Something in me was reaching for Damon, and he stared back as though he had felt it too. I nearly laughed. It would have come out badly, too close to crying, so I pressed my lips together and waited for him to speak. People turned in their seats. A woman who had been looking toward the rear of the room faced the platform again. The man beside Damon glanced between us, then stepped farther back. Their attention changed before anyone explained why, and I stood a little straighter under it. Perhaps I would hear my wolf next. Perhaps I had spent all that time listening for the wrong thing. Damon started toward the platform. I knew the sound of his footsteps. I had listened for them in crowded corridors, looked up from whatever I was doing when he passed. Usually, I managed to look away before he noticed. Today I let myself watch him come. He stopped below me, close enough that I could have reached his shoulder. "Elena." My name sounded different in his mouth with everyone listening. There was no hesitation before it, no lowered voice to make the people nearest him lean closer. I had imagined hearing it that way while I sewed, then felt foolish for imagining it. A smile escaped before I could catch it. "You felt it?" He looked at the place where my hand rested against my ribs. "Yes." I lowered my hand. He had felt it. I hadn't imagined him turning, or that strange pull, or the way the distance between us had suddenly become something my body wanted to close. "I thought nothing was going to happen." The words came out too quickly. I almost apologized for them, then remembered that he had come to me. I could speak to him. I could let him see how much this mattered. Damon put one hand on the edge of the platform. I moved toward it, ready to come down, and he withdrew his hand. My foot stayed where it was. "Stay there." I searched his face. He glanced toward the front row, where Selene had risen from her seat. The space beside him was still open, but she stood at its edge, watching us. I had seen her with him before. They were often spoken of together, their families and the alliance mentioned in the same breath. Until that moment, I had kept those conversations apart from the private, impossible hope I carried whenever Damon passed me. Now both belonged to the same room. "Damon?" He turned enough to address the people behind him. "There has been a mate connection." A rustle passed along the nearest row. I caught a woman's startled look before she bent toward the person beside her. Farther back, someone stood to see over the heads in front. I waited for him to say my name again. "My obligations to Black Moon remain unchanged. The alliance with Selene's family will proceed." Selene came forward. Her skirt brushed the leg of an empty chair, and the person beside it drew the chair in to let her pass. "What does that mean?" I asked. Damon faced me again. "It means I will marry Selene." I understood each word. I kept waiting for another sentence to make them fit with the thing I could still feel between us. "But you said you felt it." "I did." He let that answer stand. No one interrupted him. I looked at his hand, resting against his side now, and remembered how quickly I had moved when he put it on the platform. I had thought he was going to help me down. The humiliation of that small mistake came before the rest. "Black Moon needs a strong alliance," he said. "As Alpha, I have to consider what a marriage brings to the Pack." The nearest woman lowered her gaze to her lap. The man who had moved aside for Damon stood with his arms folded, leaving the way between us open. Nobody stepped into it. "And what I bring?" Damon looked at me for long enough that I began to wish I had never asked. "You haven't awakened your wolf." I waited for him to go on. He had answered. Selene reached the foot of the platform and stopped beside him. He turned toward the hall once more, giving everyone a clear view of the two of them. "I reject you as my mate, Elena." Pain struck beneath my ribs. I bent before I could stop myself and caught the edge of the platform, my palm slipping against the polished wood. For a moment, I could only hold on and wait for enough breath to speak. The platform edge pressed into my palm. Below it, Damon's boots stayed in place. He had seen me fold over, and he was waiting for me to recover without reaching for me. I let go of the wood one finger at a time. Straightening hurt. I did it slowly, keeping my feet beneath me, while the first row watched. "Look at me." He had already begun to turn away. At my words, he stopped. "Elena, you should step down." "I will. Look at me first." Selene lifted her chin toward the platform. "We should give her a moment. Everyone is waiting for the ceremony to continue." The last part was for the hall. A man near the aisle sat down, and several people behind him followed. Selene shifted closer to Damon, claiming the space I had been ready to walk into. I kept my eyes on him. "Is this your choice?" "I've explained my responsibility." "You told them about the alliance. I'm asking you." My voice caught on the last word. I had to swallow before I could continue, and I hated that he could hear it. Somewhere behind the front row, a person coughed. The ordinary sound made standing there worse. Everyone would eventually go home and talk about what had happened to me. Damon moved a step nearer. The pull answered, and I stayed where I was. Part of me wanted to reach for him, to find out whether touching his hand would ease the pain. I curled my fingers against my dress instead. "This isn't the place," he said. I looked past him at the people he had just addressed. "You chose it." He glanced toward them too. The woman in the front row had raised her head again. She watched him now. "I cannot put a connection ahead of the Pack." "You can say yes or no." I needed to hear it without the Pack between us. If he left me anything unfinished, I would carry it away and turn it over until I found a reason to forgive him. I knew how much I wanted one. He looked directly at me. "Yes. This is my choice." I waited through the foolish expectation that he would soften it. His mouth stayed closed. "All right." There was more I could have said. I could have told him how long I had watched for him, how quickly I had believed he would want me. The words crowded behind my teeth. I held them there while I turned toward the steps. The first step was shallow. I still misjudged it and had to stop with one foot lower than the other, the pain catching me again. Damon moved his hand toward my elbow. I drew my arm away. "I can manage." He let me pass. From the floor, the platform looked higher than it had from the top. Selene stood beside the steps, leaving me just enough room to come down. I passed close enough to see the embroidery along her cuff. The thread I had hidden in mine hung against my wrist again. This time, I left it there. "Thank you for understanding," she said. I stopped. "I heard him." She looked toward Damon. I walked on before either of them could answer. A few people made space as I entered the aisle. One woman shifted her knees aside without looking at my face; another watched until her companion touched her sleeve. Near the front, a man inclined his head to Selene as she turned back toward the platform with Damon. I wanted to get beyond the door before I cried. My bag lay where I had left it, beside my chair near the side passage. I could pick it up and reach the outer door. The thought gave me something small enough to do. I fixed my eyes on the chair and walked toward it. The side hall door burst open. A guard came through, pushing it back hard enough that it struck the wall. He looked past me toward the platform. "Alpha. The Pack relic is missing." Chairs scraped behind me. I stopped short of my bag as another guard moved into the passage ahead. Damon's voice reached me across the hall. "Close the exits." I turned toward the outer door. The guard stepped into my path. "Stay here, Elena."