The Rejected Alpha

Restless

TRIGGER WARNING: This section contains themes of betrayal, grief, violence (murder reference), isolation, and intense internal conflict that some readers may find unsettling.

ALERIC

single cream envelope on my desk, no seal, no signature, just the Rufous Moon Pack crest pressed into black wax. Inside, elegant script inviting the Alpha of Howling Moon to their annual Moon Ball. No explanation. No reason. Just those words, and the faint, dying trace of a female’s scent clinging to the paper like a ghost.

I spent two weeks trying to shake it off.

Sleep became a stranger. Reports piled unread on my desk. Training sessions ended with me snarling at wolves who hadn’t done anything wrong. Axel, my wolf, paced inside me like a caged thing, restless, growling low at nothing and everything. He hadn’t been this unsettled since…Lily.

We tracked the messenger eventually. Too late. Her body turned up at the edge of our northern border, throat torn out, eyes wide in frozen surprise. Brutal. Efficient. Someone had wanted her silent before she could speak. Her scent matched the letter perfectly. Whoever sent her hadn’t just risked exposure; they’d erased her the moment her task was done.

That kind of cleanup reeks of desperation. Or guilt. Why kill your own messenger unless you’re terrified of being linked to the invitation?

I turned the card over in my hands again that morning, the wax cracking under my thumb. Rufous Moon had never invited me before. No one did. Why would they? I’m the monster under their beds, the savage who takes packs instead of alliances, who ends challenges with broken necks instead of handshakes. I stopped attending those glittering Moon Balls years ago. Too many fake smiles, too many giggling females batting lashes, too many weak alphas measuring d***s through polite conversation. After Lily’s betrayal carved out everything soft I had left, parties felt like salt in an open wound.

The spot for my luna is still vacant, but I’m not looking to fill it anytime soon. Mates are liabilities. Love is leverage. I learned that the hard way.

The Moon Ball isn’t about romance for most packs anyway. It’s politics dressed in silk, alliances forged over champagne, borders redrawn in quiet corners, enemies sized up while pretending to dance. They gather to remind themselves they’re not alone against threats like me.

If I wanted females, I know where to find them. If I wanted to prove strength, I’ve already done it a dozen times over. My pack is larger, stronger, more disciplined than it’s ever been. We don’t need anyone's approval. We don’t need their dances.

So why the hell does this invitation feel like a hook in my gut? Axel rumbled again, low and insistent, claws scraping at the edges of my mind. 'Go see. Should be fun.' I told him to shut up. He didn’t.

​I have no patience for the theater of the ballroom. Sitting around, trading empty pleasantries, and dancing like a puppet to impress preening girls or spineless Alphas, that isn't who I am. My life is measured in territory gained and blood spilled, not in social graces.

​I don’t begrudge my unmated wolves their chance at the Moon Ball. Just because the flame of hope died in me years ago doesn't mean I have to force my pack to live in the dark. I would never stop a man from seeking his fated bond, but I’m not a fool. If my warriors want to attend these functions, they do so under a false name.

​No one invites a wolf from the Howling Moon. They certainly wouldn't let one through the gates if they knew the truth. We are known as savages, a reputation I’ve carved into the landscape with a heavy hand, and I have no intention of softening the edges.

​Thanks to Lily’s betrayal, my name is a curse whispered in the shadows. I’ve become the monster they tell their pups about at night. My reputation is so foul that, frankly, if I were looking at myself from the outside, I wouldn’t admit me into my own pack either.

Three years since Lily. Three years since I buried my belief in fate, second chances, and the rest of the moon-touched garbage they preach at those balls. My pack is my only loyalty now, and my reputation is my only shield. Thanks to her, my name is a synonymous with c*****e. I wear the fear I inspire like a suit of armor, it's heavy, but it keeps the world at a distance. ​I still can’t reconcile why this year’s ball feels different. The idea of these packs needing my help is a joke; in this region, I am the nightmare they pray to avoid. I don't provide salvation; I provide a funeral.

​The delivery of the invitation is what truly galls me. It wasn’t left at the border or handed to a sentry. It was sitting on my desk, in the center of my inner sanctum. It had bypassed my elite patrols, breached my physical locks, and eluded wolves whose only job is to scent an intruder before they even reach the tree line.

​That isn't just a message; it's a taunt. It means my perimeter is a sieve or I have a traitor eating at my table. Both options are death sentences for whoever is responsible.

​And then there is the messenger. Found dead at the edge of my lands before she could even breathe the air of her home. Someone went through hell to place that card on my desk, only for their employer to snuff them out to sever the trail. They wanted me there, but they wanted to remain a ghost.

​Axel is pacing behind my ribs, a low, predatory growl vibrating in my chest. He smells blood and opportunity. Someone is playing a game with the Devil, and it’s time they learned that I never play by the rules.

No matter how I dissected the logic, the "why" remained out of reach. There was nothing special about another pack’s vanity project, and I spent days trying to talk myself out of the absurdity of attending. I’m a king of ash and bone; I don't belong under crystal chandeliers.

​But Axel wouldn’t let it rest. My wolf was a constant, nagging pressure in my mind, echoing the date and time of the event until the repetition felt like a physical weight. It wasn't just curiosity, it was an instinctual demand.

​As the full moon approached, my defiance began to erode, replaced by a cold, sharpened anticipation. Someone had gone through the trouble of breaching my sanctum and murdering a messenger just to get my attention. They wanted the Devil at their door for a reason.

​I’ve never been one to turn down a challenge. If they went to such lengths to lure me out of the shadows, it would be a pity to disappoint them. I’ll go, not to dance, but to see who is foolish enough to try and pull my strings.

*****

​To the casual observer, Reid looked like any other terrified teenager in the room. But beneath his trembling exterior, the firstborn son of Sebastian Hiddlefield was drowning in a delusional sense of grandeur. At fourteen, Reid was a cocktail of recklessness and narrow-minded ambition. In a house overflowing with siblings competing for their father’s cold affection, Reid had decided that the only way to secure the Alpha throne was to do something so monumental that Sebastian could never ignore him again.

​The invite to Aleric had been his masterpiece of stupidity. ​Reid had spent his life watching his father blame others for his own mistakes, and the boy had learned the lesson well: He got away with everything.

Broke a beta’s nose in training? “Boys will be boys.” Snuck into the armory and fired silver rounds at targets after curfew? Father laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. Crashed a patrol jeep into a tree while racing his i***t friends? Sebastian blamed the vehicle, not the driver.

Every reckless stunt, every stupid dare, every time he pushed too far, Father never blamed him. Never punished him. Just smiled that slow, proud smile that said, Keep going, son. Show them what you’re made of.

So Reid kept going. Bigger. Bolder. Dumber.

Inviting Aleric to the Moon Ball was the biggest thing he’d ever done. He’d found the invitation template in his father’s study one night, elegant cream stock, black wax seal, Rufous Moon crest. Forged the message in careful, looping script. Slipped it to that quiet omega girl who cleaned the alpha’s office; told her it was an “urgent errand.” She delivered it. Then she disappeared. Reid didn’t ask questions. Dead messengers don’t talk.

He wasn’t afraid the plan would fail. He was afraid it would succeed too slowly.

Reid had stumbled across his father’s hidden horticultural farm by pure luck, a locked greenhouse behind the eastern ridge, rows of wolfsbane blooming under artificial moonlight like purple poison stars. He and his three closest friends, Dan, Ben, and a twitchy kid named Milo, had been harvesting petals for months. Silver was rare, expensive, guarded. But money talked louder than loyalty in the human black markets just beyond pack borders. A fat pouch of cash, a few veiled threats, and they walked away with a small, heavy vial of molten silver beads. Enough.

They melted it down in secret over a stolen propane torch, stirred in the crushed wolfsbane juice until the liquid turned a sickly, shimmering violet. Potent and lethal. Even a wolf as monstrous as Aleric couldn’t shrug off a dart laced with that.

Reid turned the tiny silver-tipped dart between his fingers now, watching it catch the hallway sconce light. His heart hammered, not in fear, but anticipation. The kind that tasted like copper on his tongue. Tonight, he would step out of the shadows when Aleric least expected it. One clean shot. One fallen tyrant. His father’s face when the news spread: My son. My heir. The boy who ended the savage king.

Sebastian would have no choice. The title would pass early. Before Reid even turned eighteen. The pack would kneel to him. The stories would start: Reid, the one who felled Aleric.

He slipped the dart into the hidden sheath inside his sleeve, straightened his formal jacket and stepped closer to the ballroom doors.

His friends waited in the wings, Dan with the backup darts, Ben with a lookout post, Milo sweating like a pig but loyal enough to stay.

Reid’s mouth curved. Let them call him reckless. Let them call him stupid.

Tonight they’d call him alpha. And no one, not his father, or the entire Alphas present would look down on him after today.

He hadn't just invited Aleric for a thrill; he had invited him to be the star of a public execution. What better way to cement a legend than to fell a god in front of a gallery of the world’s most powerful wolves? He wanted to be the boy-king who ruled before he even shifted, a human-skinned predator who didn't need a wolf to command the kingdom.

​The plan was a masterpiece of teenage cruelty. He had used his position as the ball’s coordinator to slip the invitation to the Howling Moon, using black-market contacts and a mountain of stolen gold to bypass Aleric's borders. And the messenger? She was a loose end, snuffed out like a candle the moment her job was done.

​Reid’s strategy was simple: wait for the powder keg to explode. He would watch as Aleric, provoked by the sheer presence of so many enemies, began a bloodbath. He’d wait for the old, stubborn Alphas, the ones who stood in the way of his father’s total control, to be ripped apart. And when Aleric was standing in the center of the c*****e, breathless and triumphant, Reid would strike from the shadows.

​A silver-tipped dart to the base of the skull. A liquid-death infusion of wolfsbane. ​It seemed so easy. In Reid’s mind, Aleric wasn't a monster; he was just a ladder. And tonight, Reid intended to climb it.