LUNA ALEXANDRIA: The Alpha's Buried Daughter

My name is Alexandria Dimitry. Nobody calls me that. In the Nightshade pack, I'm just "Alex." Or "Dimitry's ugly duckling." Or when my father is angry, "that mistake." I was born with a caul over my face, or so the pack midwife said. She said it meant I would see things others couldn't. What I saw for the first eighteen years of my life was a pack that wished I had never been born. My mother died giving birth to me. My father, Alpha Richard Dimitry, never forgave me for it. He remarried quickly to a Luna who gave him two perfect sons and a daughter with golden hair and clear skin — my half-sister, Chloe. Me? I got my mother's black hair, grey eyes that were almost silver, and a jagged birthmark that looked like a scar running from my left cheekbone to my jaw. The pack healers said it would fade. It never did. Tonight was my eighteenth birthday. The night I was supposed to find my mate. The pack house was decorated for Chloe's birthday, not mine. Chloe turned sixteen today, and her party was in full swing downstairs — music, laughter, meat roasting. I was upstairs in the attic room that had been my bedroom since I was six, wearing a dress that used to be Chloe's, two sizes too big, trying to braid my hair so the mark didn't show. "Alex! Get down here and help with the dishes! Your sister's friends are waiting!" My stepmother's voice. I flinched out of habit and ran downstairs. The living room was packed. All the young wolves from Nightshade and two neighboring packs were there. And in the middle of it all, standing next to my father and looking like he had been carved from moonlight itself, was him. Blake Callihan. Heir to the Blood Moon pack, the strongest pack in the state. Twenty years old, already six-foot-three, already an Alpha in training. Black hair, blue eyes that turned amber when his wolf surfaced, and a reputation for rejecting every girl who threw herself at him because he was waiting for his fated mate. Our eyes met across the room. The world stopped. It wasn't romantic like the stories. It was violent. It was a punch to my chest, a fire in my veins, a voice inside my head that wasn't mine screaming one word. "MATE." My wolf. I finally had a wolf. After eighteen years of silence, of being called wolfless, she woke up and she was howling _mate, mate, mate._ Blake's eyes widened. His nostrils flared. He smelled it too. The bond snapped into place like a live wire between us. He started walking toward me. The crowd parted without even knowing why. My heart was beating so loud I thought everyone could hear it. This was it. The Moon Goddess hadn't forgotten me. She gave me the strongest mate possible. He stopped a foot away from me. He looked down at my face, at my scar, at my too-big dress, at my shaking hands. And his face twisted. Not with love. With disgust. "No," he said out loud, loud enough for everyone to hear. "No f*****g way." My wolf whimpered inside me. "What?" I whispered. He turned to my father, ignoring me completely. "Alpha Dimitry. With respect, there has to be a mistake. This can't be my mate. She's... look at her." My father didn't even defend me. He just looked embarrassed. "Blake, son, the Goddess sometimes has a strange sense of humor—" "I, Blake Callihan, heir of Blood Moon, reject you, Alexandria Dimitry, as my mate and Luna." The words hit harder than any slap Luna Kirsten ever gave me in my old life. The bond — that bright, golden thread I had felt for all of three seconds — was suddenly being cut with a rusted knife. I screamed. I couldn't help it. A rejection is physical pain. It felt like someone reached into my chest and ripped my heart out. I fell to my knees, gasping, my vision going white. Someone laughed. Chloe. "Oh my god, Alex thought Blake would actually want her?" Chloe giggled to her friends. "That's so sad." Blake didn't even look down at me again. He walked away, out the front door, and his friends followed him, leaving me crumpled on the floor of my own pack house while my own family watched. I didn't cry. I had learned long ago not to cry in front of them. I pushed myself up, my scar burning, my chest bleeding where no one could see the wound, and I ran. Out the back door, into the woods, past the pack borders. I ran until my lungs gave out and I collapsed under an old oak tree that marked the edge between Nightshade and neutral territory. "Why?" I whispered to the Moon above. "Why would you give me a mate just to humiliate me?" The wind answered. Or rather, a voice in the wind did. "Because he was never meant to be your end, Alexandria. He was meant to be your beginning." I wasn't alone. A man stepped out from behind the oak. He was tall, but not like Blake — leaner, scarred. He had dark brown hair, green eyes, and a leather jacket that said he didn't belong to any pack here. He was holding a first-aid kit, like he knew he would find someone bleeding. He crouched down to my level, but didn't touch me. "I'm Cole," he said softly. "Cole Evans. I was tracking a rogue near here and I felt... that. A rejection. A bad one." My wolf, who had gone silent after Blake's words, suddenly lifted her head inside me. "Safe," she whispered. It was the first kind word she had ever said. Cole looked at my face, at my scar, and he didn't flinch. He didn't look away. "That birthmark," he said. "My mother had one just like it. She said it meant you were marked by the first wolf." No one had ever said my mark was anything but ugly. "You're not wolfless, are you, Alex Dimitry?" he asked, and the way he said my full name — not mocking, but like it was important — made my chest ache in a completely different way. And for the first time since I felt the mate bond snap, I felt something else bloom in its place. Not a bond. Not yet. A promise.