My 5 Alpha Stepbrothers Rejected Me, Now They Beg for Me

Three years in the Blackthorne house had taught me one rule: Elara Voss did not exist unless someone needed a scapegoat. I stood in the circle of white stones at the center of the Silvermoon great hall, wearing my mother’s silver dress, and reminded myself why I had come. It wasn’t for the Moon’s blessing. I didn’t have a wolf to bless. I was here because Alpha Marcus had said tradition applied to everyone under his roof, and because refusing would have let the pack say I was afraid. And because, eleven months ago, my mother had died of a “winter fever” that never made sense. Her last words to me were don’t let them see what you are. I had spent every day since trying to understand what she meant. As far as I could tell, I was nothing. A human seamstress’s daughter, wolfless at twenty, tolerated in a house of wolves out of obligation. Tonight, I intended to stand through the ceremony, keep my face blank, and leave Silvermoon at dawn. I had a bag packed under my bed. “Look at her,” someone whispered behind me. “Not a single spark.” “The Alpha married a human and got a human girl,” another answered, not bothering to lower her voice. “What did he expect?” I kept my chin up. You let the words slide off like rain off a roof, and you never let them see the water getting in. The great skylight above us was a perfect circle of black glass, with the full moon hanging in it like a coin. Its light fell straight onto the stones. Onto me. “Elara Voss,” old Maren intoned, white braid gleaming, milky eyes unfocused. “Daughter of Alina. Step into the light and let the Moon speak.” I took one step. The stones hummed under my slippers. Nothing happened. A ripple of laughter moved through the crowd. Heat crawled up my neck. I stared at the floor and counted the seams between the stones. One. Two. Three. Almost over, I told myself. I lifted my eyes, and because I couldn’t help it, looked at them. The five sons of Marcus Blackthorne stood in a line before their father’s carved chair. Dorian stood at the center, the eldest and the heir, tall and black-clad, with storm-gray eyes that had told me on my very first day in this house that I did not belong. He had never looked at me with anything but cool distance since. In three years, he had spoken perhaps a hundred words to me, every one of them correct and every one of them cold. Kael leaned against a pillar, golden-haired, wearing the easy smirk of a man who was trusted right up until the moment he shouldn’t be. He caught my eye and winked. It was lazy and careless, and it hurt more than the whispers. Ronan stood like a wall, scarred along the knuckles, his dark gaze fixed on a point above my head. He had stopped speaking to me after my mother’s funeral, when I’d found him alone in the garden and he had looked at me as though caught committing a crime. Silas, slender and soft-eyed, ink on his fingers, kept pushing his glasses up his nose. When our gazes met, he flinched. And Jace, the youngest, with his mess of brown curls and his grin missing for the first time in memory, shoved his hands deep into his pockets like a boy who wished he were anywhere else. Jace was the only one who had ever been kind to me. For three years, he’d left cheap red-wrapped chocolates on my pillow and never once knocked. Why are all five of them here? I wondered. They never attended ceremonies together. At the edge of the dais, beside the Alpha’s chair, stood a woman I knew only by sight: Elder Seraphine of the Council, tall and graceful in dove-gray silk, her silver hair pinned in a perfect coil. She was smiling at me. It was the only smile in the hall that wasn’t cruel, and somehow it frightened me most. “Open yourself to her light,” Maren said. I closed my eyes. It was a stupid, hopeful thing to do. But for a moment, I let myself imagine something stirring inside me. A voice. A warmth. A wolf of my own. Mama, I thought. If you can hear me, please. The locket under my dress grew warm against my skin. Something clicked. I felt it in my chest first: a tiny, bright snap, like a thread pulled taut. Then a second. Then a third. My eyes flew open. Silver light was pouring from the skylight, but it no longer fell straight. It bent. It lifted off the stones in glowing ribbons, fine as spider silk, and each one streamed across the hall in a different direction. Five threads. One sank into Dorian’s chest. One tied itself to Kael’s heart, and his smirk vanished as if wiped away. One slammed into Ronan, who stumbled back a full step. One wrapped around Silas, whose glasses slid right off his face. One twined, bright and fierce, around Jace’s ribs, and he gasped like he’d been punched. The hall went silent. No coughing. No rustling silk. I don’t think anyone was breathing. And I could feel them. That was the impossible part. Five heartbeats pounded inside my own chest, each with its own rhythm. Dorian’s, slow and heavy and terrified. Kael’s, quick and bright. Ronan’s, a drumbeat of rage and grief. Silas’s, trembling. Jace’s, wild joy that curdled into panic. “Five,” Maren whispered, her blind eyes wide. “Five fated bonds. In all the histories of the Moon, no wolf has ever...” “Silence.” Marcus Blackthorne was on his feet, the color gone from his face. “This ceremony is concluded.” “Father,” Dorian said hoarsely. It was the first time I had ever heard his voice shake. “She’s...” “I said it is concluded.” But the threads wouldn’t fade. They hung between us, shimmering, tying me to five men who had spent three years pretending I didn’t exist. Every instinct I hadn’t known I had was screaming one word. Mine. Mine. Mine. I looked at Dorian. His gray eyes were fixed on me, and for one heartbeat, just one, I saw something raw and unguarded in them. Fear. Hunger. Something that looked a great deal like longing. Then his face slammed shut like a door. “Dorian?” I whispered. He didn’t answer. Kael had pushed off his pillar, the smirk replaced by horror. Ronan’s fist was clenched so tightly that blood dripped between his fingers. Silas was whispering something over and over, too softly for me to hear. And Jace stared at me with wide, shining eyes, shaking his head, mouthing, no, no, no. No, what? I looked at Seraphine. She hadn’t moved. Her hands were folded, her head tilted slightly. She did not look surprised. She looked like a woman who had been waiting a very long time for exactly this. Then the first silver thread began to tremble. It wasn’t fading. It was straining, pulled tight, as though someone at the far end had taken hold and begun to pull. The light flickered. The hum in my chest turned sharp and high. At the head of the hall, Marcus Blackthorne closed his eyes like a man bracing for a blow. Then he nodded, once, to his eldest son. And Dorian Blackthorne took a long, slow breath, stepped forward into the circle of moonlight, and opened his mouth.