Rejected Once, Claimed Twice

The Night I Disappeared

I didn’t stop running until my legs gave out.

The forest was dark and cold. Branches tore at my arms and face, but I barely felt them. The pain in my chest was louder than everything else — a raw, gaping wound where the mate bond had been ripped away.

I collapsed against an old oak, gasping for air. Tears finally came, hot and angry. I pressed my forehead to the rough bark and let them fall.

Asher’s voice kept replaying in my head.

I reject you, Luna Hayes.

He hadn’t even hesitated.

My sister’s smile. The pack’s cheers. The way no one tried to stop me when I walked away.

I was nothing to them.

A bitter laugh escaped me. “Happy birthday, Luna.”

I stayed there until the moon began to sink. When I finally pushed myself up, my decision was already made.

I would not go back.

Not tonight. Not ever as the weak, discarded girl they all knew.

I walked deeper into the forest, following the old rogue trails my mother had once warned me about. By dawn I reached the edge of Silver Moon territory. The border markers glowed faintly under the rising sun.

I stepped across without looking back.

Three days later I collapsed at the gates of a small, hidden settlement deep in the mountains. My clothes were torn, my feet bleeding, and the rejection sickness had already started eating at me. Most wolves didn’t survive a full rejection without their pack.

A woman with sharp eyes and a long scar across her cheek found me.

“You’re far from home, little wolf,” she said.

“I don’t have a home anymore,” I answered.

She studied me for a long moment, then nodded once. “Then you’ll earn one here.”

Her name was Raven. She was the leader of a small group of warriors who lived outside any pack law. Rogues, but not the mindless kind. Trained. Disciplined. Dangerous.

They didn’t ask many questions.

They only asked if I was willing to work.

I was.

The first months were hell. My body was weak from the broken bond. Every full moon the pain returned like a fresh wound. I threw up more nights than I slept. But I never asked to leave.

Raven made sure of that.

She put a blade in my hand on the third day and said, “Pain can either break you or sharpen you. Choose.”

I chose to become sharp.

I learned to fight until my knuckles bled. I learned to move silently through the trees. I learned to control the emptiness inside me instead of letting it control me.

And every night, before I slept, I whispered the same promise to myself:

Three years.

When I return, I will no longer be the girl they rejected.

I will be the woman they regret.