REJECTED BY THE ALPHA KING

CHAPTER 2: FIVE YEARS LATER

Asha's POV

The coffee shop on Fifth Avenue was packed with the usual morning crowd. Businesspeople in expensive suits lined up for their lattes and cappuccinos, checking their phones and looking at their watches. Tourists sat at small tables, studying maps and guidebooks, speaking in different languages. Students occupied the corner booths with their laptops and books. I sat in a corner booth near the window, working on my laptop, a cup of black coffee at my side. The coffee was hot and bitter, exactly how I liked it. No sugar. No milk. No sweetness.

Nobody here knew who I really was.

My name is Asha Sharma now. Not Asha from the Crescent Moon pack. Not the girl who was rejected at her Mating Ceremony in front of hundreds of people. Not the girl whose mate looked at her with disgust and walked away like she was nothing. That girl was dead. I had killed her the night I ran away from home, disappearing into the forest with nothing but the clothes on my back and the rage burning in my chest like a wildfire.

For five years, I had lived in the human world. I had paid for my education with the money I saved from working three jobs. I had worked as a waitress at a downtown restaurant, a bartender at a nightclub, and a*****e manager at a retail shop. It was exhausting and difficult, but it kept me moving forward. I had gone to college and studied business management and security systems. I had learned everything I could about protection, defense, and strategy. Then I had started my own company...Sharma Security Solutions...and through hard work, smart decisions, and careful planning, it had become very successful. We provided security consulting to major corporations all over the country. Banks, tech companies, government agencies, and hospitals. Everyone wanted Sharma Security Solutions.

I was rich now. Powerful. Respected. People feared me. People wanted to work with me. People wanted to know my secrets about success. I had built an empire from nothing. I had created a life where I was in control.

I was everything I needed to be.

My phone buzzed. I looked at the text message from my assistant, Sophia Lim, a young woman in her late twenties who was brilliant with security systems and had been with me since I started the company three years ago. She was one of the few people I actually trusted.

"Emergency. Client situation. Need you ASAP. Robert Chen from Nexus Digital is freaking out. Says he received a threat. The building might be in danger."

I closed my laptop and grabbed my coat without hesitation. Five years of freedom, and I still felt the pull of duty. Old habits from my pack life died hard. When someone needed help, when someone was in danger, I could not say no. It was in my nature, no matter how hard I tried to suppress it.

Thirty minutes later, I was sitting in the office of one of my biggest clients, a tech company called Nexus Digital. Their CEO, Robert Chen, was a nervous man in his fifties with gray hair and worried eyes. He looked stressed and scared. His hands were shaking as he slid a folder across the desk toward me. His secretary had tried to stop me, but I had walked straight past her.

"We received a threat," he said, his voice shaking slightly. "Two days ago. Someone sent us an email claiming they will attack our building unless we pay them five million dollars. They said they have people inside our company, people we would never suspect. I did not know who to call. I did not know what to do. Then I remembered you. You are the best. If anyone can help us, it is you."

I opened the folder and read the threat carefully. The grammar was terrible. The spelling was wrong. The language was generic and not professional at all. This was not a real threat from someone who knew what they were doing. This was an amateur. This was someone's idea of a joke or a test. I had seen real threats before. This was not it.

"You do not need to worry about this," I said, looking up at him calmly. My voice was steady and confident. "This is not a professional operation. Whoever sent this does not have the skills to back up their threats. This looks like a disgruntled employee or someone playing a prank. But we can tighten your security just to be safe. I will send my team over tomorrow to assess the situation and add extra security measures."

"How can you be so sure?" Robert asked, still looking worried.

"Because I know what real danger looks like," I said quietly, thinking about the rejection that had shattered my world five years ago. That was real danger. That was real pain. This was nothing compared to that.

As I left his office and drove back to my own in my sleek black car, my phone buzzed again. This time, it was a news alert. A headline popped up on my screen, and I had to pull over to the side of the road to read it properly. My hands started to shake so badly that I could barely hold the phone steady.

"ALPHA KING KAI TEO ANNOUNCED TO ATTEND INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS SUMMIT IN THE CITY TOMORROW"

My hands started to shake so badly that I could barely hold the phone.

He was coming here. To my city. To my world. The world I had built away from him, away from that pain, away from that rejection. The world where I was safe.

And for the first time in five years, I felt my wolf stir inside me. She had been quiet, sleeping, trying to accept our rejection and move on with her life. But now she woke up, angry and desperate and hungry.

"He is coming," she whispered inside my mind, her voice urgent and desperate. "He is finally coming back to us. After all this time."

I told myself it did not matter. I told myself I was over him. I told myself I was stronger now, and he could never hurt me again.

But deep down, I knew the truth.

Something was about to change.

Something was about to break open that I had spent five years trying to bury deep inside my soul.

And when it did, everything would fall apart.