Rejected by My Alpha, Claimed by the Moon-Crowned Alpha

Chapter 3: The Alpha Who Should Have Killed Her

The black wolf stayed where it was after the man's voice came from the trees.

So did I. Blood dripped from my palms into the thin snow between my knees. The mark under my torn dress burned in answer to the stranger, pulsing from my collarbone down my ribs. I wanted to ask what he meant by my blood. I wanted to ask who he was. Mostly I wanted my legs to work.

They did not.

The wolf stepped closer, large enough that its shoulder came nearly to my chest. Black fur, silver at the throat, eyes fixed on mine. It was not snarling. That made it worse. A starving animal would have been easier to understand.

Behind it, a man walked out from between the pines.

He wore no ceremonial cloak or polished crest, only a dark coat dusted with snow and a blade at his side. The wolf lowered its head a little when he passed. That told me more than jewels would have.

Alpha.

My body knew it before my mind put a name to it. Every Omega instinct I had screamed at me to lower my eyes. I was bleeding, shaking, kneeling in enemy territory, and still I kept my chin up because Silver Ash had taken enough from me tonight.

The man's gaze moved over my hands, my torn dress, and the silver light still flickering under the fabric. His expression did not change.

"Name," he said.

The command pressed against my skull, colder than Riven's and cleaner. Riven's voice had always felt like a hand on the back of my neck. This felt like a locked door.

Selene stirred. Careful.

I swallowed blood and smoke. "Elara."

"Pack."

Behind me, wolves howled from the direction of Silver Ash. Closer than before.

"I don't have one," I said.

His eyes sharpened. "Everyone has a pack."

"Mine just tried to cut me open."

The black wolf's ears tipped forward. The man's face changed only a little, but I saw it. Interest, not pity.

Torches flashed through the trees behind me. Kael shouted my name, and the rejected bond twisted inside my chest like it still had the right to hurt me.

Three Silver Ash warriors broke into the clearing. Kael came with them, breath white in the cold, one sleeve torn from the chase. Two guards carried silver chains. Another held a cloak from the ritual room, the hem stained dark.

Kael stopped when he saw the black wolf. The color left his face. "Alpha Blackthorn."

The name spread through me with every childhood warning attached to it.

Darius Blackthorn. Monster Alpha of the North. The wolf who killed trespassers. The man Silver Ash children whispered about after dark and then denied being afraid.

I had run from a ritual knife into his territory. It almost made sense, in the worst possible way.

Darius did not look at Kael first. He looked at the silver chains.

"You bring restraints to my border," he said.

Kael's throat moved. "A runaway from Silver Ash crossed illegally. She is injured and unstable. We came to retrieve her before she caused offense."

Runaway. Unstable. Retrieve. He said the words neatly, the way Silver Ash always wrapped ugly things for witnesses.

Darius finally turned his head toward him. "She crossed bleeding. That is already an offense. Yours."

One of the Silver Ash guards stepped forward. "She belongs to our pack."

The black wolf showed its teeth, and the guard remembered where he was.

Kael lifted both hands. "This is internal Silver Ash business. She is an Omega with a broken bond. She does not understand what she is doing."

Darius looked down at me. "Do you?"

The question was not kind. It was useful, which somehow hurt more. It put the answer back in my mouth while my blood dripped into Blackthorn snow and Silver Ash waited behind me with chains.

There was no safe answer. There was only mine.

"I understand that I am not going back with them."

Kael's face changed. "Elara—"

"No." My voice cracked, but the word held. "You rejected me. You do not get to speak for me."

Something warm and mean flickered through Selene. Darius watched me long enough that I started to feel the cold again, then crouched in front of me.

Close up, he had a thin scar through his left eyebrow and faint silver at the edge of his dark irises. He did not touch me.

"If I let them take you," he said, "you will survive the walk back?"

I thought of the basin, the knife, Seraphine leaning forward while Kael stood in the doorway. Riven had ordered them to bring me back alive because alive was useful enough.

"No," I said.

Kael stepped forward. "She is lying."

Darius rose. The movement was quiet, but every Silver Ash wolf went still.

"On my border," he said, "I decide which lies interest me."

Kael's jaw clenched. "You would start a pack dispute over a rejected Omega?"

Darius glanced at the silver light leaking through my torn dress. "No. I would start one over men who chase a bleeding girl into my woods with silver chains and call it retrieval."

The black wolf moved between me and Silver Ash.

That was when I realized I was crying. Not because I felt safe. I did not. I was cold, bloody, and kneeling in front of a man who might still decide I was a problem to lock away. But someone had asked what I chose and then acted as if the answer mattered.

Kael saw the tears. For a moment his eyes looked almost human.

Then Riven's voice came from deeper in the trees. "Alpha Blackthorn."

The torches parted. Alpha Riven stepped into the clearing with his ceremony cloak thrown over one shoulder, Maren close behind him clutching a leather satchel to her chest. Riven's gaze found me, then the mark, then Darius. His fear was quick, but not quick enough.

Darius noticed. "Interesting."

Maren stared at my collarbone as though distance alone was stopping her from cutting the light out.

Darius turned his head slightly. "Call Eira."

A woman with close-cropped gray hair and a healer's satchel stepped from the Blackthorn side. She came toward me, stopped at Darius's lifted hand, and waited.

He asked, "Will you allow my healer to look at your hands?"

After Silver Ash had dragged me, held me down, snapped the chain from my throat, and lifted a knife over my skin, the question almost broke me. The monster Alpha asked.

I nodded once.

Eira knelt beside me. When she saw the silver branching under my skin, her mouth tightened. It was not greed. It looked more like recognition, and fear behind it. She looked up at Darius and said nothing.

Riven stepped forward. "She is under my authority."

Darius's voice dropped. "Not while she bleeds on my soil."

"You do not know what she is."

"Neither," Darius said, "do you want me to."

The clearing went quiet. Riven's hand curled into a fist, and for a few seconds I thought the Alphas would begin a war over my kneeling body.

Darius looked at me instead.

"Elara. You have three choices. Return with Silver Ash. Stay here until dawn and let my healer close your wounds. Or run back into the trees and see what finds you first."

Kael made a sound. "You cannot offer her—"

The black wolf snarled, and Kael stopped.

Darius did not look away from me. "Choose."

My hands hurt. My chest hurt. The bond hurt. I looked at Kael, at the chains, at Riven's controlled fury, at Maren's satchel. Then I looked at Darius Blackthorn.

"I will stay," I said, "until dawn."

That was not trust. It was not surrender. It was only the first choice Silver Ash had failed to steal from me tonight.

Darius gave one sharp nod. "Then she is under Blackthorn protection until dawn."

Riven's eyes went flat. "You will regret interfering."

Darius smiled for the first time. There was no warmth in it.

"Get in line."

Eira wrapped my bleeding hands in dark cloth. When her fingers brushed the edge of the silver light, she flinched. I saw it. So did Darius.

He asked quietly, "How long?"

Eira answered even quieter.

"If that is what I think it is, it should not exist at all."

The mark pulsed once beneath my skin.

Across the clearing, Riven's face turned white.