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

Chapter 2: The Mark They Wanted

The guards dragged me out of the Moon Hall before the pack decided whether to laugh, whisper, or pretend nothing had happened. Their fingers dug into my arms hard enough to bruise. My shoes scraped over silver tile, then wood, then the colder stone beyond the ceremony doors.

I twisted once to look back. Kael stood where I had left him, black jacket perfect, Silver Ash crest bright over the heart he had just used against me. His eyes met mine for half a second. He did not move.

Seraphine did. She followed with one hand pressed to the silver leaves at her throat, but she was not looking at my face or at the guards hurting me. She watched the burning line under my skin with a hungry kind of focus that made my stomach turn.

"Where are you taking me?" My voice cracked around the bond pain. "Alpha Riven?"

Riven walked ahead of us, formal cloak snapping behind him. "To be healed."

Maren made a small sound. Riven's head turned just enough for the old healer to shut her mouth.

Healed should have meant clean beds, bitter tea, and Maren's wrinkled hands checking my pulse. Instead, the silver fire under my collarbone throbbed, and something deep in my chest stirred with a thought too rough to be mine.

This is not safe.

I sucked in a breath. My wolf had never given me words before.

The guards shoved me through a side corridor used by healers and servants. The music faded behind stone. We passed the real infirmary, with its rows of narrow beds and herb cabinets, and kept walking.

"The healing room is back there," I said.

No one answered. Maren took a key from her waist chain and unlocked a black iron door at the end of the hall. Cold air rolled out, damp and stale, the kind that lived under locked floors.

The room beyond was round and windowless. Seven moonstone lamps sat in the floor around a circle drawn in white powder. At the center stood a silver basin on a narrow table. Beside it lay a curved moonstone knife.

My mouth went dry. Whatever this was, it was not healing.

Seraphine entered behind us. She had taken off her silk gloves. "Is it ready?"

Not whether I was all right. Not whether I would survive. Ready.

Riven stopped beside the basin. "It opened early. We proceed before midnight."

"Father," Seraphine said, and now her voice trembled, "you said the rejection would only weaken her."

"It did." Riven looked at me as if he were checking a tool for cracks. "Enough."

The guards forced me to my knees at the edge of the circle. Pain shot up my legs when they hit the floor. I tried to rise, but one guard pressed down on my shoulder.

"Do not damage her chest," Maren snapped.

Her chest. The way she said it told me everything I needed to know. I had stopped being Elara the moment the mark showed through my skin.

Kael stepped into the doorway and stayed outside the circle.

"What is this?" I asked him.

His jaw flexed. "It is pack business."

Pack business. My rejection, my pain, my body, all wrapped in two clean words so he would not have to look at what they meant.

Maren knelt in front of me and reached for the little silver pendant at my throat. I jerked back. "Don't touch it."

She paused. Riven laughed once. "Still attached to your protection charm?"

My fingers closed around the pendant. I had worn it since I was five. Maren fastened it after one of my fevers and told me it would keep my weak wolf calm. She said it was why I survived winters, training injuries, and the monthly sickness that came with the bitter tea she made me drink.

Protection. I had believed that word because the alternative was too ugly for a child to hold.

Maren would not meet my eyes.

"It was never for protection," I said.

Seraphine smiled. "You truly did believe everything."

Maren pulled the chain. The pendant snapped free.

Pain tore through me so sharply I screamed. The silver line beneath my skin flared from collarbone to shoulder, branching bright and wrong. Every moonstone lamp in the floor went white.

Seraphine gasped and stepped forward. Riven caught her wrist. "Not yet."

Maren dropped the pendant into the basin. It hissed, and black smoke curled from the silver as if the charm had been hiding rot for years.

My wolf shoved against my ribs.

Run.

This time I heard her clearly. Run, Elara.

Maren lifted the moonstone knife. "Hold her left arm."

The guard on my right shifted to grab my wrist. For that one heartbeat, his weight lifted from my shoulder. I saw the basin, the broken pendant steaming inside it, the powder circle under my knees, Seraphine leaning forward, and Kael standing in the doorway doing nothing.

They had taken my rank, my mate, my name before I knew any of them could be stolen. They were not taking whatever this was too.

I slammed both hands into the silver basin.

Pain ripped up my palms, but the basin toppled. Blackened water and smoking silver splashed across the white circle. The powder hissed, flashed, and broke apart in bright patches. Maren cried out. Seraphine stumbled back, her perfect dress catching a stripe of black water across the hem.

"Elara!" Kael shouted.

Now he remembered my name.

I snatched the broken pendant from the floor. Its edge sliced my fingers, but I drove it into the hand of the guard reaching for me. He roared. I ran badly, knocking my hip into the table and nearly falling at the door, but I ran.

Riven's command cracked behind me. "Stop her!"

My body tried to obey. Every wolf in Silver Ash was raised under Alpha command, and my knees buckled before I reached the corridor. The mark burned. Selene growled one hard word inside me.

No.

Riven's command broke for just long enough. I lurched through the doorway and ran down the servants' corridor with blood on my hands and rejection tearing at my chest.

Boots hit stone behind me. Ahead, the passage split left toward the kitchens and right toward the outer yard. I chose right because the kitchen doors were heavy and the yard had walls, posts, shadows, places to trip and hide and maybe keep moving.

Cold night air slapped my face when I burst outside. Shouts rose behind me. I crossed the yard past the training posts, past the kennels, past the low wall where Omega children were told never to climb.

I climbed it.

My dress tore. My palms slipped on cold stone. A wolf howled behind me. I dropped on the other side and hit the ground hard enough to knock the breath from my chest.

The northern forest waited beyond the low field.

No Silver Ash wolf entered those trees after moonrise. That was Blackthorn border, where trespassers disappeared and the monster Alpha ruled. I looked back once. Torches flared in the yard, and Kael stood at the wall, pale beneath the moon.

For one second, I thought he might follow.

Then Riven's voice rang out. "Bring her back alive. The mark is open."

Alive was all they needed me to be.

I turned and ran into Blackthorn forest.

Branches scraped my face. Roots caught my feet. Silver Ash smoke thinned behind me, replaced by cold pine, wet earth, and the sharp animal smell of territory that did not belong to my pack. My strength failed at the edge of a ravine dusted with thin snow, and I stumbled to my knees.

A growl rolled from the trees ahead, low enough to stop my breath.

I lifted my head.

A black wolf stepped out of the dark, larger than any wolf I had ever seen. Blood dripped from my hands onto the snow-dusted ground. The wolf lowered its head and breathed in.

Then a man's voice said from the shadows behind it, "No Omega carries blood like that."