MATED TO NOTHING

CHAPTER 3:THE REJECTION

He did not come to her that night.

Ciara sat by the river until her fingers went numb and the moon traced a silver path across the water. She waited. She did not know if she was waiting for a sign, a message, a shadow moving through the trees.But she waited for something,anything.

Nothing came.

The bond pulsed in her chest like a second heartbeat. Muffled now but yet present. Always present.

She touched her sternum through the gray dress. Her skin was warm. Almost hot. As if something beneath it was waking up.

No, she told herself. I imagined it. He looked at me by accident. Every Alpha looks at every outcast. It's curiosity nothing more.

But she didn't believe it.

And when she finally returned to Shadowfang's cluster of tents, her mother was waiting.

Lena stood in the entrance of their tent, arms crossed, face unreadable.

"I told you to stay inside."

"I needed air."

"You needed to not be seen."

Ciara pushed past her into the tent. "Too late for that."

Lena followed her inside. Pulled the tent flap closed. The candle flickered between them.

"What happened?" Lena asked.

"Nothing."

"Ciara."

"Nothing happened." Ciara sat on her pallet. Stared at the candle flame. "Kael Draven looked at me. From across the meadow. That's all."

"That's not all." Lena knelt in front of her. "I can smell it on you. The bond."

"There is no bond. I don't have a wolf. I can't have a mate."

Lena's jaw tightened. "The bond doesn't care about wolves."

"Then what does it care about?"

Lena didn't answer. Instead, she reached into the chest of herbs and pulled out a small dark brown leather pouch,tied with a black cord that looked old even older than the tent, older than the gathering, older than anything Ciara had ever touched.

"Wear this," Lena said. "Around your neck. Don't take it off."

"What is it?"

"Something that will hide you."

"Hide me from what?"

Lena pressed the pouch into Ciara's hand. The leather was warm.

"From him," Lena said. "From everyone. From the thing inside you that's starting to wake up."

Ciara stared at the pouch. "You've had this the whole time."

"Yes."

"And you never gave it to me before."

"No." Lena's voice was quiet. "Because I was hoping you'd never need it."

A howl rose outside. Long and low. The signal that the gathering was about to begin.

"Put it on," Lena said.

Ciara lifted the pouch over her head. It settled against her sternum, warm and heavy. The bond dimmed, not disappeared, but muffled. Like someone had thrown a blanket over a fire.

"Stay here," Lena said. "I'll be back before dawn."

She left.

Ciara sat alone in the dark, one hand pressed to the pouch, and waited for a future she hadn't asked for.

Kael Draven did not sleep either.

He sat in his tent,larger than the others, draped in black, furnished with a collapsible table and a map of the territories and stared at the fire.

Theron stood by the entrance. Guarding.

"You're going to reject her," Theron said.

It wasn't a question.

Kael didn't look up. "Yes."

"Publicly?"

"The law requires it."

"The law requires a lot of things." Theron stepped closer. "It doesn't require you to be cruel."

Kael's jaw tightened. "What do you want me to do? Accept her? Take her home? Make her my Luna?" He laughed a short, bitter sound escaping his mouth. "She has no wolf, Theron. No power or status. My pack would eat her alive."

"She has the bond."

"The bond is not enough."

Theron was quiet for a long moment. Then: "Is that what you told yourself when you killed your uncle? That the bond wasn't enough? That family wasn't enough? That anything other than power was weakness?"

Kael stood.

The temperature in the tent dropped. Frost spiderwebbed across the canvas walls.

"Careful," Kael said.

Theron held his ground. "I've been careful for six years. I've watched you build an empire. I've watched you destroy everyone who stood in your way. And now I'm watching you destroy yourself because you're afraid of a girl who weighs a hundred pounds and can't even shift."

"I am not afraid."

"You're terrified." Theron's voice was quiet. Steady. "Not of her but what she means. The bond chose her for a reason, Kael. The bond doesn't make mistakes."

"The bond made a mistake."

"Did it?"

Kael turned away. Stared at the map on the table. At the territories he'd conquered. At the borders he'd fortified. At the empire he'd built out of blood and will and the absolute certainty that he was right about everything.

"She's from Shadowfang," he said. "The smallest pack in the region. Her mother is a healer with no wolf. Her father is unknown. She has no status, no power, no…"

"You're listing her weaknesses," Theron interrupted. "Because you're trying to convince yourself that she's not worth it. But you wouldn't need convincing if you actually believed it."

Kael's hands curled into fists.

"I am rejecting her," he said. "At dawn. In front of the packs. And then I am walking away."

Theron nodded slowly. "And if the bond doesn't break because of her lack of wolf?"

"It will break."

"And if it doesn't?"

Kael looked at his Beta. His oldest friend. The only person in the world who could speak to him like this and live.

"Then I will break it myself," Kael said. "By any means necessary."

Dawn came cold and gray.

Ciara stood in the center of the gathering field with her mother's dust still on her fingers. The pouch was gone. She had woken to find it shredded beside her pallet torn apart during the night, by something she didn't remember leaving a visible black mark on her chest.

She had tried to cover it with her hand. It hadn't helped.

The crowd had gathered in a wide circle around the central fire pit. Thousands of wolves. Alphas in their thrones. Betas at their sides. Warriors with their arms crossed. Packs huddled together like spectators at an execution.

Kael stood ten feet away.

He looked different in the morning light.The vulnerability she had glimpsed the night before, if it had ever been there at all was gone.

"Ciara Dale of Shadowfang," he said. His voice carried across the field without effort. "Step forward."

She stepped.

"By the laws of our kind, when the bond is recognized between two wolves, it must be accepted or rejected. Freely and Publicly. Without coercion."

His silver eyes met hers.

"I reject this bond."

The words hit her like stones.

She felt something crack inside her. Not her heart,something deeper.The thing that had been sleeping beneath her skin, the thing her mother had tried to hide with the pouch, the thing that had been waiting for eighteen years to wake up.

The rejection didn't kill it.

The rejection angered it.

Ciara's hands shook. Her vision blurred. But she did not fall. She did not cry. She looked at Kael Draven,the most feared Alpha alive, the man who had just humiliated her in front of thousands of wolves and she felt something she had never felt before.

Hunger.

Not for him.

For power.

"You're wrong," she said.

The crowd went silent.

Kael's eyes narrowed. "What?"

"You're wrong about me." Her voice was steady and clear She didn't know where the words were coming from, but they kept coming. "You think I'm nothing because I don't have a wolf. You think I'm weak because I can't shift. You think rejecting me will make me disappear."

She stepped closer. Close enough to see the pulse beating in his throat.

"But I won't disappear," she said. "I'll change. And when I do, you'll remember this moment. You'll remember looking at me and seeing nothing. Because I will be the nothing that haunts you."

Kael's mask cracked. Just for a second.

Then he turned away.

"The rejection stands," he announced to the crowd. "The bond is severed. This girl is nothing to me."

He walked away.

And Ciara stood in the center of the circle, alone, and felt the thing inside her open its eyes.