Chapter 1: Rejected
The bond snapped into place the moment our eyes met.
I felt it—the ancient magic of the Moon Goddess connecting my soul to his. My wolf, Lyra, howled with joy inside me. After twenty-three years of loneliness, of being packless and unwanted, I had found him.
My mate.
Ethan Blackwood, Alpha of the Blood Moon Pack, the most powerful werewolf on the West Coast.
But as I stood there, trembling with hope and desire, he looked at me like I was nothing.
"You," he spat, his silver eyes glinting with disgust. "You're not her."
And just like that, my mating ceremony became my rejection ceremony.
---
Three months later
"Touch your hair like she used to," Ethan commanded, his voice rough with whiskey and grief.
I hesitated, my fingers hovering near the dark waves that fell past my shoulders.
"NOW."
I flinched at his bark, quickly tucking a strand behind my ear—the way Seraphina Vale had done in all her photographs. The way Ethan's deceased true mate had looked in the dozens of portraits that still hung in his mansion.
The way I would never be.
"Better," he murmured, though his eyes remained distant, seeing someone who wasn't there. Someone who wasn't me.
He reached for me, and I forced myself not to pull away. His hands were warm but impersonal, roaming my body with mechanical precision. There was no passion in his touch, only desperation—the desperate need to feel something he'd lost three years ago.
"Say my name," he whispered against my neck. "Say it like she did."
"Ethan," I breathed, hating myself for the tremor in my voice. "My Alpha."
He stilled.
Then, with a growl of frustration, he pushed me away.
"Wrong." He turned his back, running a hand through his dark hair. "Seraphina never called me that. She called me... she called me..."
His voice broke, and I watched his shoulders shake with silent grief.
I should have felt sympathy. The Moon Goddess knew I'd experienced enough loss in my life to understand his pain. My parents killed by hunters when I was twelve. My original pack destroyed in a territorial dispute. Years as a rogue, barely surviving, until fate led me to this moment.
To this man.
To this hell.
But as I pulled my dress back into place, I couldn't find any compassion in my heart. Only the hollow ache of knowing that I—Ava Thorne, daughter of warriors, survivor of the Shadow Creek m******e—had been reduced to a replacement part for a dead woman.
"Get out," Ethan said, not turning around. "I can't look at you right now."
I didn't argue. I never argued.
I simply walked to the door, my bare feet silent on the cold marble floor.
"Ava."
I paused, hand on the doorknob, my heart leaping with pathetic hope.
"Don't come back tonight," he said. "I need to be alone."
The hope died, as it always did.
"As you wish, Alpha."
