The Last Ashford

Rejected

"Get away from me."

That's the first thing Kael Drummond ever said to me. Not hello. Not my name. Just three words, low and furious, like I was something he'd stepped in.

I'd spent the whole night carrying trays at the Alliance Gathering, the one night a year when Ashwood, Iron Claw, and whatever's left of the smaller packs all sit in the same hall and pretend to like each other. I wasn't there to be seen. Omegas never are. We're there to fill cups and clear plates and disappear into the walls when the important people talk.

I'd seen Kael walk in two hours earlier, and so had every other wolf in the room. You couldn't not see him. He moved like the floor owed him something. Black hair, gray eyes that didn't land on anyone for more than a second, a scar through one eyebrow that made him look like he'd already survived the worst thing that could happen to him. Iron Claw's future Alpha. The kind of wolf they wrote warnings about.

I was refilling wine glasses at the high table when it happened.

It wasn't romantic. I want to say that first, because every story makes it sound romantic, and it wasn't. It felt like getting hit by a truck made of heartbeat. One second I was pouring wine, and the next my chest seized so hard the bottle slipped in my hand. My wolf, who'd been quiet and tired my whole life, sat straight up inside me and howled.

Across the room, Kael went still.

I knew. Everyone in a hundred-foot radius knew, because wolves can smell a mate bond snap into place the way you can smell rain coming. The hall went quiet in that horrible, rippling way a room goes quiet right before something bad happens.

Kael crossed the floor like he was being pulled on a string he hated. He stopped in front of me. Up close, he was even bigger, and his eyes did something I didn't expect — they searched my face like he was hoping he was wrong.

"You," he said.

"Me," I said, because somebody had to say something, and my voice came out steadier than I felt.

I watched it happen in his face — the second he understood exactly who I was. Wren Calder. Omega rank. The girl who refilled his wine. Not an heiress. Not a warrior. Not anyone his father had ever mentioned as worth knowing.

His jaw went tight enough to c***k a tooth.

"This isn't — " He stopped. Started again. "There has to be a mistake."

"There's no mistake," Elder Roan said from somewhere behind me. Her voice cut through the silent room like a blade. I didn't turn to look at her. I couldn't take my eyes off Kael's face, watching him decide something.

He decided wrong.

"I reject you," he said. "I reject you as my mate, Wren Calder."

The pain came fast and ugly, like something tearing loose behind my ribs. I'd heard about rejection burn my whole life — heard the older wolves talk about it in low voices, like it was a ghost story — but knowing about a thing and feeling it rip through your chest are two very different things. I didn't make a sound. I want that on record. Two hundred wolves stared at me waiting for me to cry, and I didn't give them the show.

"Get away from me," he said again, quieter this time, like he was talking to himself as much as to me. Then he turned and walked out of the hall, and the whole pack watched him go, and then every single one of them turned to look at me instead.

Della was at the second table. I felt her eyes on me before I found them, and when I did, she wasn't horrified. She wasn't even surprised. She looked satisfied, like a woman watching a bill finally get paid.

Marcus, our Alpha — the closest thing to a father I had — wouldn't meet my eyes at all.

I set the wine bottle down very carefully, because my hands wanted to shake and I wasn't going to let them. "Excuse me," I said to no one, to everyone, and walked out the side door into the cold.

I made it as far as the tree line before my knees finally listened to what my chest was telling them. I sat down hard in the wet grass and put my head between my knees and breathed.

That's where Elder Roan found me.

I heard her before I saw her — slow steps, a cane she didn't really need tapping the ground. She didn't say anything comforting. She didn't say anything at all at first. She just grabbed my wrist, turned it over, and pushed my hair back from behind my ear with fingers that were shaking harder than mine.

She was staring at my birthmark. The thin crescent moon shape I'd had my whole life, the one Della always told me to keep covered because it was "unsightly."

Roan's face went the color of old paper.

"It can't be," she whispered. Not to me. To herself, like she was arguing with a memory. "You're supposed to be dead. You've been dead nineteen years."