The Alpha's Rejected Mate

What the Moonfire Remembers

Three months in, my hands finally stop shaking every time I call the moonfire. That doesn't mean I'm any good at it. Yarrow still puts me on my back at least twice a day, and my palms are covered in faint silver scars, like whatever's under my skin keeps trying to claw its way out through the same spots.

But the fire doesn't die the second I get scared or tired anymore.

It stays. Small. Steady. Mine.

"You're not ready," Yarrow says one evening, watching me hold a quiet flame of moonfire in my palm like it weighs nothing.

"But you're not nothing anymore either.

That's something."

"High praise," I mutter.

She almost smiles. That same night, the dream hits me for the first time. I'm standing in a clearing I've never seen, but it feels familiar in my bones.

Old.

Older than Ashwood. Older than anything I know. A woman stands in the center with her back to me, dark hair falling down her back. Before my brain catches up, my chest already knows her.

"Mom?"

She doesn't turn. The trees around her are burning, but it's not wild fire-it moves like it's listening to her. Silver light pours off her skin, easy and natural, just like Yarrow described.

Then, all at once, the light goes out. Voices rise up. Angry.

Loud.

Closing in. She finally turns, and for one awful second I see her face-my mother's face, much younger than I remember, twisted with pure terror. "Run," she says. Not to me.

To someone I can't see.

"Elena, run-" I wake up gasping, tangled in my blanket, moonfire flaring wild and bright in both palms, lighting up the whole hut. Yarrow's at my door before I can even call her name. She must have felt it.

"Tell me," she says. No softness. Just sharp urgency.

I tell her everything.

The burning trees, the voices, the terror on my mother's face, the way she screamed my name like a warning. Yarrow's expression goes flat and careful while I talk, which scares me more than anything. "That wasn't a dream," she says when I finish, lowering herself onto the stool across from me. "That was a memory.

One that belongs to you."

The room seems to tilt. "That's not possible. I wasn't even born-" "Weren't you?"

Her pale eyes lock onto mine. "The Nightshade line doesn't just pass down power, Elena. It passes down memory when the blood runs strong enough.

Your mother didn't only seal what you are.

She buried what happened to her mother before her." My hands won't stop trembling. I press them hard against my knees.

"That was my grandmother, wasn't it?

The last one who let the fire burn in the open."

Yarrow doesn't answer right away. That silence says enough. "Her name was Seraphine," she says at last, quiet, like speaking it hurts.

"She was stronger than your mother. Stronger than you are right now. And it didn't matter.

When a whole pack decides you're a threat instead of a blessing, numbers win."

"What happened to her?"

"She didn't survive the night you just saw." Yarrow's jaw tightens. "Your mother was eight years old.

She watched it from the trees.

After that, she spent the rest of her life making sure it never happened to you." I think about my mother-always quiet, always careful, always standing half a step behind everyone else. I used to think that was just who she was.

It wasn't. It was armor.

"Why now?"

I ask, my voice smaller than I want it to be.

"Three months of nothing, and suddenly I'm dreaming her memories?"

"Because you're getting stronger."

Yarrow looks at me, steady and unflinching. "The moonfire doesn't just wake up your power.

It drags up everything that was buried with it.

Every warning. Every reason your bloodline stayed hidden." She pauses, and for a second something close to pity crosses her face.

"You wanted the truth. This is what it looks like.

It doesn't come easy."

After she leaves, I sit there in the dark for a long time, staring at the faint silver lines on my palms.

Somewhere out there, a pack once decided a woman like me needed to die rather than be protected. And right now, back in Ashwood, an Alpha King who threw me away for being weak is sitting on a throne he doesn't realize is cracked. If they ever found out what I really am...

Would they protect me?

Or would it all just happen again?

I don't sleep the rest of the night. I sit at the edge of camp watching the trees, the moon hanging high and cold above them. Deep in my chest, underneath the fear, something colder and harder starts to settle.

If they come for me the way they came for her, I won't be standing there burning alone. I'll be ready.