BOUND AFTER THE REJECTION

Nobody tells you a rejection sounds like silence first. Ten minutes earlier, I had been on my knees picking glass out of a puddle of red wine, and the worst thing in my life was Mirelle. "Anna! The wine is empty." "I can see that." "Then why are you still standing here?" I took the bottle out of her hand before she could make a show of it. "Going." "The Alpha will be here any minute. I won't have you embarrassing us again." Again. I'd dropped one tray in two years, and she kept it like a coin in her pocket. I swallowed what I wanted to say and went to the kitchen. Fresh jug, full bottle, back out. My feet had been hurting since six that morning, and my dress had a tear down the back that I'd fixed with a safety pin. Tonight was supposed to be a celebration. Vic Blackwood, our Alpha, was home from the border talks, and Blackridge was drinking to it. So wine was a matter of pack security. Fine. The hall looked beautiful, I'll give it that. Chandeliers, red roses in glass vases, a band by the stairs playing something quick enough to make the young wolves bounce on their toes. I'd watched a hundred parties like this from the edges. I knew exactly where the shadows were thick enough to stand in. I'd also never been a guest at one. When you're wolfless, the pack doesn't invite you to the part where people find their mates. Dr. Hale told me when I was sixteen. He'd listened to my heart, sniffed my wrist like I was a bad cheese, and told the pack's medical officer what he'd told them when I was a baby. Nothing in there. No wolf. Nobody looked surprised, least of all me. I moved down the long table filling glasses. A man held his cup out without looking at me. Another asked for more before I'd finished pouring the first. Somebody behind me yelled my name, and I turned too fast. My elbow caught a chair. The bottle left my hand. It hit the stone and went off like a gunshot. Wine soaked my skirt. A shard bit into my ankle. A few guests jumped, and then someone laughed, and then more of them did. "Oh, wonderful," Mirelle called across the room. "What else are you good for?" I crouched, took a cloth, and started picking up the big pieces. My hands were shaking. Embarrassment, mostly. The rest was knowing Mirelle would find a way to make me pay for it. That was when the room changed. It didn't go quiet all at once. It thinned out, voice by voice, like someone turning down a dial. A guard at the doors said, "The Alpha." The band stopped halfway through a bar. I looked up. Vic Blackwood stood under the archway in a black suit with his collar open and a thin scar running from his ear down into it. He wasn't old, not by Alpha standards, but nobody who'd watched him run this pack for six years mistook him for green. I'd only ever seen him from far away. Across a training field once, down a corridor twice. He'd never said a word to me. There was no reason he would. His eyes crossed the hall and landed on me. I dropped my head and went back to the glass. It didn't help. I could feel him looking, the way you feel sun through a window. And then I was aware of everything, which made no sense. The roses. The smoke in the fireplace. The sour sweet smell of the wine on my dress. And underneath all of it, something I'd never smelled in my life and somehow recognized anyway. Cedar. Rain on warm stone. I breathed in before I could stop myself. My heart did something strange, a hard stumble and then a run. Heat spread behind my ribs like I'd swallowed a lit match. I wanted to stand up. I wanted to walk toward him. That scared me worse than the glass had. When I finally stood, he was already crossing the hall, and people were stepping out of his way like water. "Alpha," I said. My voice came out smaller than I wanted. "I'm sorry. I'll have this cleaned up." He didn't answer. He just looked at me, like he was trying to place a word he'd forgotten. "What's your name?" "Anna." "All of it." "Anna Vale." Something went across his face, fast. His jaw clenched. His eyes flicked toward the fireplace, where Marcus, his Beta, had been laughing with a guest. I saw Marcus hear my surname. I saw him stop smiling. I looked between them. "Have we met?" "No." "Then I don't know why you're looking at me like that." It was out before I could grab it. Behind me, Mirelle made a noise like a kettle. But Vic didn't shout. He stepped closer, close enough that the cedar smell wrapped all the way around me. "Look at me," he said, quietly. I did. His eyes were the gray of old iron, and they weren't cold right now. They were something worse. They were lost. For one second he looked exactly as confused as I felt, and I realized his hand was trembling at his side. Then Marcus was there. He hadn't crossed the hall so much as appeared, one broad hand on Vic's shoulder, his mouth near Vic's ear. I couldn't hear what he said. I only saw the effect. Vic's face closed like a door. He straightened. He turned to the room. "Everyone, listen." The hall went dead. "I, Vic Blackwood, Alpha of Blackridge, reject Anna Vale as my mate." I didn't understand the words. Not at first. They sat in the air like a language I'd never studied. Then the pain landed. It tore through my chest so hard that I grabbed the table. My breath wouldn't come. Something I'd had for maybe four minutes, something I hadn't even known I wanted, was being ripped out through my ribs. The floor tilted. All I could hear was my own heartbeat and, far off, voices. "The wolfless girl?" "Of course he refused her." "She really thought she'd be Luna." I hadn't thought anything. I'd thought wine and glass and don't cry. I made myself look up. Vic was watching me. His fists were clenched, and a muscle jumped in his jaw. For a moment I would have sworn he was in pain too. Then he looked away. "Take her out." A guard took my arm. I pulled free. "I can walk." The guard looked at Vic. Vic gave the smallest nod. I picked my cloth up off the floor, because apparently that was the thing I was going to do. Blood had started running into my shoe. There was still a sliver of glass in my hem. Nobody moved to help. I turned back to him once. "Why?" It came out so quietly that I didn't know if anyone heard. Vic did. "You don't belong beside me." "I never asked to." "Then we understand each other." Four words, and they hurt more than the rejection had. He wasn't being cruel, and I think that was why. He said it like he was reading it off a wall. I walked out between the guard and the shut doors. Marcus watched me go. He wasn't smiling. The courtyard air was freezing. I crossed it with my head high, because that was the only thing I still owned, and slipped in through the servants' door. The music started again before I reached my room. Of course it did. I shut the door and leaned against it. I don't know how long. Long enough for my knees to give. Eventually I sat on the bed and pulled off my shoe. The cut was bad. I'd bled through my stocking. I wiped at it with the wet cloth and looked closer. There wasn't a cut. There was a thin pink line, and then, as I watched, not even that. The skin pulled together like a zipper closing. I pressed my thumb against it, waiting for the sting. Nothing. "That's not how that works," I whispered. I got up and went to the little mirror over the basin. The girl in it was pale, with wine in her hair and red eyes. I splashed my face and said, "You're fine," to her. She didn't believe me. I tried again. "You will be fine." Something moved under my ribs. Not my heart. Lower, and slower. It felt like something big turning over in its sleep. I froze. The room was exactly as I'd left it. The window was shut, the door was shut, and no one was there. Then a voice, not out loud, not mine, so faint I almost took it for my own thought, said one word. Run. I stood in the middle of that tiny room and understood that I'd spent eight een years being told there was nothing inside me. Whatever had just spoken disagreed