The Alpha's Forsaken mate

Episode1

Thea's POV

"If you know you can't work here, then don't come here and cause a nuisance."

My aunt's voice cut across the preparation room sharp enough to make two of the attendants flinch at the same time.

The girl she was yelling at looked like she was fighting the urge to disappear onto the floor, holding an empty tray against her chest with both hands while my aunt stood in front of her looking like someone had personally insulted her by existing.

I kept my head down and focused on arranging the glasses in front of me.

At every event, my aunt would find someone with less authority and use them to show her dominance over the room. Today that someone was a nervous attendant who had apparently set up the wrong type of glasses on the wrong table. A mistake that had earned her three minutes of public humiliation in front of everyone preparing for the summit.

"Move her to the back," my aunt said finally, waving her hand in the girl's direction like she was shooing something away. Then her eyes swept the room and landed on me.

"Thea. Front hall. You're on drinks duty. Try not to embarrass me."

With shaky hands, I picked up my tray and went.

The peace summit between the Silvermoon and Nightshade packs was the kind of event that filled every room with tension. Both packs seated on opposite sides, wolves who had spent years viewing each other as enemies, now expected to make polite conversation over expensive food and act like none of that history existed.

I had no opinion on the politics of it. I never did. Politics in Silvermoon had never once worked in my favor, and I had learned a long time ago that the best thing I could do at any pack event was to be invisible and useful at the same time.

I moved through the hall with my tray, offering drinks to wolves who barely bothered to look at me or notice my presence, which was exactly how I preferred it. The wolf less girl who lived at her aunt's house and served drinks at pack functions was not someone anyone needed to look at closely.

I had almost made it to the far side of the room when everything changed.

It came without warning, a pull so sudden and so specific that my feet actually stopped moving before my mind had caught up with why. My heart started beating really fast, a recognition that did not come from my eyes or my ears but from somewhere deeper, some part of me that apparently knew something I didn't.

If I had a wolf I would have been able to understand what exactly the feeling was, but I think they call it the mate bond.

My eyes moved across the room on their own.

He was standing near the far wall with the Nightshade delegation around him, tall and broad-shouldered, dark hair, the kind of physical presence that reorganized a room just by existing in it. He was mid-conversation with one of his senior wolves when it happened, and I watched the exact moment it hit him because he went completely still in a way that had nothing to do with the conversation he was in the middle of.

His head turned, and our eyes met across the full width of the hall.

For a few seconds, the noise of the room, the voices and the movement and the clinking of glasses, all of it fell away completely, and there was nothing except the pull in my chest and the man standing across from me who I had never seen before in my life and who my entire body was responding to like I had known him forever.

Kade Blackthorn. The Alpha of the Nightshade Pack. I recognized him now that I was looking properly, had seen his name in pack mails my aunt left unattended on the kitchen table, heard wolves speak about him in the way they spoke about someone whose opinion genuinely mattered.

He was my fated mate.

The certainty of it was unlike anything I had ever experienced, not a guess or a hope but knowledge that settled into my bones like it had always been there and was only now being acknowledged.

I watched him cross the room.

I watched the way people moved without being asked as he came through them, the natural clearing that happened around an Alpha who was used to having space made for him. He stopped a few feet in front of me and the pull in my chest intensified to something I had to actively manage not to show on my face.

Up close, he was even more overwhelming, grey eyes that were currently moving over me in a slow and deliberate way. He was scanning my body, checking me out.

A frown appeared on his face and I knew exactly what he was seeing.

The scar that ran along my jaw from a childhood incident my aunt had never bothered getting properly treated. The plain serving uniform that marked me clearly as someone here to work, not attend. The absence of any wolf energy coming off my body, something every wolf in a room could sense, the specific blankness of someone who had no wolf to feel.

I watched it all register in his eyes.

I watched something move across his face as he took in each detail.

He moved closer to me till he was standing directly in front of me. At this point, a few people were already looking at us wondering what was going on, while someone already knew what was happening.

He straightened, and when he spoke his voice carried the full weight of Alpha authority behind it, the kind of voice that was designed to be heard clearly by everyone in a room, and the surrounding room went quiet.

He looked directly at me, ensuring his voice carried across the room.

"You can't be my mate. Why would the moon goddess give me a wolf less for a mate?” he said, anger already building up in his voice. “I reject it, you can't be my mate, you are unworthy of an Alpha," he said.

He didn't yell, but he spoke with a sharp, deliberate clarity that sliced through the crisp air. Every syllable was perfectly formed, ringing out so loudly that members of both packs heard the insult echo against the wall. The hall went completely silent.

I stood with my tray in both hands and felt the bond that had just begun to break from.

I held my chest, my eyes stung with tears.

Every face in the room turned toward me.