MATED TO TWO RIVAL ALPHAS

Not you

CHAPTER TWO - Not You

SHERRY.

Eric’s eyes stay on mine. The room has gone so quiet I can hear someone shift their weight near the tables.

I still wait for him to take it back. To laugh. To say the bond shocked him the same way it shocked me. Maybe he needs a second. Maybe the words came out wrong.

He does none of those things.

“Eric,” I say, and my voice sounds thinner than I want it to. “You feel it. I know you do.”

He looks at me the way someone looks at a problem that will not leave on its own. The cup is still loose in his fingers. He sets it down on the nearest table without glancing away from me.

“I feel it,” he says. “That doesn’t mean I want it.”

The hope that had been holding me upright starts to thin. I take one more step because the bond is still pulling, still insisting that if I just get closer, everything will settle into place.

“We’re mates.”

“I know what we are.” His tone is flat. “I also know what you’re not.”

Viktor reaches us first. He positions himself slightly between us, one hand out like he can still stop whatever is about to happen. “Eric. Think before you open your mouth again.”

Eric doesn’t look at him. He keeps his attention on me. “I have thought about it. I’ve been thinking about it since the second the bond hit.”

A few people near the front lean closer. Someone whispers my name. Hazel stands a little behind Eric’s shoulder, her expression carefully blank, but her eyes are bright with something that is not sympathy.

I try again. “We can figure this out. We don’t have to decide everything tonight.”

“There’s nothing to figure out.” Eric’s voice stays even, almost patient, like he is explaining something simple to a child. “A Beta needs a mate who can stand next to him. Someone who can handle the border runs, the fights, the decisions that come with the rank. Look at you, Sherry. You spent half the night hiding behind a pillar with a book. You flinch when people laugh too loud. You have never once stepped onto a training field without someone watching to make sure you don’t get hurt.”

The words land one after another. Each one finds the exact place that already knows they are true.

“That’s not fair,” I say.

“It’s accurate.” He crosses his arms. “I need someone who won’t become a liability the first time things get hard. You’re my best friend’s little sister. I’ve watched you for years. You’re quiet. You’re careful. You’re soft. That might work for someone else. It does not work for me.”

Viktor’s voice drops into a growl. “Watch how you speak to her.”

Eric finally glances at him. “You want me to lie? Pretend the bond is enough? It’s not. I won’t spend the rest of my life protecting someone who can’t protect herself. That’s not what a Beta does.”

The silence around us has weight now. A few older wolves look away. A younger female near the tables covers her mouth with her hand. Hazel’s mouth curves, just slightly, like she has been waiting for this exact outcome.

I hear myself say, “The Moon Goddess chose us.”

Eric lets out a short, humorless breath. “Then the Moon Goddess made a mistake.”

The formal words come next, clear and deliberate, loud enough for every wolf in the hall to hear.

“I, Eric, Beta of the Blood Moon Pack, reject you, Sherry of the Blood Moon Pack, as my fated mate.”

The bond does not break cleanly.

It tears.

Pain shoots through the very center of my chest, a sharp, profound pain that feels like a vital part has been yanked out. My lungs get so startled that they stop breathing. The whole room starts swaying, and I can barely hear my own gasp; it sounds so foreign. My knees touch the ground, and I have no idea about falling over. Two of my fingers are still on top of my sternum as if trying to protect whatever I have left.

My wolf makes a single broken sound and then goes quiet, smaller than she has ever been.

The hall noise returns in pieces. Someone gasps. A chair scrapes. Viktor is already kneeling beside me, one arm solid around my shoulders, trying to keep me upright.

“Sherry. Breathe. Look at me.”

I cannot look at him. I cannot look at anything except the floor. The stone is cold under my palms. My vision keeps narrowing and widening in waves.

Eric’s voice continues above us, calm and final. “The rejection is done. I stand by it.”

He turns away. Hazel steps in close to him, her hand finding his arm like she is the one who needs steadying. He does not push her off. He does not look back.

Viktor starts to rise, fury visible in the set of his shoulders, but another voice cuts across the space before he can speak.

“Get her out of here.”

My mother steps out of the crowd. Camilla’s face is composed, almost elegant, the same expression she wears when she is dealing with pack politics she finds distasteful. She does not look at the way I am still on the floor. She looks at the people watching us.

“Mother,” Viktor says, sharp.

“She has made enough of a spectacle.” Camilla’s tone is quiet but carries. “Begging in front of the entire pack. Crying on the floor for a Beta who has already made his choice. This is the Alpha’s family. We do not behave this way.”

I lift my head. For one second I wait for her to come closer, to put a hand on my shoulder, to say anything that sounds like she sees what just happened to me.

She does not move toward me.

“You have always been too soft,” she continues, still speaking more to the room than to me. “I told your father years ago that keeping you shielded would only make this worse. Now look. A public rejection. An embarrassment. Get her somewhere private before she makes it worse.”

Viktor’s arm tightens around me. “She is in pain. The bond just broke.”

“Then remove her from the hall so the rest of us can finish the celebration without this display.”

The words settle into the same place Eric’s did. I push against Viktor’s hold. He tries to keep me there, but I get my feet under me somehow. My legs feel unreliable. The pain in my chest is still spreading, a dull, heavy pressure that makes every breath shallow.

I do not look at Eric again. I do not look at my mother. I push through the nearest gap in the crowd. Bodies shift out of my way. Someone says my name. I do not answer.

Viktor calls after me once. I keep moving.

The double doors give under my hands. The night air outside is humid and thick, the way Florida nights always are, and it hits my face like a different kind of weight. I do not stop at the steps. I cross the open ground past the training yards, past the last of the pack houses, and keep going until the trees close in around me.

Only then do my legs give out.

I slide down against the base of a wide oak, the bark rough through the thin fabric of my dress. Dirt presses into my palms and the backs of my legs. The full moon filters through the canopy in broken pieces. Somewhere nearby a night insect starts up and stops again.

I press both hands over my face and let the sound out. It is not quiet. It scrapes my throat raw. The words Eric used keep turning over in my head, exact and clear.

Too small. Too fragile. A liability. Below his standards.

I remember the way he used to nod at me in the hallways when we were younger, polite and distant. I remember thinking those small acknowledgments meant something kinder than they did. I remember watching him from the edges of rooms and telling myself it was only curiosity.

It was never only curiosity.

My chest pain refuses to go away. It transforms into an ugly, dull pain that doesn't fade. My wolf is silent, so hidden that I almost forget she exists. Time goes by; I don't know if it was just a few minutes or more. Tears come out less and less since there is no more pain to express.

My breath attains a rhythm that is close to normal. I use the back of my hand to clean my tears and gaze at the moonlight filtered through the leaves. I do not want to be that girl who just cried silently on the floor of the pack house while everyone was watching.

I do not want to be the kind of person that others think of as too weak to be taken seriously anymore. The notion is tiny and trembling and almost scary because it is so well felt. I have no clue what the future holds. Still, one thing is clear to me is that I cannot remain the same person anymore.

The leaves rustle softly, and something is coming from my left. I freeze. Blood Moon territory scents diminish, and new strange, heavier, and wilder ones come. There is a pressure connected to these unfamiliar smells that none of the wolves I have ever seen was able to exert. It hangs over the small clearing like a held breath.

I slowly turn my head. Two red eyes are staring at me from the thick darkness between the trees. They don't come any closer.

They just stay there, calm and unblinking, as if they have long been waiting for me to see them.