The Rejected Omega is the Moon Goddess's Heir

Chapter 5

Nash’s pov

I woke to an empty riverbank and told myself it didn't matter, I'd marked her so that means she was mine forever.

Wherever she'd gone, the bond would hold, and I'd find her the second I had the chance to look. The grass beside me was bent from her laying over them. I pressed my palm flat against it like that would tell me anything useful about where she'd gone.

Wylie tracked me down an hour later, her face tight with relief she was clearly saving up to spend on chewing me out for going off alone.

You went off the plan." She didn't wait for an explanation. "I circle back and you're just gone. What happened?"

"I had to, some filthy rogues cornered a woman near the stream on Twilight land." I explained, watching her face shift from irritation to anger. "I put them down."

Her eyebrows drew together. "What woman?”

"I don't know. I didn't get her name." I dragged a hand through my hair, still trying to make sense of it myself. "Wylie, I marked her."

She went still, the last of the irritation draining out of her expression, replaced by a sharp, careful attention I rarely saw from her. "You what?"

"I marked her." Saying it out loud made it feel more real and more impossible at the same time. "The second I got close to her, I knew she was my mate. The bond hit me like nothing I've ever felt before I even had her name."

"Nash." She said it like a warning, like she already knew where this was going before I did. "You marked a stranger you can't even identify?"

"She's not a stranger. She's my mate." I held her gaze, daring her to argue with that. "I know how it sounds but you have to trust me on this.”

She exhaled slowly, her mouth pressing into a thin line while she worked through it. "Okay. Where is she now?"

"Gone. I woke up on that riverbank and she wasn't there."

That pulled her attention up, her eyes narrowing on me. "Gone like she needed space, or gone like she's hurt?"

"I don't know." That was the part that scared me most, saying it out loud to her. "I thought the bond would point me straight to her. So far it's telling me nothing."

We crossed back into Red Moon territory by mid-morning, and the second my boots hit familiar ground, I reached for the bond, trying to trace it back to her the way every mated wolf could trace a mark. Nothing came. No direction, no pull, no sense of her at all, just a hollow where the connection should have been humming steady in my chest. I tried again standing in the courtyard, then again in my own quarters, and both times I got the same silence staring back at me.

"That's not possible," I said, more to myself than to Wylie. "I marked her."

"Maybe it's still too new." Wylie didn't sound convinced of her own suggestion. "Give it a day."

"I don't have a day." I snapped, pacing to the window and back before I trusted myself to say the rest of it evenly. "Put the word out. Tell every scout and messenger we've got to search for her."

Wylie's brow furrowed, already turning it over. "Looking for what, a mark? Those aren't easy to spot from across a room."

"Any woman with a fresh mark near the border. Doesn't matter which territory." I stopped in front of her, holding her gaze so she'd understand I meant it. "The second someone spots her, I want word brought straight to me."

"That's a lot of ground to cover on a guess." She wasn't arguing, just laying it out plain, the way she always did before agreeing to a reckless plan. "Could be weeks and it could be nothing."

"I don't care how long it takes." My voice came out rougher than I meant it to. "I don't care how many territories they have to search. Find her."

Wylie studied me for a long moment, and whatever she saw in my face must have settled it, because she gave a short nod instead of pushing back further. "I'll have it moving by tonight."

She hesitated a little before speaking up again.

"You know the marriage alliance with Twilight goes through in two weeks," she said. "You're expected at their mating ball. The whole point of the alliance falls apart if you don't show, Nash." She crossed her arms, "Are you sure chasing down a mate you can't even trace is worth risking that right now, on top of everything else sitting on your plate?"

"I'm not choosing between them." I growled lowly, "I'll go to the ball and I'll do whatever the contract requires of me. But I'm not giving up on her because the timing's inconvenient. She's mine, Wylie. That doesn't stop mattering just because a treaty needs signing."

"I didn't say it didn’t matter." She held up both hands, backing off. "I just don't want you tearing yourself in half trying to be in two places at once."

Wylie didn't argue further, though I could tell she wanted to. She left me alone in my quarters with a headache building behind my eyes.

I sat on the edge of my bed and reached up to unclasp the wolf fang necklace I'd worn since I was twelve, the leather worn soft from years against my skin, and set it in the drawer of my nightstand instead of putting it back on. I couldn't explain why. It just felt wrong to wear it while I couldn't find the one thing I needed most.

Chloe’s pov

Edith swept into my room without knocking, a dress draped over her arm in a shade of deep red.

"You'll wear this to the mating ball." She dropped it across my bed like she was doing me a favor. "Try to look presentable for once. Who knows, maybe the Red Moon Alpha will fall for you."

I grabbed the dress and threw it straight to the floor. "If you like that wolf so much, you can marry him."

Her mouth twitched, "I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I've got my own Alpha waiting. I'm going to be Luna of Twilight. Hudson promised me that himself."

The words made my heart break a little, and I hated how much they still had the power to hurt after everything else she'd already taken. I hated her more in that moment than I'd hated anyone in my entire life, and before I could think better of it, I lunged at her, my hand curling into a fist.

She caught my wrist before I got close, her grip closing hard enough to bruise, and shoved me back onto the bed with a strength I didn't have anything to match. I struggled against her hold, twisting and pulling, but it was useless, my wolfless body no match for hers, and she pinned me down without even breaking a sweat, her knee braced against the mattress beside my hip.

"Why?" I asked, my voice cracking under the weight of nineteen years I'd never let myself ask out loud. "Why have you hated me since we were kids? What did I ever do to you?"

She tilted her head, considering the question like it genuinely puzzled her that I'd bothered asking.

“Are you stupid?” She sneered.

She let go of my wrists and stepped back, straightening her dress like nothing had happened, while I lay there on the bed with my whole chest hollowed out. My wrist throbbed where her fingers had dug in, already darkening toward a bruise I'd have to hide under a sleeve tomorrow.

I stared at Edith who had hatred burning in her eyes, "There's no why, Chloe. You're a lowly bastard. Good for nothing. I don't like you, and you shouldn't even be in this house."