Rejected at the Altar, Crowned in Blood

The altar stone was still warm from the day's sun when Liora Thorne stepped onto it barefoot. Three hundred wolves stood in a ring around her, shoulder to shoulder, torches burning along the tree line. Ironfang's whole pack had come to watch their Alpha take a mate. In a few minutes the moon would clear the pines, the bond would be sealed, and Liora would stop being the omega who scrubbed the training halls and become Luna. That was the plan. She had wanted it for two years, ever since the mark had burned onto her wrist and the pack learned that Dorian Blackthorn's fated mate was the girl whose wolf had never once spoken. Nobody had been happy about it. Liora hadn't cared. That first night, Dorian had looked at her across the great hall and something in his face had cracked open for half a second before he shut it again. She had lived on that half second for two years. Her dress was borrowed. Her palms were wet. She had practiced the vow all week in the washhouse, whispering it to a basin of gray water until the words stopped sounding like someone else's. I accept you. I choose you. I am yours. Even now they sat ready behind her teeth. Dorian waited at the center of the stone, tall and dressed in black, jaw locked tight. To one side of the altar sat the Council's witness in a carved chair, Elder Marek Voss, silver-haired, both hands folded over the head of a cane. He watched the way a man watches a card game he has already won. Behind Dorian's shoulder stood Tobias, the Beta, staring at the ground. And at the front of the crowd, in a white gown that cost more than Liora's whole life, stood Selene Ashgrove. Smiling. Something was off. Liora felt it in her stomach, the same sick roll she'd had all week. She had been dizzy at the washbasins, nauseous at the smell of the kitchens. She'd blamed nerves. "The moon is rising, Alpha," Voss said. "Speak the words." Dorian didn't move. "Dorian?" Liora whispered. The moon cleared the trees. Silver light spilled across the stone, and the mark on her wrist flared hot, reaching for him the way it had every day for two years. His own mark answered. She saw it glow through his sleeve. His eyes dropped to it. The crack opened again. She saw it, she swore she did. Then his face shut like a door. "I, Dorian Blackthorn, Alpha of the Ironfang Pack," he said, his voice flat and carrying, "reject you, Liora Thorne, as my mate and as my Luna." Nobody breathed. Then the pain hit. She had heard stories about the rejection wound. Nobody had told her it felt like being sawn in half from the inside. The bond snapped. Something tore out of her chest, and she folded onto her knees on the stone with a sound she didn't recognize as her own. "No," she gasped. "Dorian, no, what are you...?" "I take Selene Ashgrove as my chosen mate," he went on, as if reading from a list, "and as Luna of Ironfang." Selene glided forward and slid her hand into his. Her eyes found Liora on the ground, and there was nothing in them. Not triumph. Not even pity. Just a woman checking that a job was done. The crowd found its voice. A laugh first, somewhere in the back. Then a whisper, then a ripple. I told you. Did she really think... An omega. Liora shoved herself up on shaking arms. Under her ribs, her wolf, the silent one, the one that hadn't spoken a word in twenty-two years, thrashed like an animal caught in a trap. "You felt it," she said to him. Her voice cracked in half. "I watched you feel it. Look at me. Tell me why." He looked. For one second, he really looked at her. The hand that wasn't holding Selene's trembled against his leg. "Because you are not worthy of this pack," Dorian said. "Guards." Voss smiled. Just a flicker, there and gone. Liora saw it and had no idea what it meant, and then two guards had her by the arms. They didn't drag her. That would have been kinder, somehow. They walked her through the ring of wolves at an even pace while three hundred people watched, and nobody looked away. A girl she had shared a bunk with spat at her feet. A boy she'd taught to braid rope turned his back. "Strip her mark," Selene's voice floated after them, sweet as honey. "The pack can't have it on display." The guards didn't take her to the gates. They took her to the old healer's cell behind the infirmary, a low stone room that smelled of smoke and dried herbs. Pack law, one of them muttered. A rejected she-wolf had to be examined for wound damage before she was cast out. Nobody wanted it said that Ironfang had left a woman bleeding on the road. They shoved her inside and bolted the door. Liora sat on the cot with her arms around her stomach and her teeth chattering. Her wrist burned where the mark had been. It was fading already, the bright line going gray, like ink in water. Don't cry, she told herself. Don't you dare cry in front of them. Nobody was in front of her. She cried anyway. She cried for the girl who had practiced the vow. She cried for the wolf under her ribs, which had never answered her once and was now howling anyway, silent and hollow, a sound she could feel in her teeth. Twenty-two years of nothing, and the first thing it chose to do was mourn. A key turned. The door opened on an old woman with a lantern, bent nearly double, a white braid hanging to her waist. Nessa, the pack healer. She had stitched Liora's knees when she was seven and never once called her an omega. "Let me see your wrist, child." "There's nothing to see." Liora laughed, a wet, ugly sound. "He took it. He took all of it." "Hush." Nessa set the lantern down and took Liora's wrist in dry, warm fingers. She frowned at the fading mark. Then, slowly, she pressed two fingers to the inside of Liora's wrist, and after that her palm flat against Liora's belly. She went very still. "How long since you bled?" Liora blinked. "I... what?" "Your last bleed, girl. When?" Liora counted. Her mouth went dry. Seven weeks. The night before the mating was announced, she had gone to Dorian's rooms, and for the first time he had stopped fighting it, and... "No," she whispered. Nessa closed her eyes. Her lips moved, counting something Liora couldn't hear. When she opened them again, they were wet. "Two heartbeats," the old woman said quietly. "Strong ones. Both his." The cell tilted. Liora pressed her hand to her stomach as if she could hold everything in, hold it steady. Two. In the same hour the father of her children had thrown her away in front of three hundred wolves. "Does he know?" she breathed. "Nobody knows." Nessa's grip tightened on her arm, hard enough to hurt. "And listen to me, Liora Thorne. Listen close. Nobody can know. Not tonight. Not one soul." "Why? He has a right..." "Because someone in this pack wanted you gone badly enough to make that boy break his own bond in front of the whole world," Nessa said. "And I don't think that someone wants you gone alone." Outside, a horn sounded. Long, low, mournful. The exile horn. Nessa let go of her arm and blew out the lantern.