Chapter 1: The One He Rejected
The first time she touched his hand, Floyd flinched.
It wasn’t because he hated her. It wasn’t even because he feared her. It was because something inside him — something ancient and aching — told him not to want her.
Not to need her.
And yet, Alpha Lyra stood there, holding his hand like it was the most natural thing in the world.
Her touch was warm. Gentle. Nothing like the stories told about her — the fierce daughter of the Bloodfang Alpha, the girl born with fire in her blood and power in her bones.
“Floyd,” she said softly, her thumb brushing over his knuckles. “You don’t have to run anymore. Not from me.”
He didn’t answer.
The silence between them stretched long, filled with the hum of night crickets and the distant howl of wolves echoing through the valley. He kept his eyes on the stars above, refusing to look at her, because he knew if he did… he might break.
He was just an omega. Cursed. Hidden. Half of his bloodline erased from the records to keep him safe.
But she had found him anyway.
“Why are you here, Lyra?” he finally asked, his voice almost a whisper.
“To protect you,” she said. “To tell you that I choose you.”
Floyd closed his eyes.
He had waited so long to hear those words. From anyone. He had spent years in the shadows, hearing whispers that he was too soft, too strange, too broken to ever be wanted by someone like her.
But now that she was here, offering herself to him, he couldn’t take it.
“You don’t know what you’re doing,” he said, pulling his hand away, slowly. “You think this is fate? That I’m yours? It’s not real.”
“Yes, it is,” she insisted. “I feel it. Don’t you?”
Her voice cracked.
Floyd looked at her then — finally — and it nearly broke him. The way her golden eyes shimmered under the moonlight. The way her chin trembled, even though she was trying so hard to be strong. The way her heart was wide open for him, and all he had to do was say yes.
But he couldn’t.
If he let her in, the truth would come out. The truth about who he really was. The power buried deep in his veins. The prophecy whispered in his ears as a child. And the danger that came with loving him.
“I don’t want you,” he lied.
It was the cruelest thing he’d ever said.
Lyra stepped back like he had slapped her. She didn’t cry. She didn’t beg. She just stared at him with a pain that twisted her face in ways he’d never forget.
“I see,” she whispered. “Then I’ll leave.”
And she did.
Floyd stood there long after she vanished into the night, fists clenched, chest burning, heart breaking.
He told himself it was for her own good. That pushing her away would save her. But deep down, he knew—
He had just rejected the only person who ever truly loved him.
