REJECTED BY THE PRINCE, CLAIMED BY HIS RUTHLESS UNCLE.

CHAPTER TWO: THE MOON’S DAUGHTER, THE PRINCE REJECTION

By the time the sun began sinking toward the western hills, the Great Courtyard had filled with more wolves than Liana had ever seen gathered in one place. Silver banners hung from every pillar, embroidered with the crescent moon sigil of the royal family. Torches lined the stone pathways, their flames just beginning to flicker to life as dusk crept in. Nobles in fine silks mingled near the front, their voices a constant murmur of anticipation, while pack members of lower rank — merchants, healers, warriors not of noble blood — filled the outer edges of the crowd.

Liana found her place among them without complaint, tucked near the back beside an elderly healer named Mabel who had always been kinder to her than most. The old woman patted her arm as she settled in.

"You look lovely tonight, dear," Mabel said.

"Thank you," Liana murmured, though she doubted it was true. She had learned to accept kindness without arguing against it, even when some small voice inside her wanted to.

At the front of the courtyard, raised on a dais draped in white cloth, stood the royal family. King Alaric, broad-shouldered and gray at the temples, radiated the kind of authority that came from decades of rule. Beside him stood Queen Miriam, elegant and composed, her eyes scanning the crowd with practiced grace. And beside them both stood the one everyone had truly come to see.

Prince Cassian Blackwood.

Even from a distance, Liana could understand why half the kingdom seemed to have lost their minds over him. He stood tall and effortlessly commanding, dark hair swept back from a face carved with the kind of symmetry poets liked to write about. His eyes swept over the crowd with the practiced indifference of someone who had never once had to wonder whether people found him worth looking at. He wore his ceremonial black and silver like a second skin, every inch the future Alpha King.

Liana had seen him from afar before — passing through corridors, presiding over minor pack matters — but she had never once imagined he would look at her, and tonight was no exception. His gaze drifted over the assembled crowd without pausing, moving on to more interesting things.

The High Priestess stepped forward, an ancient woman wrapped in silver robes that seemed to catch and hold the fading light. She raised both hands toward the darkening sky, where the first hint of the rising moon had begun to show above the horizon.

"Tonight," she called, her voice carrying easily across the silent courtyard, "the Moon Goddess reveals her will. Tonight, fate joins what destiny has already decided. Let every wolf here bear witness."

The crowd fell utterly silent. Even the wind seemed to hold its breath.

The High Priestess produced a small silver bowl, filled with water that shimmered faintly, as though moonlight itself had been poured into it. She began to chant in the old tongue, words Liana didn't understand but which sent a strange shiver down her spine regardless. The torches along the courtyard flared brighter for a moment, their flames turning a pale, unnatural silver before settling back to orange.

The bowl in the Priestess's hands began to glow.

"The Moon Goddess has chosen," she announced, her eyes fluttering closed as though listening to something no one else could hear. "The bond has been sealed. Prince Cassian Blackwood's fated mate stands among us tonight."

A ripple of excitement moved through the crowd, hundreds of hopeful eyes turning toward daughters and sisters and friends, silently praying for the announcement to fall in their favor. Liana felt Selena straighten beside their mother near the front of the crowd, chin lifted, clearly certain of what was coming.

The High Priestess opened her eyes. They had turned the color of moonlight, glowing faintly silver as she scanned the crowd — and then, slowly, deliberately, her gaze locked onto a figure near the back.

"Liana Ashwood."

For a moment, Liana thought she had misheard.

The courtyard had gone so quiet she could hear her own heartbeat pounding in her ears. Every head turned. Every eye found her, standing frozen beside Mabel with her hands clasped so tightly together her knuckles had gone white.

"Liana Ashwood," the High Priestess repeated, "step forward. The Moon Goddess has chosen you as Prince Cassian's destined mate."

The world seemed to tilt.

Liana felt Mabel's hand gently pressing against her back, urging her forward, and somehow her feet obeyed even though her mind had gone completely blank. She moved through the parting crowd as if in a dream, aware of hundreds of stunned faces turning to watch her pass, aware of the murmurs that followed her like a wave. An omega. The prince's mate is an omega. Surely there's been some mistake.

She barely registered reaching the front of the courtyard. She barely registered the way the royal family stared down at her — the King's brow furrowed in something like confusion, the Queen's expression carefully blank, and Selena's face, just for an instant before she smoothed it into something more composed, twisted with something ugly and disbelieving.

Liana lifted her eyes to Prince Cassian.

For one impossible moment, hope bloomed so fiercely in her chest that it nearly took her breath away. Here, finally, was the thing she had never dared to believe she deserved — a place where she belonged, a bond chosen not by rank or beauty but by fate itself, a love that could not be taken from her because the Moon Goddess herself had woven it into being.

She thought: maybe this is where my suffering ends.

She had never been more wrong about anything in her life.

Because Prince Cassian was not looking at her with wonder, or curiosity, or even simple surprise. He was looking at her the way a man looks at something unpleasant that has been tracked into his home. His jaw had tightened. His eyes had gone flat and cold, sweeping over her plain dress, her simple hair, her omega status radiating off her like a scent he found offensive.

The High Priestess extended a hand toward them both. "Come forward, Your Highness. The bond must be acknowledged before the kingdom."

Cassian did not move.

The silence stretched, taut and terrible, until it felt like something might snap.

"Your Highness," the High Priestess said again, a note of warning creeping into her voice. "The Moon Goddess has spoken. This bond cannot be ignored."

Cassian's gaze finally shifted from Liana to the crowd, and something in his expression hardened into resolve. When he spoke, his voice carried easily across the silent courtyard, clear and cold and final.

"I reject Liana Ashwood as my mate."

The words landed like a physical blow.

Liana felt her whole body go numb, as though someone had reached into her chest and simply stopped her heart from beating. Around her, gasps rippled through the crowd, shocked whispers rising into a low roar. She heard Mabel's soft, horrified intake of breath somewhere behind her. She heard the King demand, in a low furious voice, what his son thought he was doing. None of it seemed real. None of it seemed to be happening to her.

"Cassian." The Queen's voice, sharp with warning. "Think carefully about what you are doing."

"I have thought about it," Cassian said, and there was no hesitation in him at all, no flicker of doubt, only the calm certainty of a man who had made his decision long before tonight. "I will not accept a mate chosen for me by fate when my heart already belongs to someone else."

He turned, and crossed the dais, and reached for Selena's hand.

Liana watched it happen as though from very far away — watched her own sister step forward with practiced grace, watched Cassian lift her hand to his lips, watched the crowd's shock curdle slowly into something closer to scandalized fascination. She heard him announce, in that same clear unshaken voice, that he loved Selena Ashwood, that he intended to make her his Luna, that no ceremony and no goddess would change what was already written in his heart.

Selena did not look at her sister once.

Liana stood alone at the center of the dais, in front of the entire kingdom, utterly rejected and utterly humiliated, and she understood in that moment that something inside her had just been broken in a way that no kind word, no gentle touch, no quiet act of forgiveness would ever be able to fully mend.

The last thing she saw before the High Priestess's hand closed gently but firmly around her arm, drawing her back from the dais, was her mother's face in the crowd — not shocked, not outraged on her daughter's behalf, but simply, quietly relieved that the scandal hadn't attached itself to Selena instead.