THE ALPHA'S FORSAKEN LUNA

The Rejection

The moonlight burned silver through my bedroom window, but my blood ran cold.

I had been waiting for this night for eighteen years. Every she-wolf in the Shadowfang Pack dreamed of her eighteenth birthday, the night her wolf would fully emerge, the night she would meet her fated mate.

I was not dreaming. I was hiding. My hands trembled as I pulled the worn sweater over my head. Not that it mattered what I wore. My place in this pack had been decided long before I was born. I am the Omega's daughter. The lowest of the low. The wolf everyone stepped over on their way to something better and tonight, I would discover which of the pack's elite males would be cursed with me as a mate.

Knock. Knock.

My heart stopped.

"Lena." My mother's voice, soft and terrified, seeped through the thin wood. "They're here for you."

I opened the door. Her eyes were red rimmed, her Omega submissiveness etched into every line of her bowed posture. Behind her, framed in the doorway of our small pack cottage, stood Beta Marcus. His lip curled. "The Alpha requests your presence at the ceremony, Omega's daughter." Not requests. Demands. No one refused the Alpha. "Of course," I murmured, lowering my gaze the way I had been trained since birth. "I'll come immediately." Marcus sneered. "Try not to embarrass the pack."

He turned and walked away without waiting for a response. Why would he? I was nothing. I had always been nothing. The Omega's daughter. The girl with no father. The runt who could not shift until she was sixteen, three years later than everyone else. My mother clutched my arm. "Whatever happens tonight, Lena, remember. You are stronger than you know." I almost laughed. Strength? I had survived eighteen years in a pack that treated me like dirt. That was not strength. That was stubbornness. "The ceremony," I said flatly. "What do you know about it?" Her face paled. "Only that the Alpha has been different lately. Ever since his mate died three years ago. He is angry, Lena. He is looking for someone to blame." "Then why would he want me there?"

She did not answer. She just squeezed my arm and whispered, "Be careful." The ceremony took place in the pack's great hall, a cavernous building of dark stone and darker secrets. Every wolf in Shadowfang had gathered. Hundreds of eyes tracked me as I walked down the aisle between the stone benches.

I kept my gaze fixed on the floor. I knew what they were thinking. What is she doing here? Why would the Alpha summon the Omega's daughter to a mating ceremony? I had no answers for them. At the front of the hall stood Alpha Kael. He was thirty five years old, in the prime of his power. Dark hair. Darker eyes. A body carved from centuries of Alpha bloodlines. He had been a widower for three years, ever since his Luna died in childbirth, taking their unborn son with her.

The pack had been waiting for him to choose another mate. I had never imagined I would be in the running.

He looked at me as I approached. His eyes swept over my plain clothes, my unwashed hair, my too thin body. Something flickered across his face, disgust or pity, before settling into cold indifference. "Elara Vance," he said, and his voice echoed off the stone walls. "You have been summoned because the Moon Goddess has chosen you as my fated mate." The hall erupted. Gasps. Whispers. Somewhere behind me, someone laughed. A sharp, cruel sound. The Alpha's fated mate. The Omega's daughter. The two most incompatible wolves in the pack, bound by a goddess who apparently had a cruel sense of humor.

I stood frozen. My wolf, that weak, late blooming creature inside me, howled with joy. Mate. Alpha. Powerful. Safe. But I knew better. Alpha Kael was many things. Powerful, yes. Respected, absolutely. But safe? The wolves who got close to the Alpha had a habit of disappearing. "Say something," he commanded. I raised my eyes to meet his. My voice came out steady, though my entire body shook. "What would you have me say, Alpha? Congratulations?" A ripple of shocked laughter ran through the hall. No one spoke to the Alpha like that. His eyes narrowed. "You think this is a joke?" "No." I swallowed hard. "I think this is a mistake." The temperature in the room dropped. His wolf rose to the surface, golden eyes bleeding into his dark irons. "The Moon Goddess does not make mistakes." "Then why does it feel like a punishment?" The words left my mouth before I could stop them. I watched his face change, surprise first, then fury, then something I could not name. "You think being mated to me is a punishment?" His voice was silk wrapped around steel.

"I think," I said carefully, "that you do not want me. And I think forcing a mate bond on someone who despises you is the cruelest thing the goddess could do to both of us." Silence. Complete, absolute silence. Then Alpha Kael smiled. It was not a kind smile. It was the smile of a predator who had just decided how to play with his food. "You are right," he said. "I do not want you. So I will do what any Alpha would do when offered an unworthy mate." He stepped forward. Placed his hand on my shoulder. His touch burned through my sweater like fire. "I, Alpha Kael of the Shadowfang Pack, reject you, Elara Vance, as my fated mate."

The words hit me like a physical blow. My wolf screamed. My heart cracked. I felt the bond, that golden thread the goddess had woven between us, snap like a rotten rope. Pain. White hot. Blinding. All consuming. I fell to my knees. And in that moment, surrounded by the laughter of the pack I had grown up in, I made a promise to myself. I will rise from this. I will become someone they cannot ignore. And one day, Alpha Kael will beg for my forgiveness.

But I would not give it.