Rejected by the Alpha, Claimed by the Lycan King

Chapter 2: The Blackwood Forest

Chapter 2: The Blackwood Forest

I don't remember walking home.

I remember the cold stone under my knees. I remember Selene's small hand sliding into Damon's. I remember that howl from the Blackwood low, terrible, rolling across the valley like the sound of something ancient waking up.

After that, everything blurs. Torchlight. Faces. Voices that didn't belong to me.

When I finally came back to myself, I was sitting on the cold wooden floor of my bedroom in my father's house. My white dress was ripped at the knees. My braid had come undone, and pieces of my hair stuck to my wet cheeks. The moon still hung outside my window, fat and untroubled, as if nothing had happened tonight.

As if a goddess hadn't just lied to my face.

The door opened.

My father walked in.

Beta Castor Vale. Tall. Lean as a hunting blade. Dark hair I had inherited from him, the same dark eyes too. He had served three Alphas across his lifetime. He had taught me how to track a deer when I was six. He had taught me how to throw a punch when I was eight. For eighteen years, I had believed this man loved me more than anything else in his world.

He didn't come and sit down beside me.

He just stood in the doorway, looking at me the way a man looks at a plate that's already been broken.

"Aria."

"Papa." My voice came out cracked and small. "Papa, he he chose Selene. He rejected me and he chose Sel"

"I know."

"How could she" I couldn't get the rest out. The bond-wound in my chest was still burning, raw as an open cut. Every breath was glass going down. "Papa, she's sixteen. He's the Alpha. How could you let her"

"I gave him my permission."

The words knocked the air out of me.

I lifted my head slowly. My father's face was carved from stone.

"What?"

"Damon came to see me last week," he said. "He told me his wolf had warned him in a dream. He said the Goddess had paired him with the wrong daughter of Vale. He asked for Selene's hand instead." A pause. "I said yes."

"You" My throat closed up. "You knew. You knew what was going to happen tonight"

"I knew."

"And you didn't tell me?"

He didn't answer.

Inside me, my wolf stirred slow, heavy, the way an injured animal moves before it dies. He chose her. My own father chose her over me.

"Why?" I whispered.

He finally crossed the room. He crouched down in front of me, and for one stupid, hopeful second, I thought he was going to pull me into his arms the way he used to when I was a small girl who had scraped her knee.

He didn't.

His hand caught my chin. Hard.

"Because Selene is going to be Luna," he said quietly. "And the Vale family is going to rise with her. Do you understand me, Aria? Our blood will sit beside the Alpha's blood. Our pups will lead this pack for generations to come."

"And me?" The tears spilled over before I could stop them. "What about me, Papa?"

He let go of my chin.

He stood up.

He walked back to the door.

And without turning around, without looking at me one more time, he said, "You'll leave the territory at sunrise."

The world stopped turning.

"What?"

"A rejected mate cannot live among her pack, Aria. You know the law. Your presence here weakens Damon. It weakens Selene. It weakens this family." His voice was as flat as a frozen lake in winter. "You will leave at sunrise. You will not come back. If any wolf of Blackmoon finds you on this territory after tomorrow, they have my permission to kill you where you stand."

I couldn't speak.

I couldn't even cry anymore.

He stepped out and pulled the door shut behind him.

I sat on that floor for a long time. Hours, maybe. The moon shifted across my window. My wolf was silent inside me not dead, just stunned, the way a wolf goes still after a gunshot.

When the first grey light of dawn touched the glass, I stood up.

I didn't pack a bag. There was nothing in that house I wanted to carry into my next life. I peeled off the torn white dress and dropped it on the floor where it belonged. I pulled on dark hunting trousers and a long black coat. I tied my hair back tight. I laced my boots.

I walked out of my father's house without looking at the rooms I had grown up in.

I walked past the pack hall where I had played as a little girl.

I walked past the training grounds where Damon had smiled at me across the dirt, three summers ago, and made me believe in something that was never real.

I walked until the houses thinned out and the trees grew thicker. I crossed the boundary stones into the Blackwood forest before the sun was fully up.

And then I ran.

I shifted as I ran. Bones cracked and reformed inside me. Where a girl had been, a black wolf with grey eyes hit the ground in full stride. My paws ate up the earth. My breath fogged in the cold morning air. I ran until my legs trembled. I ran until Blackmoon Pack was just a memory at my back. I ran until my wolf had nothing left, and then I shifted back into a girl on the forest floor, gasping.

I didn't know where I was.

I didn't know how far I had come.

The Blackwood forest stretched out in every direction ancient, dark, the trees so tall their tops disappeared into mist. The Blackwood was no-man's-land. The forgotten place between three pack territories. Wolves didn't come here. Even rogue wolves avoided the Blackwood.

Because something else lived in these trees.

Something older than packs.

I sat down against the trunk of a black oak, pulled my knees up to my chest, and finally let myself cry.

I cried for Damon. I cried for Selene. I cried for the father I had buried tonight without ever putting him in the ground. I cried for the future that had been stolen from me the Luna I would never become, the bond that had been torn out of my soul.

I cried until there was nothing left inside me to cry with.

And then somewhere in the silence I heard the footsteps.

Slow. Heavy. Deliberate.

A man's footsteps.

I went absolutely still.

In the Blackwood forest, no man should be walking.

I lifted my head, my heart slamming against my ribs hard enough to bruise.

He stepped out of the mist between two trees.

He was tall. Taller than Damon. Broader through the shoulders. Dressed in black from his shoulders to his boots, a long coat that moved around his legs like smoke. His hair was black and a little too long, falling across a forehead marked by a thin pale scar. His face looked carved like something a god had spent too much time on. Sharp jaw. Cruel mouth.

And his eyes

His eyes were silver.

Not grey. Not pale. Silver. The colour of a coin held under moonlight. The colour of a blade pulled fresh from its sheath.

My wolf, who had been silent for hours, suddenly slammed against my ribs from the inside.

Mate.

I couldn't breathe.

That's not possible. I was rejected tonight. A rejected wolf cannot have another

Mate.

He stopped a few steps away from me. He looked down at the torn coat, the dirty face, the tear tracks running through the dust on my cheeks and something behind those silver eyes flickered like fire moving behind glass.

When he finally spoke, his voice was low and rough, the kind of voice that every wolf in the Blackwood could probably hear at the same time.

"There you are," he said. "I've been waiting for you for five hundred years."