The Rejected Luna: The Bond That Refused to Break

CHAPTER 8:The Scent That Ruined Me

~SARIA'S POV~

Three days have passed since I left the forest.

Three days of hiding from the pack.

Three days of pretending the second pull would disappear.

Instead, it refuses to fade. Neither does the scent. It used to rise for a while, then disappear. Now it clings to me.

I stand on a hill overlooking Night Crown territory.

The pack lies below me.

My home.

Or at least it used to be.

The sight squeezes something inside my chest. My knees threaten to give way beneath me.

They do not deserve my loyalty anymore even though I had vowed to protect the pack the way my parents did, even through my instability.

A cold wind suddenly brushes my face.

It carries memories with it.

My father once brought Darian and me here.

The grass had reached our ankles that day. My father laughed as the wind tugged at his cloak while he pointed proudly toward the pack below.

One day, this will belong to both of you.

I remember how proud he looked.

Back then believing him felt as natural as breathing.

Darian stood beside me that day and promised my father he would always protect me, and he would never break my heart.

I close my eyes.

For a heartbeat, I almost let myself stay in that memory.

Then I remember the ceremony.

My stomach knots so tightly I have to swallow twice.

My temper finally snaps.

“Darian!”

My voice cuts across the morning air.

The sound startles birds from nearby trees.

“Darian, you betrayed me!”

The words leave me before I can stop them.

My throat burns.

“Darian, you betrayed all of us.”

The wind carries my voice away.

No answer comes back.

Of course it doesn't.

The ache beneath my fractured mark pulses sharply.

The scent rises with it.

Stronger than before. Like it has been waiting for this exact moment to completely settle itself.

I press a hand against my neck, trying to force it back.

“Kora,” I whisper inside myself. “Hold it.”

My wolf barely answers.

Too weak.

I push harder, trying to steady myself, but the resistance only makes the heat under my skin spread faster. It's the same strange heat that has followed me ever since the bond fractured.

Beneath it all, the second pull seems to resist the scent, as if the stranger somewhere beyond the forest understands what I'm feeling right now and is ready to help.

I don't understand why that thought comforts me. It should frighten me instead.

I should find him and check whether he really possesses the dark-gold crescent on his wrist, before deciding what to do next.

But a memory of him comes without warning.

His scent.

Rain-soaked pine.

The way it wrapped around my senses and started forcing everything else away.

Even now, it slips into the memory so clearly that my breathing catches before I can stop it.

My jaw tightens.

“Impossible,” I whisper.

I force myself out of the memory before the rest of it can surface.

Then it vanishes.

Night Crown remains in front of me.

Reality waits below.

Because I need to know who deliberately wanted the secret about the m******e to be buried forever.

Because I need to know why my mate mark has behaved differently ever since the m******e.

Eventually, I force myself forward.

One step.

Then another.

Every step feels heavier than the last.

I keep waiting for something inside me to tell me to turn back.

Nothing does.

Toward the pack that no longer feels like home.

Before I can move further, heads turn. Voices fall. Then they rise again, louder, sharper, afraid.

I stop at the edge of the clearing as the scent hits harder again. It almost steals my breath.

A child near the training posts starts crying.

His mother snatches him up and pulls him behind her so fast it makes my chest pull tight.

Even children fear me now.

Suddenly, a stone lands on my back.

My shoulder goes numb before the pain catches up.

For a second I cannot breathe.

Before I can look for whoever threw it.

A shout comes from one of the Warriors.

“Stay back!”

Several warriors rush forward, strips of cloth soaked in bitter scent-blocking herbs tied across their noses and mouths, as if they have spent the whole night searching for me.

They form a barrier between me and the center of the pack.

Here they are.

These were the warriors who often used my parents as examples while training the younger ones. They were the same men who kept reminding me that one day I would surpass them.

A bitter laugh breaks out of me before I can stop it.

“Right,” I murmur.

Of course.

Nothing changed. It only got worse.

Before I can force myself upright, a hard slap crashes across my face.

My ear rings. Heat spreads across my cheek until it burns beneath my palm.

“Bad omen,”

A rough hand shoves me into the mud.

I taste dirt. My vision smears for a second, and everything around me goes dark at the edges.

But I try to look past the warriors anyway. Many wolves have gathered a few steps from us. They are all wearing scent blockers.

I thought they had come to confront the warriors.

Instead, an old woman who used to smile at me every market day now refuses to meet my eyes.

A little boy hides behind his mother's skirt.

Some wolves point at me and laugh.

If my parents could see me now, they wouldn't recognize what the pack had turned me into.

“Our rejected Luna,” a wolf yells. “I thought the Alpha made the biggest mistake. But in the end, he surprised us.”

Laughter erupts around me.

Anger rises fast enough to shake my hands, then exhaustion crushes it down again.

A woman near the front recoils visibly. “She’s unstable,” she says, voice shaking. “Can’t you feel it?”

Some of the tightness inside my chest eases.

At least one person doesn't look at me like a monster. Someone I barely know.

“That’s not only a scent,” another snaps. “She is a witch. And she must be exiled from our pack."

I turn my head. My eyes find the man who spoke.

It is the man who warned his daughter, my best friend, never to come near me again.

The same man my father once defended when the pack wanted to imprison him after he was wrongly accused of betrayal.

I spit the dirt from my mouth. My jaw hardens when our eyes meet. He doesn't care.

“Our Alpha played a wonderful role,” one woman shouts. “This thing thought she would rule us.”

“Over my dead body,” she adds.

Laughter erupts again.

Their voices blur together until I can no

longer tell who is speaking.

Mud drips from my hair onto the ground between my feet.

I hate myself for thinking it. But maybe they are right. Maybe I don't belong anywhere anymore.

"Thing.”

The word hangs in the air.

I have been called unstable.

Cursed.

Rejected.

But never that.

The words taste like bile in my mouth.

No one ever wanted to understand. Not really.

Before I can make sense of everything happening around me, the second pull stirs again. Then a voice rises inside me.

"Be strong.”

The words never reach my ears. They rise inside me, as though the bond itself is whispering them.

My eyes sweep across the crowd. Maybe he's really here. Maybe I'm imagining it.

No.

It is real.

The voice echoes again.

I know that voice now. It matches exactly with the voice of the stranger I met in the forest.

It reminds me of the moment he whispered, "Sorry." That apology unsettled me more than the blood itself.

Even now I feel his presence. My wolf groans softly inside me, as though she believes he is here to fight them all.

"This is pure madness," I mutter. "I should have considered him my enemy by now.”

Instead I keep remembering the way he looked at me, like seeing me hurt him too.

And a thought hits me harder through the confusion.

If that stranger is as dangerous as I still believe...

Why does every part of me feel as though he wants to save me?

Because the one person I believed understood me most proved me wrong when he rejected me.

I let my eyes fall shut.

The crowd fades for one heartbeat.

Then everything crashes back again.

For one horrible breath, I almost beg the crowd around me.

Almost tell them I did not ask for any of this.

That I am trying.

That I am scared too.

I bite the inside of my cheek hard enough to taste blood.

“I didn’t ask for this,” I say instead.

My voice comes out lower than I expect. Steadier too. As if the strange pull is giving me strength.

“Really?” A warrior kicks me with his boot as I try to rise.

I fall back into the mud.

Still, I push myself upright again, my fingers digging into the dirt. Veins stand out beneath my skin.

My voice comes out loud now. Fearless.

“I’m tired of all of you acting like I chose what happened to me that night.”

Nobody moves for a heartbeat. The clearing is silent except for my breathing. Even the birds have stopped singing.

Not because they agree.

Because no one expects me to answer back.

“We need to take her to the council,”

The warriors hesitate for a heartbeat.

Then they move closer now. Slower. Careful. Like they are approaching an animal that might bite.

I wipe the mud from my hands and slowly straighten.

If the council has been hiding the truth all this time...

Then maybe this is exactly where I need to go.

I do not argue.

I do not run.

Not because I accept this.

Because I need answers more than I need pride.

And right now, the council knows more than they admit.