2. Pained
1712 Words
Lyra
The rejection bond didn’t just snap; it detonated.
Kaelen let out a scream of agony, a raw, animal sound that tore through the Silver Moon Plaza. He clutched his chest as the invisible thread tying our souls together was ripped out by the roots. He fell to his knees, his body convulsing on the floor he had just defiled, the mark he had not even received yet burning like into his very spirit.
My wolf whimpered inside me, a hollow, dying sound. The pain wasn't just his; it was mine. It felt like someone had reached into my chest with a red-hot claw and carved out a piece of my heart.
But I did not show it. I would rather die than give him the satisfaction of my tears.
I looked at Ava. She was trembling, tears streaking her face as she looked from Kaelen’s convulsing form to the blood on her own hands. She looked small. Pathetic. A thief caught with a prize that was already turning to ash.
"You wanted him?" I screamed. "You can have him. You can have the scraps of a man who will never be an Alpha. You can have a name that will be cursed by every pack in the world."
I turned my back on them.
The crowd parted for me like the Red Sea. I walked past the Alphas with their shocked, stony faces and the Lunas with their pitying eyes. I walked past the omegas who had whispered about me all night, their eyes wide with a mix of horror and morbid fascination.
I walked down the grand staircase, my white silk dress trailing behind me like a ghost. The lilies on every table, once symbols of my rising, seemed to bow their heads in mourning as I passed.
I walked out of the Silver Moon Plaza and into the cold, midnight rain.
The rain hit my face. Cold. Hard. It soaked through my dress in seconds, the white silk turning transparent, clinging to me like a second, unwanted skin. My hair fell in wet strands across my face blinding me but I kept moving until the light from the ballroom was a distant, mocking glow behind me.
I didn't care.
My wolf was howling inside me now. Not in anger—the anger was gone, replaced by a grief so deep it felt like drowning. The bond was gone. Kaelen was gone. Every dream I had built the pups, the pack, the future was gone.
My father was right.
I could see his face in my mind, the way he had looked back in London months ago. He’d sat on his throne with that glass of whiskey, his eyes filled with a terrifying clarity. "A Beta's son will only ever see you as a prize to be won, Lyra. Not a woman to be loved."
I had screamed at him. I had called the Alpha of Alphas a cold-hearted monster who didn't understand love. I had staked my pride on a man who had just traded it for a few minutes of betrayal.
And now, everyone had seen. Everyone knew.
I looked up at the moon. It was full and bright, mocking me from behind the gray clouds. The rain washed the scent of lilies from my skin, but it could not wash away the shame.
I pressed my hand to my chest, over the hollow cavity where the bond used to be. The void was unbearable. It was an empty, frozen tundra where my heartbeat used to be.
I will never forgive him, the thought echoed in my head.
But as I stood there in the downpour, soaked and broken and alone, the truth finally clawed its way to the surface.
I would never forgive myself.
The sound of a car door closing cut through the rhythmic drumming of the rain. I didn't turn around. I didn't want to see anyone. I wanted the earth to open up and swallow me whole.
"Lyra."
It was my mother. Her voice was trembling, thick with the kind of grief that only a mother feels when her child’s heart is shattered in front of a thousand eyes. I felt her presence behind me, her warmth trying to fight through the freezing rain.
"Go away, Mom," I whispered, my voice barely audible.
"Sweetheart, please. Get in the car. You're shaking." She reached out, her hand grazing my soaked shoulder. "We need to go home. We need to get you out of this rain."
"I'm not going anywhere," I snapped, though there was no heat in it. Only exhaustion. I wanted to stay here. I wanted the cold to numb the part of me that was still screaming. "Just leave me here. Tell them I died. It's better than what they're saying in there."
"Lyra, look at me." She stepped in front of me, her own eyes red and swollen. "He isn't worth this. He isn't worth your life."
I looked past her, toward the grand entrance of the Plaza. The doors swung open again, spilling a harsh, yellow light onto the wet pavement.
A figure stumbled out.
Even through the rain, I recognized the way he moved. Kaelen. He looked wrecked, his shirt torn, his eyes searching the darkness with a desperation that made my stomach turn. He was calling my name, his voice cracked and raw from the rejection.
The sight of him was like a jolt of electricity. The reluctance to move vanished, replaced by a frantic, suffocating need to be anywhere but near him.
"Lyra! Wait! Please!"
Kaelen’s voice was like a shard of glass, cutting through the heavy rhythm of the rain. I saw him stumble past the yellow glare of the Plaza’s porch lights.the man I had loved, the man I had fought my father for, looking like a beggar after ruining our future.
The sight of him didn't bring back the love. It brought a wave of nausea so violent I thought I would heave right there on the pavement. My reluctance to move vanished, replaced by a frantic, animalistic need to be anywhere but in his line of sight.
"Lyra! Just listen!"
"No!" I screamed, the word tearing at my throat.
I lunged for the car door, my fingers slipping on the cold, wet handle before I finally yanked it open. I scrambled into the leather backseat, my soaked dress heavy and freezing against my skin, smelling of rain and the dying scent of lilies.
"Drive," I gasped as my mother hurried into the driver's seat.
"Mom, please. Drive! Go!"
The engine roared, a mechanical snarl that drowned out Kaelen’s desperate shouting. The tires screeched against the wet asphalt, and I watched through the rear window as his silhouette was swallowed by the dark and the downpour.
I didn't just collapse; I disintegrated.
The adrenaline that had kept me standing in the ballroom evaporated, leaving behind a void so cold it felt like my blood was drying off. I curled into a tight ball on the floorboards of the car, ignoring the luxury leather, burying my face in my knees as the first sob ripped out of me. It wasn't a cry. It was a guttural, broken sound—the sound of a wolf whose pack had been slaughtered.
"Lyra, look at me," my mother whispered, her voice thick with her own tears as she steered us away from the only life I had ever known.
"I can't," I choked out, my chest heaving so hard it hurt to breathe. "I can't see, Mom. Everything is black. It’s all black."
I clutched my own arms, my nails digging into my skin through the wet silk, trying to find a physical pain that could distract me from the hollow agony in my chest. I felt like a ghost. I felt like a joke. The Rejected Luna—the title was already etched into the air I breathed.
"Take me away," I shrieked, the sound echoing off the car’s roof, raw and hysterical. "Take me somewhere I don't have to exist! Don't let the sun come up, Mom. Please, just don't let it be tomorrow. Take me away from here... I don't want to breathe anymore!"
I pressed my forehead against the floorboards, the vibration of the road humming through my skull like a death knell. I was at the bottom of a dark well, and the rope had just snapped.
"Mom, please..." I pleaded, my voice a broken whisper into the carpet as the car sped into the night. "Just make me disappear."
My mother’s breath hitched. A sharp, terrified sound.
"Lyra, don't say that! Don't ever say that!"
She was panicking. I could feel the car swerve slightly as she took her eyes off the road, reaching back with one hand to find me, to grab hold of me before I slipped further into the dark Through the thick, blinding veil of the Norway fog.
"Lyra, look at me—"
"Mom, watch out!" I screamed, but the warning was choked by a sob.
A pair of headlights exploded out of the fog like the eyes of a monster. The screech of tires on wet pavement was the last thing I heard followed by a high metallic scream that matched my own. My mother yanked the wheel, but it was too late.
The impact was a wall of thunder.
The world spun.I felt the violent jolt of my body being thrown against the seat, the smell of burning rubber and deployed airbags filling the cabin.
Then came the cold. Not the cold of the rain, but the heavy, silent cold of the void. My mother’s name died on my lips as the darkness I had begged for finally rushed up to meet me.
That was the last thing I remembered before the light went out and the crushing realization that I might have actually gotten my wish knocked me out.
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