REJECTED BY HER MATE, DESIRED BY THE LYCAN KING

Wren's POV Today I kissed a stranger in the middle of the forest. It was the last thing I expected to do, especially on the day I was supposed to be claimed by someone else entirely. I'd pictured this day since I was young enough to understand what a mate bond was supposed to mean. I imagined standing before the pack and feeling something reeling and deep buzzling inside me, something certain, something that made every year of waiting worth it. I imagined my wolf finally going quiet and sure the moment she recognized him. Richard and I had been fated to each other since I was sixteen. Five years of knowing exactly who I was meant to end up with should have felt like peace. Instead, it had always felt like something I was simply enduring until the ceremony made it real. I told myself that was normal. That the bond didn't have to announce itself early. That today, once the pack witnessed it and the moon goddess sealed it, I would finally feel what I was supposed to feel. But I guess it didn't go as planned . Standing at the edge of the ceremonial circle, dressed in white, I noticed the shift before I understood it. Richard wouldn't meet my eyes. The elders around us had gone unnervingly still, it's more like I walked into a room, that my present isn't valid. I searched his face for reassurance and found none. "Richard." My own voice sounded far away to me. "What's happening?" He didn't answer right away. When he finally spoke, it wasn't to me at all,it was to the pack that was gathered behind me. "I can't do this," he said, loudly and that forced everyone to come to a pause and focus their attention on us. "Not with her."The air went out of my chest entirely. "She isn't my mate," he continued, and I watched him, as his eyes lifted toward someone standing near the back of the crowd. "Freya is." A soft gasp rippled through the gathered wolves. I turned, following his gaze, and found her, a young she-wolf I barely recognized, her hand pressed to her collarbone like she hadn't expected to be named either. Or like she'd expected it all along and was only now allowed to look pleased about it. My heart was pounding so hard I thought the whole pack could hear it. "Richard, this is—" I started, but the words wouldn't come together into anything coherent. Someone near the front murmured something I couldn't make out. Another wolf laughed, quickly smothered. I felt every eye in that circle pressing into me at once, and for a moment I couldn't remember how to stand up straight. Then I saw it. The mark on her neck. It was faint, but unmistakable, just above the curve of Freya's shoulder where her dress had slipped. I believe it may be days old, at least. Maybe longer, if I'm not mistaken. He hadn't just chosen her at this moment. He'd already claimed her. He'd stood beside me all week, let me believe this ceremony still meant something, while he already marked another wolf in her neck. Fury tore through the grief so fast that I barely registered the shift between them. "You marked her already," I said, and my voice didn't sound like mine. "Before you even stood here and did this to me." Richard had the decency, at least, to flinch. I didn't wait for an answer. I didn't wait for anything. I turned and walked straight through the parting crowd, refusing to let a single wolf there watch me come apart. I made it past the tree line before the tears came, it was so hot and humiliating,that I almost hated myself for how badly I wanted to disappear into the dark beyond the ceremonial grounds rather than face one more second of being looked at. I was so deep in whatever emotion I was feeling until I heard footsteps near me which courses me to go stiffed My first thought was Richard, come to explain himself, to smooth over what he'd done with some excuse I had no interest in hearing. My second thought was worse: that someone from the pack had followed me out here to witness whatever came next, and spread the story to the pack before I'd even had the chance to fall apart in private. "Whoever's out there," I called, wiping my face fast with the back of my wrist, "I'd rather be alone." The footsteps didn't stop. If anything, they grew closer, unbothered by my warning. I turned toward the sound, ready to snap at whoever had the nerve to trail me through the dark on the worst night of my life and found a man standing several feet off, half-lit by the moon breaking through the canopy. He wasn't dressed for the ceremony. No pack colors, no formal dress. He's dark and wears practical clothes, like he'd been out here doing something that had nothing to do with me at all. "You're on the boundary line," he said, his tone even . "This section's supposed to be checked for rogue activity tonight. You shouldn't be out here alone." "I didn't ask for an escort," I snapped, humiliation making the words sharper than I meant them. He glares at me for a moment, I watch him stare plainly at my ceremonial dress, my ruined face, the state of me entirely. "Clearly," he said. I turned to walk past him, done with this entire night, done with everyone in it and my bracelet, the pale ceremonial one I hadn't even remembered I was wearing, caught on a low branch jutting out beside the path. I yanked at it speedily. "You'll snap the clasp doing that," he said, and before I could tell him to leave it alone, his fingers were already working the delicate chain free of the bark. "I had it," I muttered. "Sure you did." He released my wrist once the bracelet came loose, and I stepped back too quickly, embarrassed by how close he'd been standing, close enough that I could smell rain on him, and something darker underneath, like cedar smoke. "Easy," he said, watching me stumble back. "Don't touch me," I said, sharper than the moment probably called for. He raised both hands, palms out, unbothered by the bite in my voice. "I wasn't trying to." I started walking again, my chest was still too tight, my eyes were still too hot, and I didn't get more than a few steps before something in me simply gave out. It was not grief exactly, it's more closer to rage, aimed at everyone and no one. At Richard. At Freya. At the moon goddess herself, who was supposed to have given me certainty tonight and had instead handed me the entire pack's pity. I didn't decide to turn around. I just did. He didn't move away as I closed the distance between us, though his brows pulled together,and faint confusion slowly wore on his face for the first time since I'd noticed him. "What are you—" I didn't let him finish. I reached up, curled my hand into the front of his shirt, and kissed him. For one full second, he kissed me back. I felt it happen as his mouth softened against mine, one hand coming up like it meant to settle against my jaw and then, just as fast, he pulled away, putting an actual step of distance between us like I'd burned him. We stood there, both of us breathing harder than the moment should have warranted. What is wrong with me? "Are you always this reckless?" he asked finally, his voice was lower than before, his gaze was hundred percent on me. "I don't know what I am tonight," I admitted, before I could stop myself. It was the most honest thing I'd said since the ceremony started. His eyes moved over my face, and for a moment I thought he might say something else , anything that would make this worse, or better, I genuinely couldn't tell which. Instead, his jaw tightened, and whatever had crossed his expression a moment ago folded itself away. "Are all Alpha daughters this good at making bad decisions," he said, "or is tonight special?" Heat flooded my face, humiliation and something else tangled together too tightly to separate. I stepped back, putting real distance between us this time. "I should go," I said. He didn't stop me. He didn't offer his name either, and I was too rattled to ask for it. I turned and walked deeper into the trees, away from him, away from the ceremonial grounds, away from Richard and Freya and the mark that had already decided everything before I'd even arrived. I couldn't go back yet. Not while my face still felt raw enough to give me away. Even as I walked, I swore I could feel his eyes on my back the entire way through the dark. … "There's no graceful way to say this, Wren, but the council needs a statement from you before sundown," my aunt said gently, catching up to me near the edge of the training grounds. She was the pack's second, and the closest thing I had to a mother since mine had passed. "For the record. To formalize the dissolution." "Do they need it tonight?" I asked, keeping my voice as even as I could manage. "They'd prefer it," she said, staring at my face. "Wren, are you alright? You don't have to pretend with me." "I'm fine," I told her, too quickly. The last thing I wanted was for her to see how far from fine I actually was, or to carry word of it back to my father, who already had enough to manage as Alpha without adding his daughter's humiliation to the pile. "It's just a lot to process." She didn't look convinced, but she let it go, even though she noticed I was trying to buckle everything in. "There's something else," she added, hesitatingly. "Without a confirmed mate bond, your position on the succession line is... unclear. The elders will want to discuss what that means for you going forward." Unclear? As if the last five years of my life folding neatly into place beside Richard's hadn't just been publicly unmade in front of everyone I'd ever known. I was the only wolf my age still standing without a mate bond to my name and it was not because I lacked strength, or worth, or a place in this pack but maybe it's because the one bond I'd built my entire identity around had turned out to belong to someone else. I am an alpha blood line and the last wolf of my generation,so everyone thinks I'm special and powerful . It's more like a line marked by the moon goddess herself generations back, said to run deeper and stranger than an ordinary wolf's. Whatever that inheritance was supposed to mean for me, it hadn't shown itself yet. But I'd spent my whole life training to stand on my own, mate or no mate, it had been long before Richard had ever been part of the plan. I didn't know yet what tonight would cost me. I only knew that whatever came next, it would have to be something I chose for myself.