Luna of Ashes

Sereia pov The moon was full… the night my world fell apart.I stood in the middle of the pack circle, my white dress catching moonlight, my hands shaking at my sides. Every wolf in Blackthorn territory had come to watch. I could feel their eyes on me like small knives, pressing in from every direction, hungry for the moment I'd been dreading and dreaming about since I turned sixteen. Kaelen stood across from me…Tall Broad shoulders Eyes the color of melted silver, eyes I had seen in my dreams since before I ever met him. My mate…My fated mate, the moon goddess herself had marked us for each other, and I had waited nineteen years to feel the bond snap into place. It had snapped into place. I felt it the moment he walked into the room…warmth spreading through my chest like sunlight through water, my wolf howling with joy inside me, clawing to get closer to him. I thought this was the happiest night of my life. I remember thinking, stupidly, that I would tell our children about this night someday.Then his father, Alpha Corvin, stepped forward and whispered something in his ear. Kaelen's face changed. The warmth in his eyes turned to stone, so fast I thought I'd imagined the warmth in the first place. "Sereia Voss," he said, loud enough for the whole circle to hear, his voice flat and cold like he was reading off a grocery list instead of ending my life. "I reject you as my mate." The words hit me like claws tearing through skin. I heard gasps around the circle. Someone laughed, a cruel little sound near the back, and I never found out who, though I've spent three years wondering. My wolf whimpered and curled into the smallest corner of my chest, as if she could hide from the pain by making herself invisible."Kaelen." My voice came out smaller than I wanted, barely a whisper in a circle gone completely silent. "What are you…" "I don't want you." He wouldn't look at me now. He was staring at a spot somewhere over my shoulder, jaw locked tight. "You're not fit to be my Luna." “Kaelen, you can't do this to me." My voice cracks, rising even as I try to hold it steady. "You can't reject me. Not like this.He doesn't answer. He won't even look at me.What happened is my knees gave out, and I caught myself on the stone altar in front of everyone, my palms scraping raw against the rock, and I heard my own father's voice from the crowd, ashamed, telling me to get up before I embarrassed him further,I got up. I walked out of that circle with every eye in Blackthorn on my back, my world stopped spinning because if I was going to fall apart I was not going to do it where they could watch. I did not cry until I was three miles into the forest, alone, my dress torn from running through the brush, my bare feet bleeding from stones I never felt. That was three years ago. Tonight, I am not that girl anymore. "Alpha Voss." Damaris, my second, pokes her head into my study, pulling me out of the memory before it can swallow me whole. "The car is ready. The summit starts in an hour." I look at myself in the mirror one more time. My Dark red hair braided back tight, not a strand loose. Black coat, sharp at the shoulders,Nothing soft left in my face. I built this version of myself out of the wreckage Kaelen left behind, Every night I train until my knuckles split, until I earned my own territory, pack and title. Nobody rejects an Alpha and walks away clean. "He'll be there," Damaris says carefully, watching my face for cracks. "Kaelen. He's Alpha of Ashford now. His father died last winter." My stomach tightens, but I don't let it show. Three years of practice has made my face a locked door. "I know." "Sereia." Damaris uses my name, not my title, which she only does when she's worried about me. "You don't have to go. Send me instead. Nobody would blame you."You'd go in a heartbeat if I asked," I say quietly, and something in her expression softens, "but this isn't yours to carry for me. She nods, once, like she expected that answer and respects it anyway. That's the thing about Damaris.. she pushes exactly as hard as I need and never an inch further. I almost let myself hide one more time, the way I've hidden for three years, letting Damaris be my face at every summit, every border meeting, every gathering where Kaelen Ashford might be standing. Then I think of the small boy asleep down the hall, silver-eyed and dark-haired, who has no idea his father is the most powerful Alpha in the northern territories. Rowan doesn't know Kaelen exists. Kaelen doesn't know Rowan exists. And if I want to keep it that way and protect the one part of my life that is still whole.. I need a seat at that summit table, not an empty chair Damaris fills for me while I stay home and pretend I'm not afraid. "I'm going," I say. The drive to the summit hall takes forty minutes. I spend all forty of them telling myself I am ready..I am not ready. The second I step through the doors, I feel it ..the bond, still alive somewhere underneath three years of scar tissue, humming low in my chest like a struck bell that never fully stopped ringing. I look up, and across the crowded hall, silver eyes find mine, and every conversation in the room seems to fall away. Kaelen goes Completely still, like a man who has seen a ghost. And for one terrible, breathless second, neither of us moves. Then his eyes drop down my face, my throat, and lower, to the faint mark hidden beneath my collar that no one is supposed to be able to see unless they are looking for it. The mark only a mate, or a father, would recognize. His jaw tightens. His eyes come back up to mine, and this time there is a question in them that makes my blood run cold because I know, with sudden terrible certainty, that he has already started counting backward.