His Rejection: Rewritten

Ch. 1 P. 2

By the time I returned to my room, the storm had stopped, or whatever it had been. The sky outside was blue again...

I stood beneath the shower until the water ran cool, trying not to think about tonight.

My first shift...

My mate...

School...

Maxon... Everything waiting for me on the other side of our front door.

When I stepped out, steam covered the mirror. I wiped my palm across it and stared at the girl looking back.

Seventeen.

Today, officially.

I didn't feel different, and maybe I wasn't supposed to.

Most wolves spent their seventeenth birthday surrounded by family; some packs held elaborate first-shift celebrations. Grimholt preferred a massive gathering beneath the moon where everyone shifting that cycle was presented before the Alpha, Dominic Ellis.

I'd always hated the idea, standing in front of everyone and being watched. Waiting to see whether my wolf would emerge properly. Waiting for everyone to find one more thing wrong with me.

My gaze fell to the necklace dangling against my chest.

Mom.

She had been beautiful. Everyone agreed about that.

I had her eyes, her hair. Her stubbornness, according to Griffin...

Some people said my father had never recovered from losing his mate, others said he'd blamed me, but the truth was more complicated than that.

Dad had tried to love me; I knew that, but that somehow made everything worse. There were mornings when he'd make breakfast and braid my hair so badly Griffin would redo it before school. Nights when he'd read to me until I fell asleep. Birthdays when he'd buy too many presents because he never seemed to know what else to do with me.

Then there were the other days...

Days when he'd stare at me too long. Days when I'd walk into a room and watch something inside him collapse.

“You look so much like her,” he'd whisper.

Sometimes he smiled when he said it. Sometimes he left the room.

As I got older, he would completely avoid me for days on end...

The drinking came next, then the pills. Then things Griffin refused to explain until I was old enough to understand them without asking.

I was eight when Dad died, and unlike Mom, I remembered every second of losing him.

I closed my eyes.

Bad idea.

The memory came anyway...

I'd come home early because I'd finished a placement examination faster than expected. Even then, school had been easy for me. Numbers arranged themselves before teachers finished explaining them. Words stuck after I'd read them once. Patterns made sense almost before I knew what I was looking for.

I'd been excited. Dad, during one of his fatherly moment, had promised me a surprise if I scored high enough.

I found him in my bedroom. At first, I thought that was the surprise. He stood beside my dresser with a folded letter beneath one hand.

“Daddy?”

He turned.

Even now, I can remember how relieved he'd looked when he saw me, and how terrifying that relief had been.

His eyes were red. His face unshaven. He smelled wrong.

“There's my girl.”

I'd smiled.

Then I'd seen the gun. I hadn't understood, not immediately.

He came toward me and knelt.

“You know I love you, don't you?”

“Yeah.”

His face crumpled.

“You look just like her.”

I didn't know what to say.

His hand touched my cheek.

“I tried, baby.”

Something cold slid into my stomach.

“Daddy?”

“I really tried.”

He kissed my forehead.

“I'm sorry I couldn't be better.”

Then he stood, and the gun came up.

Everything after that happened too quickly and too slowly.

“Daddy?”

The blast.

Blood.

The smell.

The sound of my own screaming.

I opened my eyes.

My hands were gripping the vanity.

With a sigh, I returned to the mirror and tried to relax, but the memory hadn't finished with me.

After the gunshot, I remembered screaming until my throat hurt, and then nothing...

I didn't remember Griffin coming home; I remembered him afterward, though.

He'd found me sitting against the far wall, covered in blood and staring at our father's body. People came. Pack members. Guards. Then Alpha Dominic Ellis.

I remembered his shoes first.

Black. Perfectly polished.

They stopped directly in front of me.

He'd looked at Dad, then at the blood.

Then at me.

“Did you do this?”

Even now, remembering it made something ugly twist in my stomach.

I had been eight years old.

Eight...

Griffin had lost his mind.

“Don't touch her!”

Someone held him back.

Dominic crouched in front of me. “Nova. Look at me.”

I hadn't.

“Did you do this?”

People whispered behind him. Maybe that was where the rumors truly started, maybe they'd already existed. I honestly couldn't remember anymore.

All I remembered was Dominic grabbing my arm and forcing me to stand.

Griffin roaring.

My own voice finally returning.

“No!”

Then pointing at the note.

“He did.”

Dominic had looked at the letter.

But before I ran, he'd looked at me again.

That was the part I remembered most.

Not anger. Not pity.

Something else...

Afterward, half the pack decided an eight-year-old girl had somehow killed her own father while the other half decided I had driven him to it. Children heard their parents whispering. Then children did what children did best.

They made it crueler.

By twelve, I was the girl whose mother died giving birth to her. By thirteen, my father had killed himself because he hated me.

By fourteen, some versions had me standing there smiling while he did it. By fifteen, I stopped correcting anyone. Grimholt had already chosen its version of Nova Lucas, and nothing I said was going to change it.

“Nova!”

Griffin's shout yanked me back.

“We're leaving in twenty!”

“Okay!”

I stared at myself.

Then something inside me hardened.

No. Not today.

I was seventeen. I was shifting tonight, and somewhere in this miserable pack was supposedly a male fate had chosen specifically for me.

Maybe my wolf was right. Maybe one person would look at me and see something other than the stories.

I opened my closet. My usual oversized hoodies stared back at me. I pushed them aside.

“Fine.”

My wolf perked up.

“Don't get excited.”

I pulled out a fitted dark-green top I'd bought months ago and never worn. The neckline wasn't obscene, but it actually acknowledged that I had breasts, which meant Griffin was probably going to have an aneurysm. I paired it with dark fitted jeans that hugged my hips and thighs instead of hiding them.

When I turned back toward the mirror, I was almost changed.

Almost.

My stomach wasn't perfectly flat. My thighs touched. My face still held softness that would probably disappear after my first shift.

But I looked... pretty. Really pretty.

My wolf practically purred.

“Don't.”

Approval washed through me.

I smiled.

“Okay. Maybe a little.”

I left my hair loose, letting the dark waves fall nearly to my waist, and applied a little gloss. I grabbed my favorite high-top sneakers and bag, new music player.

Done.

For once, I didn't look like I was trying to disappear. The thought terrified me more than I wanted to admit.

Griffin was leaning against his car when I stepped outside. He looked up and his keys slipped from his fingers.

I smiled.

“Oh, that's satisfying.”

He bent slowly and picked them up.

“No.”

I laughed. “No what?”

“Go change.”

“You've spent three years telling me to stop dressing like a hermit.”

“I was wrong.”

“You're ridiculous.”

“Nova.”

“Griffin.”

His eyes narrowed. Mine did too as we began our age-old staring contest. Then he muttered something under his breath and opened my door.

“You're going to make me commit a felony today.”

“Against who?”

“Undecided.”

I climbed into the passenger seat. Griffin got behind the wheel and started the car, but he kept glancing at me.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“You're staring.”

“I am assessing.”

“Assessing what?”

“How many people I can reasonably beat up before they suspend me.”

I snorted.

“You realize we're graduating this year, right? You can't solve everything with your fists.”

“You skipped a grade. You're supposed to be the smart one. Don't say stupid things.”

I laughed.

Being in the same graduating class as Griffin confused people who didn't know us. He was eighteen. I had just turned seventeen. I'd skipped ahead after scoring beyond the upper-year curriculum when I was younger. Griffin claimed it was proof that I was a freak, while I claimed it was proof he was stupid.

We had agreed to disagree.

The car followed the winding road toward the center of Pack Grimholt territory. Houses appeared between the trees, then shops, training halls and administrative buildings. Grimholt wasn't some hidden cluster of cabins in a forest. It was a thriving territory with its own businesses, schools, medical center and technology grid, all governed beneath Alpha law.

The packhouse sat near its center, it was less a house than an estate. Dark stone rose behind iron gates, surrounded by acres of training fields and old trees. The main building had been expanded so many times that different generations of Grimholt Alphas had practically built on top of one another.

Alpha Dominic's section was the oldest.

Of course, it was.

Griffin turned onto the drive and my stomach tightened.

“Still time to fake my death.”

“No.”

“Minor illness?”

“No.”

“Sudden mysterious coma?”

“I'll carry you inside.”

“You're a terrible brother.”

“The worst.”

I reached for my headphones.

Griffin caught my wrist.

“Hey.”

I looked at him.

“Whatever happens today, don't let these people decide what kind of day you have.”

Something about the seriousness in his voice made me pause.

“Okay.”

“I mean it.”

“I know.”

His thumb rubbed once across my wrist before he released me.

Then he ruined the moment. “And if somebody pisses you off, tell me first.”

“So you can beat them up?”

“So I can discuss their behavior.”

“With your fists.”

“They're persuasive.”

I laughed and put my headphones in. Music filled my ears. For the remaining drive, I watched Grimholt pass outside my window.

Tonight, everything changed.

At least that was what everyone kept saying.

I didn't know how right they were.