Rejected By Her Mate, Loved By His Brother

The Moonridge Pack was a place where strength ruled, and weakness was a curse no one dared bear. Power determined everything—your status, your worth, even the love you received. For as long as Selene could remember, she had been the weakest. Born to a low-ranking she-wolf who died shortly after childbirth and a father who drank himself into obscurity, Selene grew up without protection or affection. She was the pup left out in the cold, the girl with bones too thin and eyes too haunted. The other young wolves grew tall and fast, their claws gleaming under the moonlight. Selene remained slender, fragile. Her wolf had not awakened on her sixteenth birthday like the others. And as the years passed, whispers spread. Maybe she didn’t have a wolf at all. She had become the pack's invisible burden—tolerated, never accepted. They called her names when they thought she wasn't listening. Ghost-wolf. Pack runt. Dead blood. She pretended not to hear, but the words stung deeper than claws ever could. “Move faster, Selene,” growled Gamma Rika during training. “If rogues attacked right now, you’d be the first corpse on the field.” Snickers followed the insult. Selene bit her tongue, swallowing her pain like poison. She had learned early not to talk back. That day ended like so many others—with her collapsed in the dirt, lungs burning, hands scraped bloody. She wasn’t weak from lack of effort. She trained harder than any of them. But her body simply wouldn’t keep up. Her wolf was silent still. And then there was Rylan. The Alpha’s son. Future leader of Moonridge. Dark-haired, broad-shouldered, untouchable. He was everything Selene wasn’t. Where she was silence, he was dominance. Where she was hidden, he was admired. Every she-wolf swooned when he passed. He never looked at Selene. Not once. Still… she dreamed. Maybe, one day, the Moon Goddess would bind them. Maybe when she turned eighteen, she’d feel the bond snap into place and he’d finally see her. But those were foolish daydreams. Because Rylan was a prodigy. His wolf awakened at fifteen—a silver beast, strong beyond his peers. Some whispered he carried alpha fire itself. No one doubted he would be the most powerful Alpha in history. Except for one shadow. Kael. The exiled brother. The rogue Alpha. The curse whispered only in silence. Some said he had tried to kill his father. Others that madness took him after visions from the ancestors. Whatever the truth, Kael vanished into the rogue lands and rose as a king among outcasts. They said he could command shadows. That his wolf no longer resembled a creature of this earth. And yet… Selene often thought of him. Not with fear. But with curiosity. He was the only one who had stood against everything Moonridge believed in. The only one who hadn’t bowed. Sometimes, she wondered if he had once felt what she felt now. Loneliness. That night, her seventeenth birthday, she stood beneath the trees. Her body ached from drills, her skin littered with bruises. “Happy birthday to me,” she whispered. No one had remembered. Not that she expected them to. Suddenly, the wind shifted. A scent. Sharp. Intoxicating. Her heart pounded as warmth spread through her chest. Her breath caught. No. It can’t be… Pain exploded in her spine, white-hot and blinding. She dropped to her knees, clutching her chest. A snarl ripped from her throat— not human. Her wolf. Awakening. Finally. Tears blurred her vision as bones shifted, claws scraped dirt, and her eyes lit with power. A furious howl split the night. And then… silence. Her wolf vanished as quickly as it came. But something had changed. She had changed. From that night on, Selene dreamed of fire. Of silver eyes that weren’t Rylan’s. Of a rogue Alpha wrapped in shadow. Her story had just begun. And every prophecy whispered in the dark had just awoken.