Rejected by the Alpha, Awakened as the Blood Queen

The oak door did nothing to muffle the sounds from outside. The howls of werewolves mingled with the sharp clatter of shattering wine glasses, each wave louder than the last. How joyous they were. Every cheer felt like a red-hot iron, branding the name of the bride, Isabelle, onto the very word "fiancé." I sat quietly in the velvet armchair by the bedroom window, my icy fingertips folded in my lap. I remained motionless, like an old sculpture waiting to be hauled away. The scent of medicine in the air was thick and cloying—bitter roots, pungent stems, and a musky odor like aged earth. Together, they made up my entire sensory memory of the five years I’d spent as "Elena." The delicate brown glass bottles on the nightstand were a testament to the helplessness of Silver Moon City’s finest physician—his final ultimatum regarding my damn "anemia." "It’s incurable." When he said those words, his eyes held a healer’s frustration and the pity reserved for a weakling destined to be discarded. "Miss Elena," came a maid’s timid voice from the doorway. She had lowered her tone intentionally, yet she couldn't mask the tremor of spiteful joy. "Alpha... Mr. Kyle is here." I shifted my gaze from the window. The laurel tree was dead—stone dead. Kyle had planted it himself five years ago upon our engagement, claiming it would stand witness to our eternal union. Now, its gnarled branches stretched toward the twilight sky like a blackened skeleton. The soil at its roots had taken on an ominous dark red hue, as if something had been draining the life from it for years. I didn't move, merely letting out a soft, noncommittal "mhm." The door was flung open, hitting the wall with a heavy thud. It wasn't the maid. It was Kyle.He wore tailored black finery made for tonight’s celebration, the silver-embroidered wolf-head crest on his chest glinting with a cold, hard light. He stood as sharp and rigid as a drawn blade, radiating a suffocating sense of authority. Those signature golden eyes of his were once the sun I lived by. But when did that sun turn into a block of ice? Oh, it must have been when he stopped seeing me in them. His gaze swept over me as if flicking dust off an old piece of furniture that was in the way, finally settling on my pale face with undisguised loathing. “Why are you still sitting here?” His voice was colder than the evening breeze outside. “Put on your gown, Elena. The ceremony is about to begin.” I raised my eyes and looked at him, slowly, inch by inch. For five years, I thought I would look up at this face until the end of my life. It seems the end has arrived early. “What ceremony?” I asked softly. The chronic “weakness” of this body made my voice thin and raspy, so fragile the slightest wind could carry it away. A scoff escaped Kael’s throat, thick with condescending mockery, as if he were looking at a fool who didn't know her place. “Stop playing dumb, Elena. What do you think I’m here for? To indulge your little ‘sickly and innocent’ act? I don’t have time for this.” He took a step closer, his Alpha aura pressing down heavily. My heart felt as though it were gripped by an invisible hand—not out of fear, but a sense of being insulted, a long-dormant rage. This frail frame trembled instinctively, yet something buried deep within my soul stirred with a flicker of excitement at the affront. “For the future of the Silver Moon Pack, and for the purity and glory of our bloodline, I am dissolving our engagement,” he said, each word like a polished stone hurled with precision at my face. “My bride will be Isabelle, the pure-blooded White Wolf warrior goddess. She will bear me the strongest heirs and bring supreme glory to the family. Not like you—a weakling who can’t even hold onto her own lifeblood.”He spoke with such self-righteousness, as if discarding me weren't a betrayal, but a grand sacrifice—as if he were the hero, sacrificing his own happiness for the greater good of his kind. I watched him, noting the coldness etched onto his handsome features and the feverish hunger for power and the future burning in his golden eyes. I didn't cry; I didn't feel even a flicker of sorrow. Five years was long enough for the most scalding passion to cool into ice, and then crumble into ash. Deep within me, a dark ecstasy—suppressed for nearly a century—began to stir, like magma deep beneath the earth, searching for a c***k to burst through. "I understand," I said, nodding submissively. My voice was so calm it even surprised me. "What is it you need me to do?" My composure made him furrow his brow. The hysteria, the weeping, the accusations, the pleading he had expected... none of it came. It sparked a flicker of irritation at his loss of control, as if he had meticulously staged a grand drama only for the lead to refuse the script. It was like a heavy-handed punch landing on soft cotton. "All you need to do is walk onto the altar with dignity," he commanded coldly, suppressing a surge of inexplicable anger. "Stand there, accept the Council’s decree, and then get out of my sight. It is the last thing you can do for me as my former fiancée. Don't make this any more awkward than it already is—for me, or for yourself." "Very well," I agreed, short and sharp. Kael’s frown deepened. He stared at me intensely, his golden eyes searching my face with suspicion, as if trying to find even the smallest c***k in my mask of composure. But he failed. All he saw was a deathly indifference, and deep within that indifference lay a bottomless darkness he could not begin to fathom. "Good," he finally spat through gritted teeth, his voice tight with the annoyance of losing his grip on the situation. He turned on his heel and strode away, his ornate robes flaring in a cold, sharp arc. The heavy door slammed shut behind him with a resounding thud, rattling the paintings on the walls and shattering the last lingering trace of his scent in the room. The room fell back into a deathly silence.I ignored the bowl of medicine cooling on the table; its bitter scent no longer caused me any physical discomfort. My gaze shifted to the full-length mirror in front of the vanity. The mirror reflected a woman who was almost a stranger to me. She had a silver waterfall of hair and skin as pale as fine porcelain; her slender neck and wrists looked as though they might snap at the slightest touch. Those eyes, once brimming with love, were now as hollow as two ink-black, bottomless wells. This was "Elena"—a frail "sickly girl" pitied by all, a woman who couldn't even lift a finger in her own defense. A pathetic weakling, the laughingstock of the Silver Moon Pack due to her severe "anemia." A... perfect disguise. I raised my hand, my pale fingers brushing lightly against my chest. Through the thin silk of my nightgown, I could feel my heart beating steadily. But only I knew that deep within that heart, a covenant forged of ancient blood and oaths lay coiled like a sleeping viper, where it had remained for nearly a century. It was this "Blood Covenant"—this betrothal that maintained the fragile peace between two races—that sealed away my true power, forcing me to languish in this sickly form. It was both a shackle and a cage. And now Kyle, my dear fiancé, for the sake of his "family honor," was about to sever those chains with his own hands. How pathetic. He surely believes himself to be the star of the show tonight. Little does he know that the true curtain-raiser won't begin until he rips that worthless scrap of paper to shreds. I gazed at my bloodless, pallid face in the mirror, and the corners of my mouth curled upward in a slow, irrepressible arc. It was a cold, eerie smile that no one would ever notice. I closed my eyes, feeling the clamor of the distant celebration draw closer and clearer. It was no funeral march being played for me, but an overture composed for my rebirth. I’m starting to look forward to it. To the moment that ancient scroll is ripped apart. To the arrival of my freedom.