Rejected Omega, claimed by the Ruthless Alpha

CHAPTER 4 – Rejected and sold[Part 2]

Lucian lounged to one side, arms folded, expression carved from ice.

Farther back, Kael leaned against a pillar, arms crossed, gaze on me—steady and unreadable.

“Aria Hale,” Rowan said, using my name like a curse. “From this night forward, you no longer belong to your Beta house. At dawn, you will be married and transferred to Blackthorn. The contract is already being drafted. Consider it an honor.”

My stomach lurched. “Married…?”

“To Alpha Kael Draven,” Rowan said.

Cold spread through my limbs.

Kael. The Butcher of Blackthorn. The monster in every training yard story.

Lucian’s lip curled. “You should thank him. At least he’ll take you. There are worse fates for a rejected omega.”

I wanted to beg.

The word **please** rose hot and sour in my throat, the same way it had earlier under the Moon.

But this time, I swallowed it back.

I wouldn’t beg him. Not again. Not after he’d looked at me like a miracle, then thrown me away like garbage.

“Your Majesty,” I managed instead, voice rough, “I— I’ll leave the pack. I’ll go to the human cities. You never have to see me again. Just…don’t—”

Rowan’s eyes hardened. “You think I’ll let a Moon‑touched omega wander out into the world unsupervised? To be picked up by whoever gets there first? No. You will do as you’re told. Or you will be put down as a threat to the crown. Those are your options.”

My mouth snapped shut.

The guards tightened their grip on my arms.

“Wash her,” Rowan ordered. “Dress her in something passable. I won’t have Blackthorn think we send them filth.”

Lucian stepped closer as the guards hauled me up.

He bent, voice low for my ears alone.

“Take the offer,” he murmured. “He likes to break his toys. You’ll be smearing on his bed in a week instead of a stain on my future. You should be grateful.”

Anger flickered faintly under the grief. Small, fragile—but there.

The guards started to drag me away.

As the throne room doors swung shut behind us, my gaze snagged on Kael one last time.

He had pushed off the pillar. His arms were uncrossed now, hands loose at his sides. Those grey eyes stayed on me as I was yanked from the hall, weighing, measuring, like a predator watching prey it had already decided to claim.

Later, after too‑cold water and rough hands and a shift that wasn’t quite mine, the guards marched me down a quiet corridor toward a locked chamber.

They didn’t get there.

A shadow detached itself from a side passage and stepped into our path.

“Alpha,” one of the guards stammered.

Kael.

Even without armor, he filled the space. The torchlight made sharp planes of his face, caught faintly on the scars.

“Leave,” he said.

The word carried weight. The guards didn’t argue.

“Yes, Alpha,” they muttered, releasing me and retreating.

Silence fell.

My heartbeat thundered.

I stood in the thin shift, damp hair clinging to my neck, hands twisted in the fabric. I felt smaller than ever under his gaze.

He walked toward me without hurry, each step steady.

Up close, his scent wrapped around me: smoke, pine, iron, and something deeply, dangerously male.

He stopped a step away, looking down at me like I was a puzzle he’d already solved, but was still deciding how to break.

His gaze dropped to my throat.

His hand came up slowly.

I could have flinched. I didn’t.

His knuckles brushed the side of my neck, over the spot where a mate mark had tried to form and had been ripped away. The skin there is still ached, hot, and tender.

His thumb pressed just enough to feel the faint residual warmth—like the ghost of the Moon’s touch still lived under my skin.

“Hurts?” he asked.

“Yes,” I whispered.

He made a low sound. Not quite sympathy. It's not quite dismissal.

“They think they threw you to a monster, little omega,” he said.

My throat worked. “Didn’t they?”

One corner of his mouth curled, cruel and amused at once.

“Maybe,” he said. “But monsters don’t bow to princes.”

His eyes darkened; for a brief second, wolf‑gold flared inside the grey as his beast pushed closer, reacting to my scent, to the tang of pain and Moon‑magic and something that still whispered *mate* beneath the rejection.

His thumb stroked once over my throat in a slow, claiming drag.

“And once I mark you,” he went on, voice dropping, every word a promise, “no one will ever touch you again without bleeding for it.”

A shiver ripped straight down my spine.

Fear.

And something else, darker, that I didn’t dare name.

He let his hand fall and stepped back, as if he hadn’t just redrawn the lines of my future.

“Sleep, Aria,” he said, my name sounding different in his mouth than it ever had in anyone else’s. “Tomorrow, you become mine.”

Then he turned and walked away, boots echoing on the stone.

I stood alone in the corridor, heart pounding, the place under my skin where his thumb had touched burning like a brand.

Rejected by my fated mate.

Sold to a man they all called a monster.

And for the first time since the Moon chose me, I wasn’t entirely sure whether what had trembled inside me was only terror—

Or the first spark of something dangerously close to hope.

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