The Alpha's unclaimed

ARIA POV The rejection didn't come with shouting. You imagine the worst moment of your life and your thoughts give you noise, screaming, or at least a real argument. Something loud enough to match the size of the pain you feel. Damien Kane looked me in the eye and destroyed me quietly. It was a Thursday Full moon gathering night, the one time every month when unmated wolves felt their bonds humming like a second heartbeat. I had felt mine for three months, that was the same time I knew the way the sun is behind clouds, certainly warm, or just slightly out of reach. I wore a green dress. I don't know why I still remember that. I found him by the eastern fire, standing apart from everyone the way he always did. Damien The Alpha-heir of the most powerful pack in the northern region. The most beautiful and terrifying person I had ever been close enough to touch. When he turned and saw me, something moved across his face fast like a shadow crossing water and then it was gone. "Aria." His voice was flat. "Damien." I smiled. I was so happy. "I think you already know why I'm here." He looked at me for a long moment. The fire was behind him and I couldn't read his eyes properly. Later I would think about that. I wonder if he chose that spot on purpose. "I know," he said. "So" I, Damien Kane, Alpha-heir of the Ashveil Pack." He stopped. Breathed. "Reject you, Aria Voss, as my fated mate." The bond didn't break slowly. It snapped one clean vicious c***k, like a bone going. The pain hit the center of my chest and my knees nearly gave out. My wolf Luna made a sound inside me that I had no human word for. Not a howl. Something smaller. The sound of something folding in on itself. I didn't cry. I want to be clear about that. "Okay," I said. He flinched Small, but I saw it, and I stored it somewhere cold because it was the only thing I had. I walked back through the gathering without looking at anyone. I heard the whispers start up like a wave, The Rejected Voss girl. The omega with no wolf. I kept walking. I went home and packed my bag. By Friday morning, I was gone. —---------- That was four years ago. I'm telling you this because you need to understand who I was before I can tell you who I became. And you need to understand who I became before you can understand what happened on Tuesday afternoon that changed everything. My name now is Aria Novak. I run a small medical clinic in the human city of Cresthollow, forty minutes outside the nearest pack territory. I built it alone, with no Alpha's permission and no pack hierarchy to answer to. I finished my medical degree, rented a building that smelled like antiseptic and old wood, and I made something that was entirely mine. Four years is long enough to do all of that. It was not, until I discovered it was quite long enough to stop dreaming about him. --- Just like every other Tuesday it all fell apart . The first patient was a man with a cough he'd been ignoring for six months. Second a teenage girl from the territory borders with a wrongly healing wrist. Third was supposed to be Mrs. Gareth, my elderly patient who lied about her blood pressure medication every single visit. Mrs. Gareth didn't show up. At two-seventeen, the front door opened and a young girl fell through it. She was seventeen. Her clothes were torn at the shoulder, dried blood on her face, moving the way injured wolves move when they're pretending they're not fast controlled, with a hitch in her left hip that told me something in her pelvis wasn't right. She had an Ashveil Pack marking on her wrist. My stomach hit the floor. "Hey." I was already moving to catch her before she went down. "I've got you. Can you tell me your name?" She grabbed my wrist instead. Her grip was too strong for someone her size and condition. Her pale grey eyes locked onto mine with the intensity of someone running out of time. "Are you Aria Voss?" she said. Everything in me went still. I hadn't used that name in four years. "Who told you to find me?" I said carefully. "They said you'd know." She pressed something into my palm . "They said I should give you this." Then she passed out. —-- I got her cracked rib, bruised pelvis, stable. I worked fast and cleaned, and I kept my right hand closed around what she had given me the entire time. When she was settled and breathing evenly, I stepped into the hallway and opened my fist. A small carved wooden token, round and flat, worn smooth by years of handling. A crescent moon with a single star inside it, cut clean and precise. It belonged to my mother. who had died when I was six, whose token I had not seen since the night she was buried. The air left my lungs slowly. Then from the examination room, the girl murmured something. Still half-unconscious,I heard it clearly because the hallway was completely silent . She said: "They know about the bloodline." I looked down at the token in my palm. I looked at the Ashveil marking on her wrist. And somewhere deep in my chest, Luna who had been quiet and folded away for four years lifted her head. Outside, a black car rolled slowly past my clinic window. It didn't stop. Because as it passed under the streetlight, I saw the plate. Northern region. Ashveil territory. My hand closed tight around my mother's token. They had found me.