🌑 Chapter Two – The Aftermath
1001 Words
🌑 Chapter Two – The Aftermath
The celebration continued long after the Alpha’s words ripped through Aria’s soul.
Music pounded, goblets clashed, laughter rang louder than ever. But for Aria, the world was nothing but broken echoes.
Her body shook as wine dripped down her hair and face, soaking her thin servant’s tunic. The room blurred in and out of focus, her wolf silent inside her chest. It felt like someone had reached into her ribcage, pulled out her heart, and crushed it.
She couldn’t breathe.
She couldn’t speak.
And no one cared.
As the crowd cheered, a warrior deliberately bumped her shoulder, sending her crashing to the ground. The laughter that followed was sharper than knives.
“Look at her,” one female sneered, her silk gown glittering under the torches. “The Moon Goddess must be blind to give her to our Alpha.”
“She’s nothing but an omega w***e,” another spat, tossing the scraps of meat from her plate onto the floor in front of Aria. “Fitting she belongs on her knees.”
Tears burned in Aria’s eyes, but she blinked them away. Crying would only feed them. She pressed her hands into the floor, trying to rise, when a heavy boot pinned her down.
The new Alpha—her so-called mate—looked down at her with a smirk. “Don’t worry, omega. Someone will want you. Perhaps the lowest rogue in the gutters. That’s more your kind.”
The pack roared with cruel laughter, the sound echoing in her ears long after he walked away.
Aria remained frozen on the floor, her cheek pressed against the cold stone, until the room finally blurred with movement again. The others returned to their feast, toasting to their Alpha’s cruelty as if it were strength.
When she finally managed to push herself up, her knees wobbled. She kept her eyes on the floor, her throat tight, her wolf a hollow silence.
She slipped out of the hall unnoticed. Or perhaps, deliberately ignored. Either way, no one stopped her. To them, she was invisible again.
---
The servants’ quarters were dark and quiet. A single candle flickered in the corner, its flame weak against the night. Aria collapsed onto her thin cot, curling into herself.
Every breath hurt. Every thought cut like glass.
Rejected.
The word screamed inside her, louder than the laughter had been.
Her wolf whimpered faintly, but the sound was fading. It terrified her—because she knew if her wolf abandoned her completely, she would no longer be whole. Some omegas never recovered from a rejection this brutal. Some simply… disappeared into themselves.
Maybe that was easier.
She clutched the torn edge of her blanket, pressing it against her mouth to muffle the sob that finally escaped. Her body shook with it, every suppressed tear breaking free at once. She had always endured the cruelty, the beatings, the starvation—but this? This was different. This was final.
The one gift the Moon Goddess had given her had been torn away and used as a weapon to destroy her.
And she had no one.
---
The next morning, she rose before dawn, as she always did. Her eyes were swollen, her head heavy, but she moved silently to the kitchens. She stirred pots, chopped vegetables, scrubbed pans—because work was survival. Work meant no one could say she was lazy, no one could drag her into the center of the hall again and make an example of her.
But whispers followed her everywhere.
“She really thought the Alpha would claim her.”
“Pathetic omega.”
“Rejected mate. She’ll never be worth anything now.”
Every word was a knife. Every glance a reminder of the shame that clung to her like dirt she could never scrub clean.
By midday, when she carried trays of food to the warriors, one of them stuck his foot out. She stumbled, the tray crashing to the ground. Stew splattered across her arms and chest, scalding her skin.
The warrior grinned, leaning back in his chair. “Careful, omega. You’re already damaged goods. Don’t make yourself even uglier.”
The others laughed, throwing scraps of bread at her as if she were a dog.
Her hands trembled as she picked up the broken bowls. Her throat burned with words she would never say. She wanted to scream, to fight, to tell them all that she had never asked for this bond—that it had been forced on her by the Moon Goddess herself.
But no one would listen. No one ever had.
So she bowed her head and cleaned.
---
That night, her body ached from labor, but sleep refused to come. She stared at the cracked ceiling above her, wondering what she had done to deserve this life.
Her parents had died when she was young. She had grown up alone, shoved into the lowest ranks, treated like dirt. Still, some small part of her had always believed the Moon Goddess would give her a mate who would love her, someone who would finally see her worth.
But instead, she had been given to the cruelest Alpha of all. And he had broken her completely.
Tears slid silently down her temples, soaking into her pillow. Her chest felt too tight, her wolf’s silence crushing. She wondered if she would ever hear her again.
And then—so faint she thought it was her imagination—something stirred deep inside.
Not her wolf. Something else. A pull. A whisper. A promise.
Her heart skipped. She sat up, clutching her blanket around her shoulders. The feeling was strange—warm and wild, like the earth itself had reached up to touch her.
She didn’t know it yet, but far beyond the pack’s borders, three Lycans—Crew, Ryker, and Zane—felt it too.
Their mate had cried her first true tears.
And now, nothing in the world could keep them from finding her.
- Writer
