Rejected as Wolfless, I Am the Last Moon Wolf

The bonfire in the center of Bloodmoon village was tall enough to singe the stars, but I stood at the back of the crowd and shivered. The Mating Ceremony only happened once a year. Every eighteen-year-old in the pack lined up before the stone platform, and the Moon Goddess showed them their fated mate. Some people cried. Some people laughed. Last year, a baker’s daughter met an Alpha’s son from the eastern border, and the whole pack had talked about it for months. I’d been waiting for tonight since I was twelve. Every year I watched from the crowd while other girls got their moment. I memorized the way the firelight caught on paired hands, the way the Elders smiled like they’d made the matches themselves. I practiced my own face in the mirror, just in case — calm, grateful, worthy. My cousin Elena stood beside me now, fidgeting in her good dress. "Nervous?" she whispered. "No," I lied. "Liar." She bumped my shoulder with hers. "It’ll be fine. You’ll see. The goddess doesn’t forget anyone." I didn’t tell her that the whole village seemed to disagree. Not because I wanted a mate. Because I needed one. At sixteen, most wolves felt their animal stir for the first time. A tug behind the ribs. A flash of heat in the blood. My cousin Elena had shifted in the middle of breakfast and broken three plates. I was eighteen, and I had never felt anything. The pack had a word for girls like me. They whispered it behind their hands: wolfless. As if the goddess had forgotten to give me a soul. Girls like me did the jobs no one else wanted. We mended nets and scrubbed pots and smiled when the warriors’ daughters walked past in their new cloaks. I had learned to be useful early. Usefulness, at least, was a kind of armor. But the Mating Ceremony didn’t care about any of that. It matched souls, not wolves. Even a girl everyone had given up on could be the other half of someone powerful. That was the story I told myself every night when I couldn’t sleep. And tonight, the line was short. Only six of us were eighteen this year. I knew every face — Tomas, who laughed too loud when he was scared; little Priya, who had shifted at fourteen and already smelled of pine and confidence; and Seraphina, who had spent all week telling anyone who would listen that she had dreamed of gold eyes. Gold eyes. Caden’s eyes. Caden Blackthorne stood on the platform. He was twenty, broad-shouldered, with dark hair that always fell across his eyes. Those eyes were gold, the kind of gold people wrote songs about. Heir to the Bloodmoon Pack. My best friend from childhood. The boy who used to sneak me apples from the orchard and swear he’d find me under the moon. He was supposed to be mine. I knew it the way you know you’re breathing. From the time I was small, I’d felt a thread between us—thin, fragile, but real. When he smiled at me across the crowd, I smiled back. Then Seraphina stepped up beside him. My stepsister wore red silk the color of a wound. Her hair was twisted into a crown of braids, and she was looking at Caden like he already belonged to her. Elder Marcus raised the ceremonial blade. "Caden Blackthorne, do you accept the mate the goddess has chosen?" Caden looked at me. I held my breath. "No," he said. The crowd rustled. Someone laughed, thinking it was a joke. "I reject the bond placed on me," Caden said, louder now. "I reject Mila Blackwood as my mate. She is wolfless. Weak. Unfit to stand beside me as Luna." My knees went loose. I grabbed the arm of the person next to me to stay upright. Someone threw an apple core. It hit my shoulder and fell into the dirt. "Look at her," Seraphina said, not even bothering to whisper. "She really believed it." Caden took Seraphina’s hand. "I choose Seraphina Dawn as my true mate." The crowd cheered. The sound of it went through me like cold water. These were my neighbors. The women who had taught me to knead bread. The boys I had raced through the wheat. Their cheers weren’t cruel, exactly. That was the worst part. To them, this was simply right — the strong boy and the beautiful girl, and the broken thing finally put in its place. Not for me. For them. I searched for my father. He was near the front, tall and gray-haired, his jaw tight. For one second, our eyes met. Then he looked down at the ground. I waited one heartbeat more. For him to push through the crowd. For him to say my name the way he used to, before my mother died and the house went quiet. Nothing. Just the top of his gray head, and the dirt, and the laughter. Something cracked inside my chest. Not my heart. Something deeper, something that had been sleeping for eighteen years, curled up and waiting. I let go of the stranger’s arm. I straightened my spine. I walked forward until I was close enough for Caden to see my face. "One day," I said, and my voice was steady, "you will regret this." Caden’s mouth opened, but I didn’t wait for whatever he was going to say. I turned and ran. Not toward my father’s house. Not toward the road. I ran straight into the Bloodwood Forest—the old woods on the eastern edge of our territory where rogues lived and sane wolves didn’t go. Branches tore at my dress. Roots tried to trip me. I ran until my lungs burned and the laughter died behind me. Behind me, someone called my name. It might have been Elena. It might have been no one. I didn’t slow down. Foolish, the sensible part of me whispered. Rogues. Wolves. Death. The rest of me didn’t care. The rest of me was already breaking open. The moon vanished behind the canopy. The forest went dark. I stumbled into a small clearing and fell to my knees. Moss cushioned the impact. Silver trees leaned over me like curious giants. Then the pain started. It began in the center of my chest, hot and sharp, as if someone had reached in and grabbed my ribs. I gasped and pressed both hands to my sternum, but the pressure only made it worse. Something was trying to get out. "No," I whispered. "Not now. Not when it’s too late." A voice drifted through the trees. It sounded female and ancient, amused and furious all at once. "They called you wolfless, child. Let them see what you really are." My back arched. My vision went white. And then the world went black.