Rejected Before The Pack

Chapter 1

Aria’s POV

"Move faster, omega. The Alpha's breakfast isn't going to cook itself."

I didn't look up from the firewood. Talia's voice was the same every morning — sharp, bored, sure I was only good for orders.

"Yes, Talia," I said, and kept stacking.

The sky over Shadow Moon Pack hadn't even turned gray yet. Most of the pack was still asleep, dreaming whatever easy dreams came to people who never had to earn their place. I liked this hour best. The cold felt honest. Nobody's insults had woken up yet either.

By the time the sun broke over the trees, I'd hauled six armfuls of wood, scrubbed the training hall floor, and fed the hunting hounds, who at least looked grateful. Small mercies. I'd learned to collect them like coins.

"You missed a spot." Braden leaned in the kitchen doorway, arms crossed, watching me wring out the mop like it was entertainment. "Actually, you missed all the spots. Didn't anyone teach you how to clean, omega? Or just how to be useless?"

"I grew up here," I said. "Same as you."

"Could've fooled me."

I let it go. I always let it go. Somewhere underneath all my years of practice, there was a version of me that wanted to throw the mop bucket at his smug face. But omegas who talked back didn't stay omegas. They got worse. I'd watched it happen to Willa two winters ago. I didn't need to learn that lesson twice.

I was almost done with the pens when I heard it — a thin, broken whimper from behind the woodshed. Not a pack sound. Something smaller. Something scared.

I found him curled in the mud. A wolf pup, no bigger than my two hands, one back leg bent wrong, shivering so hard his teeth clicked. Someone's runt, probably. The kind of thing this pack threw away without thinking twice, same as they'd thrown me away, just on a faster timeline.

"Hey," I whispered, crouching down. "It's okay. I've got you."

He snapped at my fingers, all fear, no real bite behind it. I didn't pull back.

"I know," I said softly. "Everyone here bites first and asks questions never. Believe me, I know."

It took me twenty minutes to earn enough trust to touch him, another ten to splint his leg with a stick and a strip torn from my sleeve. He whined through the whole thing like it was personally my fault.

"Rude," I told him. "Considering I'm the one saving your life. A little gratitude wouldn't kill you."

He licked my wrist. Close enough.

I named him Ash, for the color of his fur, and because it felt right — something that survived a fire nobody saw. I tucked him into an old feed sack in the corner of the shed, where no one would look, and I made him the same promise I made myself every single day.

It gets better than this.

I didn't always believe it. I said it anyway.

By the time I finished my chores, the whole pack had started buzzing with a different kind of energy. Quicker footsteps. Nervous laughter. Mothers fussing over their daughters' hair. I didn't need anyone to tell me why.

Tonight was the Moon Bond Ceremony.

Tonight, the Moon Goddess would show every unmated wolf in Shadow Moon Pack the face of the person she'd chosen for them. Fated mates. Souls matched before birth, bonds nobody could break — not distance, not death, not the low, ugly whispers that had followed me my whole life.

I wasn't supposed to hope. Hope was a luxury the pack decided wasn't mine to have. But standing there with dirt under my nails and Ash's blood drying on my sleeve, I let myself imagine it anyway. A stranger's eyes finding mine across the crowd. Somebody looking at me, for the first time in twenty-two years, like I was wanted.

Not the pack's leftover. Not somebody's chore list.

Just Aria.

Maybe my mate wouldn't care that I was an omega. Maybe he wouldn't care that I had no

title, no standing, nothing to offer but calloused hands and a heart I'd somehow kept soft despite every reason to let it harden. Maybe he'd just see me.

It was a small, foolish hope. I knew that. I held onto it anyway, the way I held onto everything that had ever been mine to keep.

I was halfway back to the servants' quarters, sleeves still damp, thinking about nothing more than a few hours of sleep before the ceremony, when it happened.

A pull. Deep in my chest, beneath my ribs, somewhere I didn't know could ache like this.

It wasn't pain. Not exactly. It was recognition — a string pulled tight between my heart and something, someone, I couldn't see yet. My knees buckled. I grabbed the fence post to stay standing, breath gone ragged, pulse slamming in my throat.

The bond doesn't wake early. Everyone knew that. It wakes at the ceremony, under the full moon, when the Goddess presents you to your mate for the very first time.

Mine had just woken hours before the moon even rose.

I pressed a hand flat against my chest, like I could hold the feeling still, and for the first time in my life, I was afraid of my own hope.