THE NIGHT HE UNMADE ME
The mating ceremony circle reeked of crushed moonflowers and shame.
My bare feet bled on the stones. That was tradition. Omegas bled. Alphas chose. I’d memorized the rules since I was old enough to scrub the pack house floors. Tonight was my 18th birthday. Tonight, the Moon Goddess would finally give me a mate. Someone to see me.
Someone to stop the ache.
Please, I begged the moon. Anyone but him.
The crowd parted. He walked in.
Kade Volkov.
Alpha of the Volkov Pack. CEO of Volkov Industries. Twenty seven years old and carved from winter. His suit cost more than my entire life. His ice gray eyes found me and didn’t look away.
My wolf, small and starved inside my chest, gave a pathetic whimper. Alpha. Mine. Please.
Stupid wolf. She didn’t know he was here to destroy me.
“Lyra Valen,” Elder Marius called, voice booming through the clearing. “Step forward. Present yourself for the mating rite.”
My knees shook. I stepped into the circle. The stones bit my soles. Hundreds of wolves watched. My parents weren’t here. Omegas didn’t get families at ceremonies. They got audiences.
Kade moved. One step. Then another. Until he stood at the edge of my circle. Close enough that I smelled him.
Pine. Snow. Power. And underneath, the faintest trace of bourbon from his last board meeting. The scent made my thighs clench before I could stop it. Traitor body.
His gaze dragged over me. My thrift store dress. My scarred hands. My too thin face. I wasn’t beautiful like Selene Blackwood, the Beta’s daughter, who stood to his right in silk. I was just… Lyra. The pack servant. The girl who mopped blood off the training room floors.
Say it, I thought. Say I’m yours so this can end.
Kade’s jaw ticked. His wolf was loud in his eyes, furious and caged. He looked at Elder Marius. Then at Selene. Then back to me.
“Kade Volkov,” Marius intoned. “Do you accept this wolf as your fated mate, to cherish and protect under the Moon Goddess, until death?”
Silence.
The wind died. My heart stopped.
Kade’s voice, when it came, was carved from glacier.
“I do not.”
The words hit like a silver bullet.
I staggered. The circle stones suddenly burned. My wolf screamed inside me, a sound of pure, animal agony. She threw herself against my ribs, trying to get to him, to beg, to die.
Gasps rippled through the pack. Then laughter. Selene’s, sharp and delighted.
“By Alpha right and pack law,” Kade continued, each word a knife, “I reject Lyra Valen. She is omega. Unranked. Unworthy of the Volkov name. Unworthy of my wolf.”
Unworthy.
The word echoed. Bounced off trees. Burrowed into my bones.
My vision tunneled. I tasted copper. Was I bleeding? From where?
Kade didn’t look at me again. He turned to Selene, took her hand, and kissed her knuckles. “Selene Blackwood. You will be my Luna. The ceremony will proceed.”
That was it. Five years of secret longing. Five years of watching him from the kitchen while I served his dinners. Five years of thinking maybe, maybe, the Goddess would be kind.
She wasn’t.
My legs gave out. I hit the stones. Pain lanced up my palms. Warm blood welled, mixing with the dirt. Omega blood. Worthless blood.
Get up, I told myself. Don’t let them see you break.
But I was already broken.
And then it happened.
Deep inside, where my wolf had been whimpering, something _snapped_.
Not broke. Awoke.
Heat flooded my veins. Not fever. Power. It poured through me like molten silver, burning away the shame, the pain, the weakness. My back arched off the stones. My head threw back.
The scent of moonflowers was gone.
Now the air smelled like lightning. Like ozone before a storm. Like Luna.
The pack gasped. Elder Marius stumbled back. Even Kade froze.
My eyes flew open. And I knew they weren’t brown anymore.
They were silver. Molten. Alpha.
My wolf didn’t whimper. She howled.
A sound that shook the trees. That sent lesser wolves to their knees. That made Kade’s wolf snarl inside him, furious and aware.
What was I?
I didn’t know. I just knew one thing.
He would regret this.
I pushed to my feet. Blood dripped from my hands. My dress was torn. I was still omega. Still rejected. Still nothing.
But when I looked at Kade Volkov, my rejected alpha, my fated mate, my destroyer…
I didn’t see a god anymore.
I saw a man who had just made the last mistake of his life.
He stared at my silver eyes. His face was blank. But his wolf? His wolf was awake now. Staring. Seeing.
Too late.
I turned my back on him. On the pack. On the ceremony. On the girl I was ten seconds ago.
My voice, when it came, didn’t shake. It was quiet. And it carried to every wolf in the clearing.
“Then I reject you too, Alpha.”
I walked out of the circle. Out of the territory.
And I didn’t look back.
Not yet.
---
*6 weeks later*
The pregnancy test was positive.
I sat on the floor of a bus station bathroom, staring at two pink lines. My hand went to my stomach. Flat. Empty. Except it wasn’t.
His.
Kade Volkov’s heir grew inside the omega he’d called unworthy.
Outside, the bus to nowhere honked.
I had two choices. Go back. Beg him to claim me. Raise his pup in the pack that spat on me.
Or run. Disappear. Build something from nothing. Become someone he could never touch again.
I flushed the test. Washed the blood from under my nails.
And bought a ticket to New York.
Kade Volkov rejected me as a mate.
So I’d become the one thing he couldn’t reject.
His equal.
And one day, I’d make him kneel.
---
