The Alpha left me for dead

* * * **wren pov** My basket smelled of winter, filled with the soothing scents of pine, yarrow, and rosemary I had cut earlier that morning. I trudged up the hill with the basket in my arms, happy -- finally using my hands to do something I'd come to know well. "You're walking too fast, Wren," Odette, the head healer, complained, "and girls who walk too fast at the gathering look like they are just seeking attention." "You always say that." "Because you always walk fast." She gripped my shoulder and hauled herself up a rock on the hill. Sixty years of bending over sickbeds had made Odette's waist stooped. "Be positive tonight," she said. Being positive was one thing I was working on, so I straightened my yellow dress, kept the face I had worn since early morning, and eased my pace. The Gathering of Kin was an important tradition in the Greyfall Pack. It's a mating ceremony where unmated wolves over the age of eighteen perform the Rite of Crossing by walking over the feast stone. The stones are dressed by the elders, and the participants perform this tradition in front of all the members of the pack. It is a day when the Moon Goddess blesses you with a mate, and it is conducted every year. I was twenty-one that year, and I had been performing the Rite of Crossing every year since I came of age, but the Moon Goddess did nothing but ignore me every single time. The closest I had ever been to finding my fated mate was last autumn, when Old Hob the miller sneezed and we all thought it was the scent of a mating bond, but it was only a reaction to ragweed. I was the pack's wolfless girl, the orphan the pack had decided to keep out of guilt after I lost my parent on the Red Night. I was good for nothing but grinding herbs and holding basins. There was no twist in my stomach because I'd always been treated like an object in this pack, and now it just felt like I had no right to be nervous, but the feelings I had at the bottom of the hill always burned off as I got close to sacred ground. Odette and I sat at a ledge outside the building, close to the feast stone. It was the space made for the healer. It was close enough in case someone fainted or there was any medical emergency, but it was in the shade, far enough away not to be directly in people's faces. The rite was performed outside, like every other year, and all the pack members were already dressed in their best outfits. I put the mating cups and wine on the table just before the event began, and that was where Alpha Cassian met me. He had always been kind to me while I was growing up. Little kindnesses meant a whole lot to me, probably because I hadn't really been cared for after the death of my parents. The time the bullies of the pack put a dead adder snake inside my basket, he pulled it out with his bare hand and flung it into the bushes because he knew how much I hated dead things. Also, when a fever broke out in our pack and I worked for three days without resting, he left a bag of oranges in the corridor of the healers' hut without a note, but I had always known it was him. He was twenty-six that year and three years into being the alpha. Cassian looked like his father and even his frown, but when he came to that table that evening, he wasn't frowning, and that was the first time I'd seen him like that. "Feverfew already cut," he said. "That's early." "Yeah, frost came early." "Hmm," he said, his thumb rubbing the stem in a way I just knew he was buying time or thinking about what he was about to say. "Wren," he called. He rarely called me by my name -- I almost dropped the wine. "Alpha," I responded. "I--" he stopped. The strong pineapple perfume hit my nose, coming from the Upper West Road, and we simultaneously turned that way. It was Celeste Marrow, daughter of the alpha of Thornwood. I'd caught her sneaking into the pack to the royal house for over six months now. She always passed behind my hut, and I'd always wondered what she was doing there. Her father was so powerful. He had hundreds of warriors and shared a border with the Hallow Waste, so he was feared and respected by our pack. Cassian turned to me, holding back his lip as if there was something in his mouth. "Don't worry about what I was saying." He took his hand off the table and straightened up. "It's nothing," he said. "Good luck tonight, not that I mean--" He tried to express himself by moving his hand. "I understand, Alpha," I said and smiled at him just like I had always done when I was little. "Thank you," he said, moving away from me and toward Celeste. I poured some wine into the cup as the full moon came out. It was time for the rite. It was conducted by the elders. They started by age, and the Aston boys went first, followed by the smith's daughter and then a dozen others. Cross, Cassian's cousin, was allowed to cross the stone even if he wasn't of age, but we all knew rules bent for Alphas, and they all laughed and drank after his rite, making it look like fun. And then it was my turn. Just like every other year, I kept my eyes down and walked the stone quickly. I wasn't expecting anything, but on the fourth stone, something happened. Someone dropped a wine glass, shattering it on the floor. Cassian. "Mate?" he murmured, and the whole place went silent, but I didn't know why there was no pull or ache, maybe because I was wolfless. "Wren," he called, moving closer to me. His face changed, and it wasn't anger or grief. It was more like disgust. I've seen him angry, and I've seen him grieve when he watched his father die on the sickbed, but this was the first time disgust had crossed his face, and it was provoked by the sight of me. "The Moon Goddess has made a mistake for the first time," he chuckled. I felt eyes on the pack land on me at once. My eyes dropped to the crowd's feet, and Old Marris's hand shot up over her mouth. Alpha Cassian closed the distance and rested his hand on my shoulder. "Wren," he said, "I, Cassian, son of Brandr, alpha of Greyfall, reject Wren Kael as my fated mate," he said loud and clear in front of the whole pack with the confidence of an alpha before turning back and heading to his position. I didn't know how to feel. Pained or humiliated, never had I thought that after finding a mate I would be rejected. I stepped down from the stone, waiting for the pain of a broken bond to hit, but it didn't. I went back to the healer's position, trying to act as if nothing had happened. The whole pack erupted into laughter, and confusion churned in me over what I hadn't done right as I tried to fight back tears from falling from my eyes. "You have to accept the rejection," Odette whispered in my ear, and I immediately remembered what I was supposed to do. I went to Alpha Cassian, who was already seated with Celeste, his hand holding hers tightly, as if my acceptance of his rejection didn't matter. "I, Wren Kael, accept your rejection," I said fast and low, turned quickly without waiting to see how he reacted, and headed straight to the healers' table. I refused to look at Odette, so I took the wine and poured it into the mating cups for the two remaining couples. Most of the wine spilled across the table with my shaky hands. Odette walked me home that night without saying a word, even though I knew she had a lot to say. I was also quiet, focused on not letting my tears drop. When we got to the hut, just before I went into my room, Odette offered me a cup and poured some tea into it. "For sleep," she said. "You won't dream." I sat in the corridor while Odette went inside. I didn't drink the tea -- no desire for it -- so I let it go cold. A wind rolled in from the north side, carrying the smell of death, followed by total silence. Something was wrong -- my hand immediately went cold, the exact feeling I had on the day of the Red Night. My cup dropped from my hand and shattered on the floor. Aside from the sound of the shattered cup, nothing made a sound in that moment, not even the Greyfall dogs, which was unusual because the dogs in our pack were never silent. They barked at owls and even at their shadows. That was the night the Hollow Men came to our pack. But before the destruction, before the running, before the blood and death, before the king, the first cut I had was from the man who rejected me in front of the whole pack.