The Rejected Omega's Sovereign Reign

Chapter 2

Thrown to the Wild

My knees hit the rough stones hard enough to tear skin. Pain flashed white through me, and warm blood slipped down into the frozen dirt below.

I staggered upright and ran.

The black woods swallowed me whole, and Alfred’s pack laughter chased me like a curse, cruel and sharp in my ears. Behind me, the territory I had once known disappeared into silence. Ahead, the forest waited with a cold that felt alive.

It was not an empty wilderness. It watched.

The shadows between the trees seemed to breathe, to hiss, to whisper in a language I did not know. No familiar howl answered me here. Only the sound of my own ragged breathing, the c***k of branches, and that strange, crawling sense that something ancient was moving just beyond my sight.

The air smelled of damp earth and bitter frost. My chest tightened.

“Keep moving,” I whispered, my teeth chattering so hard the words nearly broke apart. “Do not look back. They want you to break. Don’t give them the satisfaction.”

I clenched my jaw and forced my legs onward even while they trembled. Alfred had taken my home. He had stripped me of my pride. He had thrown me out like I was nothing.

But I was still here.

I was an omega to them, weak in their eyes, broken in theirs, but something fierce and stubborn burned low in my belly, refusing to die.

Then my foot caught on a thick root.

I went down hard.

The air left my lungs as I hit the damp forest floor, my palms scraping against stone and dirt. Pain bit into my hands, and when I dragged myself onto my side, I caught the sharp scent of my own blood.

A rustle exploded to my left.

Branches snapped. Heavy bodies pushed through the brush.

I turned, and froze.

Three massive rogue wolves emerged from the undergrowth, their mangled fur bristling, their eyes lit with starving madness.

Rogues.

Their gaze locked on me at once, and I knew they had caught my scent. An unprotected female, alone, was an easy prey.

My back hit the trunk of an old oak as I scrambled away, fingers clawing at the bark behind me. My heart battered against my ribs. I had no wolf to fight with, no claws to bare, no pack to call.

One of them bared yellow fangs and lowered its body to spring.

I could not even breathe.

Then the forest changed.

A wave of raw power slammed into the clearing so hard it felt like the world itself had dropped on top of us. The rogue wolf froze mid-leap. The others flattened instinctively, their ears pinning back.

The temperature fell at once. My breath turned to white mist. The ground seemed to groan under a force I could not see.

From the darkness between the trees, a tall figure stepped into the moonlight.

Lucien Xander.

His silver-gray eyes caught the weak light and gleamed with cold authority. Scars marked his face, but there was nothing weak in him; nothing soft, nothing uncertain. He stood like judgment itself had taken shape and came walking out of the woods.

The rogues whimpered.

Not one of them fought. Their tails dropped. Their bodies folded inward as if his presence alone had crushed the strength out of them.

Lucien did not shift. He did not raise his voice.

He only took one step forward, and the air bowed around him.

“Leave,” Lucien commanded, his low, vibrating voice cutting through the clearing like iron dragged across stone.

The rogues did not need a second warning. They scrambled back into the dark brush and vanished in a panic so fast it left my skin prickling.

The silence that followed was worse.

Lucien’s gaze shifted to me, sharp and unreadable, and I hated the fact that my body still shook. He did not offer a hand. He did not soften.

“You are a fool for running blindly into a war zone, Arieth,” he said, his eyes flicking over my bloodied hands as if I were a problem to be assessed.

I pushed myself higher against the tree and glared at him. “I didn’t exactly have a choice. Alfred threw me out like trash.”

“Alfred is a coward who fears what he cannot control,” Lucien replied, his tone filled with quiet contempt. “But you have a choice right now. You can sit in this dirt, weep over a bond that was meant to e*****e you, and die proving a point to a pack that already abandoned you.”

His words hit too close to a places I did not want touched.

I narrowed my eyes. “And what is the alternative, Alpha Xander? Beg you for protection?”

A dangerous curve touched his mouth, but his eyes stayed cold. “I do not offer protection to the weak, and I do not tolerate beggars. The alternative is to stand up, learn how to bleed without crying, and live long enough to make them regret every word they spoke against you.”

Something inside me shifted.

His voice had struck a buried nerve, waking something dark and hot beneath my fear. I wiped dirt and blood from my cheek and forced myself upright, even though my legs still shook beneath me.

“I am not weak.”

Lucien stepped closer, and suddenly his shadow swallowed me whole. He leaned down until his sharp features hovered inches from mine, and then he inhaled slowly, like he was taking my scent apart piece by piece.

His silver eyes sharpened.

“We will see,” Lucien murmured, his voice dropping into a low whisper that slid straight down my spine.

“Because I smell something deeply wrong in your blood, Arieth. And it isn’t weakness.”