Rejected Luna, Claimed by the Alpha King

Chapter 1: Three Hundred Wolves

The first time Derek Blackwood broke my heart, he did it in front of three hundred wolves. I know the number because I counted them later, lying in the frost with nothing else to do.

I was carrying wine.

That is the whole story. The daughters of Silverpine got silk and silver combs for the ceremony. I got a tray.

My name is Elena. Eighteen. By the ranking sheet the elders nailed to the hall wall, I am the weakest wolf in the pack. Not the smallest. Not the slowest. The weakest. There is a difference, and they never let me forget which one I was.

My mother died when I was eleven. Two weeks before that she made me promise two things: that I would look after Mara, and that I would never let anybody see the mark low on my throat. I kept one of those promises. My father went up the northern ridge and never came back, which is a polite way of saying a bear ate him. Mara, my sister, paid our debt the only way a girl can in a town like ours. She trained until her knuckles split open, and now she stands in the warriors' line with the rest of them. I did not have the strength for the trials, and nobody let me try.

"You are late," Mara said, when I squeezed past her at the fire.

"The roast took longer than the roast."

She looked at my tray. Then at my face. Something behind her eyes shut, like a door with a bad hinge. "Keep your head down tonight."

"I always do."

"Not low enough."

I walked off before she got to her third sentence. Her third sentences were always the ones that hurt. I love my sister. I have also, on more than one occasion, pictured her falling into the river. Both are true and I have made peace with it.

My spot is by the food tables, where the steam off the meat makes your eyes water and nobody has to look at you. I have eaten standing up for six years. I am very good at it.

That is where I was when Derek came in.

Derek Blackwood. Nineteen. Future alpha. A jaw the girls of this pack stop talking about, and he knows it, which is worse. Dark hair in his eyes. He walks like the ground owes him something.

For eleven years I thought he was mine.

I was seven when I found him behind the granary, crying. His father had put him on the ground for losing a spar. I sat down in the dirt and gave him half a bread roll out of my pocket. He looked at me like I had pulled the sun down and handed it to him.

He promised me then that nothing would ever hurt me again. Seven years old. Said it with his whole chest.

When I was twelve and shifted for the first time, badly, out past the willows, he found me. Put his jacket around my shoulders. Then he said the thing every wolf in this valley grows up waiting to hear.

"I think it's you," he said, into my hair. "I think the goddess gave you to me."

Six years I carried that around. Like a hot coal. Even when the pack laughed at me on the way to the well. Even when his father started looking at me the way you look at a stain you have decided to deal with later.

And then tonight Derek walked in with someone else's hand in his.

Lila. Elder's daughter, born high, gold hair, a laugh like a bell. I want to be fair to her and I cannot. The first day she came to the pack house she found me on my knees with a rag and said, "Oh, are the help local?" and then waited, smiling, for me to answer. She wore white tonight. Every eye in the clearing followed her like she was the moon and the moon had agreed to be followed.

Derek did not look for me. That is the part I keep coming back to. Not the words, later. That. He walked in with her and did not once turn his head toward the food tables.

Garrick raised a hand and the pack went quiet.

"Tonight the goddess gives us a new bond," he said. "My son has found his mate."

The tray went out of my hands. Wine over my fingers, cold, red, into the sleeve I had washed that morning for nothing.

Derek turned. He looked across the crowd, over the warriors and the elders, until he found me. For one second I saw the boy from the granary. Then he was gone, and there was only the alpha's son, and he said my name.

"Elena. Come here."

I still do not know why I went. Some part of me is stuck at twelve and still believes him. That part should be drowned. It keeps showing up.

I stopped in front of him. Close up I could see the sweat at his hairline and the muscle jumping in his jaw. Lila smiled at me. Perfect teeth, all of them pity.

"Elena," Derek said again. Then he said the thing I had spent six years telling myself he never would.

"I, Derek Blackwood, future alpha of Silverpine, reject you. I refuse you as my mate."

Mates are picked by the goddess. Everyone knows that part. Nobody warns you what a rejection does to the body. Something gets torn out of you, and then the tearing carries on after the words are done. I learned that about four seconds later.

My knees hit the ground before I told them to.

Somebody laughed. A girl, over by the elders, and once she did it a boy did, and then it was the whole clearing, three hundred wolves laughing like I was the punchline they had stood around all night waiting to hear. I have heard wolves howl. This was worse. It went on and on, and it was about me.

Mara was screaming my name somewhere. I could not find her face in it.

Then Lila leaned down. Soft, so only I could hear, which was worse than loud.

"Did you really think he was going to marry a servant? Go wash the cups, little wolf. That's all you were ever for."

Derek said nothing. He did not stop her. He stood there with his father's choice on his arm and let them take me apart piece by piece. And the worst part is, he looked relieved. I saw it. He looked like a man who had finally found somewhere to set down a heavy box.

I ran.

I got maybe fifty steps past the fire before my legs quit on me. Down on my knees in the frost at the edge of the trees, hands in my own lap like a child told to wait, my chest opening and closing on a wound that had nothing left in it.

Then I felt something.

I was being watched. Not one of the pack. I would have known the scent, I knew every smell in that valley down to which warrior had been in the wine. This was older. The pines had gone quiet, and the wind with them.

I looked up.

A man stood between the trees. Taller than any wolf I have seen standing. Black coat, wide shoulders, and the dark arranged around him like it had been told where to go. I could not make out his face. I could see his eyes, and his eyes were gold, and they were not pointed at the fire, or the pack. They were on me. Only me. Nobody had looked at me all night, and now something with gold eyes would not look away.

He tilted his head, slow, the way you do when you are deciding whether a thing is worth the trouble.

"So," he said. His voice was low enough that I felt it in my back teeth. "There she is."

Behind me, the laughing stopped.

All of it, at once, like a rope cut.

I turned my head.

Three hundred wolves were going down onto the frost. One after another, and then all of them, and Garrick, who had ruled this valley for thirty years, went down on both knees with his grey beard in the dirt.

Not one of them was looking at Derek anymore.

I was still on my knees. So was everyone. The only difference was that I did not know why, and every single one of them did.