Chapter 1: Rejected by the Crown
The ballroom smelled like power.
Pine smoke, spiced wine, and the heavy musk of a hundred alphas trying to out-dominate each other in one room.
Elise stood in the shadows. Her grey dress was thin. Old. A servant's dress, though she wasn't a servant, she was just an omega.
In BloodMoon Pack, that word meant nothing.
"Move, omega."
A girl in emerald silk shoved her into the wall. Laughter followed. Nobody looked back. Elise pressed her palm to the cold stone and took a deep breath. Just get through tonight, she told herself.
On the dais above the crowd sat Alpha Alexandre Vance.
She felt him before she saw him. Everyone did. Black hair. Grey eyes flecked with gold. A jaw carved from stone. He didn't need to move to command the room, the room simply bent around him, the way trees bend from wind. He watched his pack celebrate with the flat boredom. Elise had never spoken to him. Omegas didn't speak to Alphas. Omegas survived. That was all.
The clock struck midnight.
Her eighteenth birthday.
Fire tore up her spine before she understood what was happening. She doubled over, a strangled gasp tearing out of her throat as her bones cracked and reshaped beneath her skin. Her wolf, silent her whole life, woke up screaming. She could not believe it was happening instantly. Her first shift. She tried to get out of the ballroom.
Then came the pull. Invisible. Burning. A hook sunk deep in her ribs, yanking her chin up, dragging her feet across the marble floor toward the throne before she could stop herself.
The mate bond.
No. No, no, no…
Three hundred heads turned. Three hundred pairs of eyes watched the ragged omega stumble forward and drop to her knees at the foot of the Alpha's throne.
Alexandre went still.
His eyes found hers, and for one heartbeat she felt him feel it too. The snap, the pull, the bond locking into place like a key finally turning in a lock built just for it. Something flickered behind his grey eyes. Surprise. Maybe even hunger.
Then his gaze slid past her to the woman in emerald silk. His beta's sister. The same girl who'd shoved her minutes ago.
Elise's stomach dropped. She understood exactly what was about to happen.
Alexandre rose.
"Please," she whispered, only for him. "Don't."
He didn't blink.
"I, Alexandre Vance, Alpha of BloodMoon", his voice rolled cold and final over the silent room, "reject you as my mate."
The bond didn't break. It tore, ripping through her chest like claws through flesh. Elise hit the floor, coughing, and when she looked down her hands were slick with dark blood against white marble.
No one moved to help her. Some smiled.
"Get her out." Alexandre was already turning away, already reaching for a goblet of wine, as if nothing had happened at all. "She has no place here."
Hands seized her arms and dragged her past the mocking faces, through the great doors, and out into the cold night.
"Rogue territory's that way." A guard jerked his chin toward the black trees beyond the border. "Don't come back."
No coat. No family. No pack. No mate. Just Elise, alone in a blizzard that wanted to swallow her whole.
She walked until her legs gave out. Crawled until her hands went numb. Snow filled her mouth, her lungs, and somewhere in the white silence, a small exhausted part of her simply wanted to stop. To let the cold finish what Alexandre had started.
Weeping is what they expect. A voice curled awake inside her, ancient, and not her own. Weep, and die here. Or rise.
Her fingers curled into the snow.
She thought of the goblet in his hand. The way he hadn't even watched them drag her away.
I reject you as my mate.
Fine.
One day, he would beg her to take it back. He would crawl just like she did.
Her vision blurred at the edges, the world tilting toward black, and then her eyes snapped open one last time, blazing gold bright enough to scorch the falling snow.
Something ancient had just woken up inside her.
And it was done being weak.
