Rejected by My Alpha Mate

Gentle Risks

The kitchen is the only place in the tower that smells like normal life.

Not normal for humans—there’s too much raw meat and wolf for that—but normal for people who spend their days carrying, chopping, washing. Heat, onions, yeast, soap. The quiet slap of knives on cutting boards. The clatter of plates. Low voices that drop away when a Beta walks through and swell again when he’s gone.

Here, no one expects me to make decisions that could get them killed.

They just expect me to stack dishes and not break anything.

After training, my muscles ache in ways I don’t have names for. Damon finally dismissed me with a curt “Enough,” and I fled before he could change his mind and decide I needed to be weapon‑tested again.

My room feels too small and too close to the warriors’ corridor. The council chamber feels like standing in the center of a gun range. So I drift down to the kitchen, hoping the noise will drown out the echo of the word weapon in my head.

“Hart,” one of the older omegas calls when she spots me lingering in the doorway. “You’re early for evening prep.”

“Couldn’t sleep,” I say. “Figured I’d come risk your knives instead of my thoughts.”

She snorts and shoves a crate of vegetables in my direction with her hip.

“Peel,” she says. “And don’t bleed on anything.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

I settle onto a stool at the prep table and take up a peeler. The repetitive scrape‑thud is almost soothing. Carrots, potatoes, something with a skin so thick it could double as armor. My fingers remember the angles, the speed that keeps me from thinking too much.

Voices warp around me, rising and falling.

“…heard the elders wanted her sent to a safehouse.”

“…heard they wanted her throat cut.”

“…heard Alpha‑to‑be said he’d spill their blood before he let them touch her.”

I focus on the vegetables.

If I let my mind drift, I see Damon’s hand on my wrist again, feel the mark pulse under his palm. This bond is my responsibility.

It should have sounded like protection.

Instead, it sounded like a man shouldering a bomb.

“You peel like someone’s mad at the vegetable,” a voice says near my elbow.

I blink and look up.

The girl from the corridor—the one who laughed at my “bad idea test subject” joke a lifetime ago—stands there with a stack of empty bowls in her arms. Dark hair pulled into a messy knot, flour on one cheek, eyes bright with something that isn’t quite fear yet.

Maisie. It takes me a second to dig her name out from under everything else.

“Is that a problem?” I ask. “Because I can downgrade to passive‑aggressive.”

She grins. “Keep going like that and the potatoes might complain.”

She dumps the bowls into the sink, then circles the table to my side. The older omega raises an eyebrow but doesn’t shoo her away. Omegas have their own gravity here. She knows who makes the kitchens run.

Maisie leans her hip against the table, watching my hands work.

“You weren’t at breakfast,” she says.

“I was busy being a dangerous asset,” I say. “New job.”

“Right.” Her mouth twists. “I heard the Alphas sent you to the wolves.”

“They’re wolves,” I say. “I’m in their house. That phrase feels redundant.”

She snickers, covering it with a cough when the older omega glances over.

“So,” Maisie says in a lower voice, “on a scale of one to ‘please hide my body,’ how bad was it?”

“Somewhere around ‘my lungs filed a complaint,’” I say. “And Damon watched me the whole time like a lab tech testing a prototype.”

“Sounds romantic,” she says.

I snort. “You and I have very different definitions of romance.”

“You’d be surprised.” She bumps my shoulder lightly with her own. “For wolves, ‘I watched you get thrown at the floor but made sure you didn’t die’ is basically flowers and chocolate.”

“I’ll pass,” I say. “I prefer my chocolate without concussions.”

“Fair.” She reaches past me to steal a peel, flipping it between her fingers. “You know people are talking, right?”

“They’ve been talking since the wedding,” I say. “I’m getting used to being background noise in other people’s sentences.”

“Not like this.” Her tone sobers. “They’re scared.”

I peel another strip, letting the skin curl into the bowl. “Of hunters or of me?”

“Both.” She chews her lip, glancing around before lowering her voice further. “They don’t know what to do with a girl who glows under a full moon.”

My wristmark tingles, a phantom echo of the forest.

“Do you?” I ask.

Maisie laughs once, quietly. “I know I don’t want you gone.”

The words land harder than I expect.

I’ve been planning around decisions other people will make about me for so long that I forgot there might be someone in this building whose primary concern isn’t political fallout.

“That’s a terrible strategic choice,” I say. “You’d have fewer problems without me.”

“I’d have fewer problems,” she says, “and fewer stories.”

I huff. “Trust me, my stories aren’t that good.”

“You walked into a council chamber and made the current Alpha argue with his own son over whether he’s allowed to sacrifice you,” she says. “That’s a better cliffhanger than most of the dramas people sneak on their phones in the laundry room.”

I stare at her.

“You watch dramas in the laundry room?” I ask.

She shrugs. “Somebody has to make sure the wifi works.”

I can’t help it—I laugh. It bubbles up from somewhere that hasn’t had oxygen in days.

Maisie’s smile softens. “There it is,” she says. “Thought it might’ve frozen off after last night.”

“It tried,” I say. “The council helped.”

Her expression shifts at the word council. “I heard Rowan fought for you.”

“He fought for his conscience,” I say. “It happened to have my name on it.”

“Still counts.” She taps the table. “Rowan doesn’t raise his voice for fun.”

“No,” I say quietly. “He raises it when someone says sacrifice and pretends they mean cleansing.”

Silence stretches between us for a moment. The kitchen hums around us, knives and water and the squeak of a rolling cart.

Maisie leans closer. “Can I ask you something?”

“You just did,” I say. “But sure. Go for two.”

“When he”—she flicks her gaze upward, toward wherever Damon is brooding—“put his hand on your wrist… did it hurt?”

I should say yes.

I should say it burned, that it felt like chains, that it was just another way to pin me to this place.

“It was hot,” I say instead. “Like the mark remembered something it can’t explain to me yet.”

Maisie studies my face like she’s weighing that answer against something she’s heard.

“People are saying the Moon chose you,” she says. “Not him. Not Lydia. You.”

“People say a lot of things,” I say. “They said I’d never shift. They said I’d marry some stranger from another pack. They said I was a joke.”

“They were wrong about some of those,” she says.

“Which ones?”

She grins. “Depends which season we’re in.”

I roll my eyes, but my mouth twitches.

“You shouldn’t get this close,” I say, quieter. “To me. You heard the elders. I’m a variable. A curse. Hunters come after people who stand near me.”

“I stand near a lot of hot stoves too,” she says. “Doesn’t mean I stop cooking.”

“This stove explodes,” I say. “You saw what I did in the forest.”

Her eyes flick to my wrist, then back up. “I saw you put yourself between a child and three rogues.”

“Damon did most of the work,” I say, throat tight.

“Damon punched wolves,” she says. “You bent moonlight.”

I flinch.

She sighs. “Look. I’m not stupid. I know being your friend is like putting a target sign on my back.”

“Then why,” I ask, “are you doing it?”

“Because someone should,” she says simply. “And because my grandmother told me stories about Silverbloods that weren’t all nightmares.”

Something in my chest stutters.

“Stories?” I echo.

“Later,” she says. “When my shift ends. If you promise not to run off to another council meeting or rogue attack.”

“I’ll check my calendar,” I say.

She nudges my shoulder again. “In the meantime, I have gossip.”

“The sacred currency of the lower floors,” I say. “What do you want in exchange?”

“You can pay me with more of that sarcasm,” she says. “I like it. It makes this place feel less like a mausoleum.”

“You have very low standards,” I say.

“I live under rich people,” she says. “We make do.”

She drops her voice. “So. Word is, Lydia’s been visiting the medic wing a lot. Not injured.”

“Let me guess,” I say. “Visiting someone who is.”

“Jace,” Maisie says. “And not to fluff his pillows. She brings him expensive fruit and touches his hand a lot. Like she’s performing caring for an audience.”

My stomach tightens.

Jace. The warrior who took a hit in the patrol attack. The one who came back bleeding silver and half‑conscious. The one hunters tortured for information about me.

“Why him?” I ask.

“Because he hurts where everyone can see,” Maisie says. “Because he came back from the forest with scars and stories, and now his opinion matters.”

“So she’s buying it,” I say.

“She’s renting it,” Maisie says. “He’s not stupid either. But people like Lydia don’t need everyone to believe them. They just need enough people to decide it’s easier to agree.”

The peeler pauses in my hand. A thin ribbon of vegetable skin dangles from the blade.

“You’re very observant for someone who claims to just manage wifi,” I say.

She shrugs. “We omegas are the plumbing of this place. We know where everything leaks.”

“You should tell Damon,” I say.

“You should,” she says back. “He listens to you.”

“He listens to my mark,” I say. “Different thing.”

“Still comes attached,” she says. “That’s leverage.”

The word makes my shoulders tense.

Leverage. Asset. Variable.

“I don’t want to be anyone’s leverage,” I say.

“Too late,” Maisie says, not unkindly. “You’re in all their equations. Might as well decide which side you’re solving for.”

I don’t have an answer for that.

She pats my arm lightly. “Shift ends in three hours,” she says. “If you’re not locked in the council again, I’ll sneak you some tea and my grandmother’s stories.”

“I’ll try to keep my schedule clear of public executions,” I say.

She smiles and pushes off the table, going back to her stack of bowls.

As she walks away, a thought settles in my chest, heavy and unwelcome:

Hunters aren’t the only ones who use the people around me to get what they want.

In this tower, care and calculation wear the same clothes.

I look down at my hands.

The mark is quiet.

For now.