Reject Me Again

Chapter2:The Goddess Who Chose the Broken One

Valerie's POV

I followed the voice because there wasn't anything else left to do. The iron gates of the Northern Pack were sealed shut behind me, and with them went the only world I'd ever known. If I stopped moving, the cold was going to finish the job before sunrise.

I dragged myself through the tree line. Every step cost me something. My feet left dark red marks in the snow the whole way.

Then, pushing deeper into the black of the forest, the air changed.

The cold just... let go of me. I looked down and watched the snow melting under my feet, grass pushing up green through the frost, small white flowers blooming the second my blood hit the ground.

Above me, the dead branches pulled back, and the moonlight didn't just fall anymore — it poured, thick and silver, like someone had opened a floodgate and pointed it straight at the path in front of me.

I stumbled out of the trees and my knees gave out.

Ancient ruins stood there, pillars taller than anything I'd ever seen, wrapped in glowing vines, covered in runes that hummed like they were alive. A sanctuary. Somewhere so old and so full of real magic that no wolf had set foot inside it in centuries.

That's when the adrenaline finally quit on me, and everything I'd been holding off — the three bonds tearing loose from Caspian, Cassian, Ronan, all of it — hit me at once.

I went down against the altar stone.

"I'm sorry," I said, and my voice barely made it out.

Not to the Alphas. Not to the pack that kept me chained half my life. To myself. To the stupid, hopeful part of me that actually believed the Goddess had handed me something good.

"I wasn't strong enough," I whispered, forehead pressed to the stone.

The ruins answered. Every rune on every pillar lit up silver, and the air went heavy, thick with something divine. I forced my eyes open and watched light pooling in the center of the temple.

The Moon Goddess appeared.

Not some towering, wrathful thing. Not a shapeless glow. She stepped down off the altar looking like a woman — silver robes that could've been cut from the night sky itself, beautiful in a way that hurt to look at, but her eyes carried something heavier than beauty. Centuries of it.

I couldn't breathe. Couldn't move. I just watched the maker of our entire race kneel down in the dirt next to a slave.

She didn't touch me. Didn't offer comfort. She just looked straight into my eyes and asked one question.

"Do you hate them?"

Her voice didn't sound like it came from outside me. It moved through my bones.

I thought about Caspian's ice-cold stare. Cassian's disgust. Ronan's tear, and how it hadn't been enough to stop him from saying the words anyway. They'd thrown me away to save their own pride.

"No," I said, and it tasted like ash coming out.

She waited, head tilted, not pushing.

"I hate myself," I admitted, and my voice broke doing it. "For thinking I could ever deserve them. For thinking a slave gets to stand next to kings."

She smiled at that. Not happy. Just sad and knowing, like she'd heard some version of this a thousand times before.

She reached out and tipped my chin up with two fingers that glowed faintly.

"They rejected you because all they could see was the chains," she said quietly. "I chose you because I saw who put them there."

That landed harder than anything else she'd said. *Who put them there.* The collar hadn't been punishment for a war my people lost. It was a cage. Someone had known exactly what I was long before I ever set foot in that courtyard.

"You're at a crossroads, Valerie," she said, standing, the silver light around her twisting into something that looked almost like a storm. "You can stay here and let the snow finish this. Or you can carry something no Luna in history has survived carrying."

She held out her hand. Whatever came next was mine to choose.

I looked at my own bloody hands. Thought about the cage, the whip, three men who'd broken me without blinking. I was done being something that just got broken.

I took her hand.

"I accept."

The second our hands touched, everything came apart.

Heat tore through my veins, so much of it I threw my head back and screamed while the magic rewired something inside me. It didn't fix the broken bonds — it just poured into the raw space they left behind, filling it with something a lot more dangerous.

Silver marks burned their way up my arms, ancient patterns branding straight into skin. The magic kept going, cracking open the locked door in my mind, reaching whatever was left of my dead wolf.

*Wake up,* the Goddess said.

Somewhere deep inside me, eyes opened.

My wolf didn't wake up slowly. She exploded into being, and a roar tore through the physical world hard enough to shake the ruins around us. But the second she took shape, I knew something was off. Something that shouldn't be possible.

A Luna's wolf is supposed to be white. Silver, maybe.

Mine was black. Massive, lethal, black all the way through — except for streaks of live moonlight running across her fur like veins of lightning. Shadow and divine light, both at once, wearing the same skin.

I dropped forward as it all settled into place. Power rolled off me with every breath. The cold didn't touch me anymore. Neither did the pain.

The Goddess started fading, dissolving back into starlight, but before she disappeared for good, she left me with four words.

"Build what they feared. Then return."

SIX YEARS LATER

Silverfall stretched out below me, all glass towers and neon, glittering like it had never once been a forest full of dying girls.

I stood at the window of my penthouse office and looked down at what I'd built. The Silver Crescent Dominion — not a pack hiding in the trees, but a coalition, packs and corporations and a military nobody in their right mind wanted to test.

No slaves. No chains. Just cooperation that was enforced hard, justice that didn't bend, and loyalty that actually held.

I took a sip of black coffee and caught my reflection in the glass. Nothing left of the shaking, starving girl in rags. Charcoal grey suit, tailored to the inch. The silver marks on my skin hidden under silk and wool. Posture perfect. A weapon wearing a CEO's face.

The office doors opened behind me.

My lead secretary walked in — an enforcer in a pencil skirt, which tells you everything about how this place actually ran — holding a datapad and looking tighter than usual.

"My Queen," she said, dipping her head.

"Report," I said, calm, level, not a question.

"The Southern and Eastern emissaries agreed to the tariffs. They'll wait the standard three weeks for a formal audience."

"Good. Let them wait. Builds character."

"There's something else." She hesitated, eyes flicking to mine. "Someone's downstairs. They skipped every diplomatic channel we have and they're demanding to see you right now."

I set my coffee down. "Who."

"The Northern Pack is here."

The words just sat there in the air. Six years. Six years since they threw what was left of me into the snow and told me not to come back.

Inside my head, my wolf — black fur, living light — rose slowly to her feet, and I felt the low rumble of her growl straight through my chest.

I looked down and smoothed a wrinkle out of my sleeve that probably wasn't even there. No fear. No ghost of the bonds they severed.

Just the pull of a hunt about to start.

"Show them in.”