The Shadow-Wolf's Rejected Mate

“Hold it properly, you useless thing!” The silk was snatched out of my hands so hard that the hem lashed across my knuckles. I swallowed the hiss before it could escape. Phaedra stood on the dressing stool, glaring at me through the mirror as if I had personally insulted her gown. “Sorry, Lady Phaedra,” I said, dropping back to my knees to straighten the fold I had apparently ruined. I had been down there since before sunrise, pinning and smoothing and fetching, and my legs had gone past aching into something numb. Somewhere around the fifth argument over earrings, it had occurred to me that today was my birthday. Twenty-one. The age every shifter in Aethelgard waited for. Nobody in this house had remembered, which was exactly what I had expected, so why did it sting? Phaedra’s wolf had woken last spring. She had set a curtain ablaze in the east wing that very night, and the whole household had celebrated with champagne. Mine had never so much as flickered. I had been tested, labelled a Blank and handed a bucket, and that was the end of any discussion about my future. Even Blanks carried a faint smell of their own and caught a little more of the world than humans did. But I carried nothing. Today the Solar Temple was hosting the Mating Ceremony, and it was no ordinary one. Crown Alpha Stellan Aris had turned twenty-one as well, which meant he would stand before the Sunstone like everyone else, and every noble girl in the capital had suddenly discovered a deep devotion to fate. “Not the sapphires, the rubies,” Lady Avelar said, sweeping in without knocking. She took the necklace from my hands, and her eyes slid over me with the kind of expression people reserve for a stain. “Stellan Aris will look at every girl in that hall and of course it will be Phaedra he sees. And you.” Her lip curled. “You will carry her train and keep your eyes on the floor. Be grateful we let you stand in a room that fine.” “Maybe the Sunstone will pair her with a stable boy,” Phaedra giggled, admiring herself. “Oh, wait. It doesn’t bother with Blanks, does it?” Their laughter followed me into the corridor. I pressed my palm flat against the cold wall for a moment and breathed, counting the tiles. Keep your head down. Survive until midnight. It was the oldest prayer I owned, and so far it had never failed me. Duke Avelar was standing at the end of the hall, straightening his cuffs. His posture was perfect as always. His gaze drifted over me and carried on to the staircase as though I were invisible. He had never struck me or even raised his voice, and I had long ago decided that this ought to make him better than the others. But I had never worked out what I had done to deserve being looked through. *** The Solar Temple swallowed us in gold. Chandeliers of caged sunfire hung from a ceiling so high that it vanished into haze, and beneath them the Sun-Wolves of Aethelgard glittered in their finest garments, drinking and laughing and sizing one another up. I had never been inside before. With a tray of sparkling wine glasses balanced on my forearms, I wove between jewelled sleeves and tried to look like furniture. Most of the nobles never noticed me, and I preferred it. What I did notice was the throne on the high dais, and the man sitting in it. King Valerius looked about sixty, though everyone knew he was nearly fifteen centuries old. Even from across the hall, his presence pressed against my shoulders until I had to lock my knees to stay standing. Phaedra had attached herself to the edge of Stellan’s circle within minutes. He was easy to find, with his tousled golden hair and a laugh that carried halfway across the hall, a young man who had never once been told no by any woman. She tucked her hair behind her ear, leaned in and laughed at something that I didn't find funny. From the gossip I had overheard while refilling glasses, I had learned that all the newly shifted nobles, especially the ladies, from packs around the Solar Court had gathered here, so the odds of your mate being somewhere in the room were high. If your wolf felt the pull, you simply followed it. If you felt nothing, you went to the Sunstone and let it decide for you. I wondered what it would be like to feel a pull toward anything at all. A horn sounded, and the hall fell silent. The herald announced the Crown Alpha, and Stellan strolled up to the Sunstone, a towering pillar of pale golden crystal in the centre of the floor, and rested his palm against it with a lazy smile. For a heartbeat nothing happened. Then the pillar flared silver and gold so violently that people shielded their eyes, and a thread of light spun out of it, thin and ghostly, drifting through the air like smoke finding a window. Phaedra hurriedly stepped forward with her hands half raised, but the thread passed her by. It slid between a cluster of gasping ladies, curled around a pillar and kept going. A cold dread began crawling up my spine, because it was heading toward the wall. It was heading toward me. I actually glanced over my shoulder, certain there must be someone behind me. There was only the wall. When I turned back, the thread had settled around my wrist, glowing warm against my skin, and a few paces away Stellan had followed it with his eyes wide and his smile gone. He was staring at me as though he had seen a ghost. I could not breathe. My own heart was suddenly loud enough to drown the hall. His nostrils flared once, hunting for something on the air, and whatever he expected to find was not there. A frown flickered across his face before he buried it. Something inside me tugged. It was impossible to describe, a pull from behind my ribs that made my feet move all on their own. The tray on my arms slipped and hit the floor with a loud crash. I took a step, then another, my lips shaping a word I hadn't chosen. “Mate…” The silence cracked and laughter poured through the gap. It rolled across the hall in waves, sharp and delighted, and I saw faces twisting in horror, in disgust, in pure entertainment. Someone cried, “A servant?” Someone else wheezed that it must be a joke. Stellan’s expression collapsed from wonder into revulsion so fast that, before I could even lift my hands, he shoved me hard in the chest. I stumbled back into a table and glass shattered around my ankles. What was I doing? What on earth had I been thinking, walking toward him without a second thought? “Do not touch me,” Stellan said, loud enough for the entire court. He straightened his jacket, and the roar of the crowd died down to hear him. “I, Stellan Aris, Crown Alpha of the Golden Dawn, reject you, Zoya, as my fated mate. A powerless servant is unfit to stand by my side.” The words had barely left his mouth before the pain arrived. It felt as if someone had reached inside my chest, wrapped a fist around the thread and torn it out by the root. I doubled over, a sound leaving my throat that I did not recognise. Humiliation scorched my face, and under it a strange heat surged up my spine until my vision turned white. I heard Phaedra scream my name, and then the whole world seemed to lean away from me as a shockwave burst from my body, white and black and utterly foreign. The impact shattered the Sunstone pillar into a thousand shards. Screams erupted everywhere. Golden light rained down in glittering dust and people dived under tables, shielding their heads. Stellan lay sprawled on the floor, staring at me in shock and terror. I looked at my trembling hands. Had I done that? Had that thing just come out of me? I did not stay to find out. I ran, shoving past a footman and kicking off my slippers when they slowed me down, and I was halfway across the marble when King Valerius’s voice thundered through the hall, deep enough to rattle the broken chandeliers. “She is corrupted by the Void! Go after her!” My blood turned to ice. I burst through the temple doors into the night, the cold air slamming against my lungs, and I did not look back as the dark line of the Whisperwood rose ahead of me. Where the thread had been there was only a raw hollow behind my ribs, a dull ache that flared with every step, as though something had been ripped out of me. Behind me came boots, shouts and the howl of wolves, and I threw myself into the black embrace of the trees.