The Luna he left behind

Ashes to Power

Chapter Two

Ashes to Power

I didn’t remember how far I ran. The forest blurred past me, my breath hitching with every step, my chest burning as if my soul had been ripped from it. My legs carried me through thickets and mud, over moss-covered roots and stones. My wolf, Elira, was quiet—wounded so deeply she didn’t have the strength to whimper anymore.

The scent of rejection still lingered in my nose like rot.

He rejected me. My mate. Alpha Damon Blackthorne rejected me.

And not just in private. Not in shame. But publicly. Proudly. Loud enough for the Moon Goddess herself to hear.

I collapsed near a creek, my hands plunging into the cold water as I sobbed uncontrollably. My reflection stared back—red eyes, smeared mascara, trembling lips. My entire body shook.

“You were wrong,” I rasped at the moon. “You were wrong.”

The full moon offered no answer. It simply glowed high above, silent and cruel.

I had nothing left in the BloodClaw Pack. Damon’s rejection wasn’t just a personal humiliation. It was a sentence. A death sentence to my status, my safety. No rejected she-wolf ever stayed within her pack for long. Whispers would follow me like flies. The females would laugh behind my back. The males would look at me with pity, or worse—with hunger.

I refused to be their scraps.

And so, I kept walking.

Days blurred together. I wandered through rogue lands, hungry and exhausted, surviving on berries and river water. My body thinned. My senses sharpened. And somewhere in the agony of being forgotten, I stopped being afraid.

By the fifth day, Elira stirred.

“We’re not dead.”

“No,” I whispered aloud. “We’re not.”

“Then stop acting like it.”

I didn’t know where her sudden strength came from, but I clung to it like a lifeline.

That night, we crossed the ridge into foreign territory. I felt it instantly—the pressure in the air, the thick scent of pine smoke and steel. It was warrior land. Wolves didn’t just pass through this part of the map.

They were called the Crimson Fang Pack. Rumored to be brutal. Silent. Unforgiving.

Perfect.

I collapsed on the border, my lips dry, my limbs barely working. I expected death. A mercy kill.

Instead, I woke up in a bed.

---

The sheets were rough. The walls were stone. My eyes adjusted slowly to the dim light of the cabin. Then I saw him.

A man stood at the window, back turned, tall and wide-shouldered. His scent was rich—ash and rain. Dangerous. Controlled.

“You’ve been unconscious for two days,” he said without turning. “You bled out from a deep thorn gash on your thigh. We cleaned and stitched it.”

I tried to sit up. Pain knifed through my leg.

He turned, finally. His eyes were silver—cool, unreadable. His dark hair was cropped short, jaw sharp and shadowed with stubble. There was no warmth in his expression, but no cruelty either.

“You’re lucky,” he said. “Rogues get shot on sight here. The only reason you’re still breathing is because our patrol saw the seal on your neck.”

I touched the faint crescent mark near my collarbone. The Moon Goddess’s brand. A mark that could only appear once in a wolf’s life.

“I was rejected,” I whispered, my voice cracked and dry.

He nodded once. “I figured.”

Silence passed between us. Then, after a moment, he said, “What’s your name?”

“Aria Quinn.”

He walked closer. “I’m Roman. Beta of the Crimson Fang Pack.”

Beta.

That meant their Alpha had to be even more terrifying.

“You have two choices, Aria Quinn,” Roman said bluntly. “You can leave when you’re strong enough, or you can stay. If you stay, you work. Train. Bleed. No special treatment.”

I blinked at him. “You’d... let me stay?”

He raised an eyebrow. “We don’t care about the shame games your pack plays. You came to our land. That means you survived. We respect survivors here. But we don’t tolerate weakness.”

Weakness.

Damon’s voice echoed in my mind like venom.

“She’s weak. She’s barely wolf.”

I clenched the sheets in my fists.

“I want to stay,” I whispered.

Roman studied me for a moment, then nodded once.

“Then get ready. Training begins at dawn.”

---

The Crimson Fang Pack became my fire.

Their camp was like no other. Barracks instead of mansions. Combat pits instead of courtyards. It was a place where dominance wasn’t inherited—it was earned. They didn’t care that I was rejected. They didn’t pity me. They didn’t coddle me. They threw me into the dirt, taught me to fall, and taught me how to rise.

Roman trained me personally. Brutal drills. Hand-to-hand combat. Endurance running. Wolf form conditioning. At night, I collapsed onto my mattress with bruised ribs and aching muscles—but every scar made me stronger.

I stopped looking in the mirror and seeing the broken girl Damon mocked. I began to see something else. Something harder. Sharper. Lethal.

And with that strength came beauty.

I bloomed in silence.

My hair grew longer. My limbs leaner. My body more powerful than I ever thought possible. I wasn't the girl who ran from rejection anymore.

I was the woman rejection made.

---

Three years later.

I stood on the edge of the northern ridge, the wind whipping through my midnight-black hair. My eyes locked on the distant tree line that marked the edge of BloodClaw territory.

Elira purred inside me.

“Are we really doing this?”

“Yes,” I replied.

The council had sent me.

Roman now served as Alpha Regent, and I had proven myself as one of his top warriors. The Crimson Fang Pack didn’t just give me sanctuary—they gave me purpose. And now they were sending me back. Not as a broken she-wolf, but as a representative of the most feared military pack on the continent.

And Damon... Damon would see me.

He would smell me before he saw me. He would feel the bond pulse—stronger, sharper, changed. And he would realize what he gave up.

Too late.

I took one final breath, then crossed the border.

The Luna he left behind was gone.

And the woman he rejected?

She was about to rewrite fate.

---