REJECTED BY MY ALPHA, CHOSEN BY HIS ENEMY

Chapter 2 — The Alpha King

"Why?"

The word slipped out before Luna could think better of it, small and raw against the silence that had fallen over the training yard.

Lucian didn't answer right away. His eyes stayed on hers, unreadable, and the longer he was quiet, the tighter her chest grew.

"You don't know me," she pressed. "I've never even left this territory. Why have you been looking for me?"

"Because I knew someone who looked exactly like you."

Before she could ask who — when, why it mattered — something whistled through the air. Lucian's hand shot up and caught an arrow inches from her throat, the shaft trembling in his grip, its black tip glistening with something that didn't look like ordinary poison. His expression hardened as his eyes followed the direction it had come from, toward the tree line beyond the broken wall, where shadows were already shifting between the trunks.

"Down!" He shoved her behind him just as a second arrow sliced past, missing her head by inches.

"They're back!" someone shouted, and the training yard erupted into chaos all over again. The masked wolves hadn't retreated — they had regrouped, and this time there were more of them.

"Get her to the wall!" Lucian ordered, and his warriors closed around Luna in a tight barrier, pushing her toward the breach in the stone. She caught a glimpse of Adrian mid-shift, claws extending from his hands as he barked orders at his own people, before another masked wolf crashed into the fray and the world dissolved into teeth and claws and shouting.

"You're not taking her anywhere!" Adrian yelled over the noise.

"Then help me get her out alive and argue with me later!" Lucian shouted back.

More attackers came over the wall, moving with a purpose that no ordinary rogue pack should have had, ignoring anyone who wasn't standing directly between them and Luna. A warrior went down. Another was dragged backward by two masked wolves at once. Then one broke through the line entirely and came straight for her.

She barely had time to turn before a clawed hand locked around her wrist and yanked her forward, pain searing up her arm. And then the mark beneath Adrian's rejection mark burned white-hot against her skin.

Light burst from her body a second time, stronger than before, pale gold energy exploding outward and throwing her attacker clear across the yard. He hit the ground and didn't move again.

For one long heartbeat, everything around her went utterly silent. Warriors on both sides stumbled back from the force of it, and even the fighting seemed to pause, as if the whole yard were holding its breath. Luna stared down at her own trembling hands as the light faded from her skin, leaving only the mark still glowing faintly beneath her collarbone.

When she looked up, Lucian was watching her, and there was no surprise left in his face. Only certainty.

"What am I?" she whispered.

His jaw tightened. "Move." That was all he said before his warriors closed around her again, and another howl rose from beyond the wall, followed by the pounding of feet. There wasn't time left to ask anything else.

They reached the breach just as Adrian caught up to them, blood covering his knuckles, his chest heaving from the fight. For a moment his eyes met hers, and something passed through them she couldn't quite name — regret, fear, maybe even something like love — but whatever it was vanished the instant his gaze shifted to Lucian.

"If you take her," he said, "they'll find you too."

Lucian went still. "Who?"

Adrian said nothing. His jaw locked, and Luna stared at him, willing him to answer.

"Adrian. Tell him." Still nothing. "Tell me!" Her voice cracked on the words.

He finally met her eyes, and the guilt written across his face twisted something in her stomach. He knew. Maybe not everything, but enough — he had known danger was coming for her, and he had known it before tonight ever happened.

Lucian stepped between them. "We're leaving."

"I'm not going anywhere until I get answers," Luna said.

"You won't get any if you're dead." The words stopped her cold. Behind them, another roar shook the night, and Lucian held out his hand. "I'm not asking you to trust me," he said. "I'm asking you to survive."

Luna looked back at Adrian one last time. He didn't stop her. That hurt more than she expected it to.

She took Lucian's hand and left.

The journey to Lucian's territory passed in a blur she could barely remember afterward. The adrenaline that had carried her through the fighting finally drained away somewhere along the road, leaving her exhausted and aching, her wrist still throbbing where the masked wolf had grabbed her, the strange mark beneath her collarbone pulsing faintly every few minutes. She didn't ask Lucian about it again. Not yet. She needed to understand what had already happened to her before she could even begin to untangle what he might be hiding.

By the time they reached his territory, the sky had gone fully dark, and his castle rose out of the trees ahead of them — black stone that seemed to swallow what little moonlight reached it, towers stretching upward, thick walls and old growth forest pressing close on every side. It looked less like a home and more like a fortress built to keep something out. Or in.

"You live here?" she asked, unable to help herself.

"Yes," Lucian said simply.

"Of course you do." For just a moment, something almost like amusement touched his face before it disappeared again.

Inside, the castle was quieter than she expected — no celebration, no crowd of curious pack members waiting to see the girl their Alpha King had brought home, only guards who lowered their heads respectfully as Lucian passed. She followed him down a long corridor lined with portraits, old faces staring down at her from gilded frames, men and women dressed in styles from generations past. She barely glanced at most of them.

Then she stopped.

One portrait hung at the far end of the hall — a woman with dark hair and storm-gray eyes, her expression gentle but carrying some quiet warning beneath it. Luna's breath caught in her throat, and she found she couldn't make her feet move.

She knew that face. Not from any memory she could place, but from somewhere else entirely — somewhere she had spent years too afraid to look at directly.

"I've seen her," she said. "In my dreams. Since I was little."

The same dream had followed her for as long as she could remember: a woman standing beneath a silver moon, a voice calling her name across some vast dark distance, and then nothing — always nothing, because Luna woke up before she could ever reach her.

She turned to Lucian. "Who is she?"

He didn't answer right away. His gaze stayed fixed on the portrait for a long moment before he finally looked at her, and something shifted in his expression — something careful, something that looked almost like grief held very tightly in check.

"You were too young to remember her," he said quietly.

Luna's heart stopped.

"Remember her?" She turned back to the portrait, her voice dropping to barely a whisper. "Lucian... who is she?"