His Rejected Curve

Chapter 4 On His Knees

We let him kneel for three hours.

I didn't order it. Theo did.

"If he wants to talk to my sister, he can learn how to wait like she had to wait for four years to be seen," Theo said, arms crossed, guarding the porch.

From the cabin window, I could see the border line. Stoneclaw's border is just a river with white flags.

On the Silverpine side of the river, in the mud, on his knees, was Prince Jaxon Thorne.

He wasn't wearing his leather jacket. Just a black t-shirt, even though the mountain morning was freezing. His head was bowed. His hands were fists in the mud.

He looked smaller from far away.

"Is he doing the wolf submission thing?" I asked my mother.

"No," Alisha said, sipping her tea. "The wolf submission thing is on all fours with your neck exposed. This? This is a boy who doesn't know what else to do. The bond sickness is eating him alive."

"What does it feel like?" I whispered. I didn't mean to ask.

Alisha touched my silver mark. "You remember how it felt when he rejected you? Like claws inside your ribs?"

I nodded.

"Now he feels that every time you feel happy without him. Every time you laugh with Theo. Every time you eat without counting calories. The Goddess is making him feel what you felt for years, all at once."

A strange, guilty satisfaction twisted in my chest. And Jaxon, across the river, flinched like he'd felt it.

"Your bond is still open, Alina," she said softly. "He feels your satisfaction right now."

I pulled my hand back.

"Come on," Theo said. "Time for training. You can't meet your mate looking like you just woke up. You meet him looking like an Alpha."

Training in Stoneclaw wasn't like Silverpine.

At Silverpine, training was about being thin, fast, pretty. If you were an Omega, you watched.

At Stoneclaw, Mama River - a massive plus-size she-wolf in her fifties - stood in the clearing with ten girls. All curvy. All in workout leggings. All panting and laughing.

"Alina Hart!" she bellowed. "So you're the famous twin-wolf girl! Darius tried to starve you? i***t man. A White Alpha needs to EAT!"

For the first time in my life, a trainer told me to eat more.

"Your size is not a weakness. Your size is your engine. You have two wolves. You need twice the fuel. Twice the muscle. Your thighs? That's your power to pin an Alpha male down. Your hips? That's your balance. You think wolves care about thigh gaps? No!"

The other girls cheered.

For two hours, she didn't make me run laps. She made me lift logs. Carry stones. Wrestle. My body, the body I had hated for being big, was suddenly GOOD at something. I pinned a girl twice as lean as Giselle.

Luna and Liora were howling inside me, YES! YES!

When we finished, I was sweaty, muddy, in Theo's oversized hoodie, my curly hair wild.

And Jaxon was still kneeling.

Theo walked me to the border line. He stopped exactly one inch before crossing. Jaxon looked up.

His face was wrecked. Dark circles. Eyes red. He'd been crying.

"Alina," he whispered. His voice was hoarse.

Theo crossed his arms. "You have two minutes. My mother says that's more than she got."

Jaxon didn't look at Theo. He only looked at me.

"I felt it," he said. "Last night, when you shifted. I felt both of them. Luna and Liora. I felt how big you are. How powerful. And I realized my father... my father made me blind."

He reached forward, but stopped at the white flags. He knew if he crossed without permission, Stoneclaw wolves would tear him apart.

"My father told me you were an Omega because you were lazy. Because you ate too much. He told me to stay away from you so you wouldn't embarrass the royal bloodline," he said, each word like it hurt. "Giselle put wolfsbane in my drink, yes. But I said the words. 'I reject you, fatass.' I said them. I laughed."

The silver mark on my wrist burned.

"Why are you here, Jaxon?" I asked. My voice was steady. Mama River's training was still in my bones.

"Because I can't breathe without you," he said simply. "The bond... it's inverted. I feel everything. I felt you feel safe this morning. For the first time. And it killed me that it wasn't me making you feel safe."

He bowed his head again, forehead almost in the mud.

"I'm not asking you to be my Luna. I'm not worthy of that. I'm asking you to let me be in your pack. As an Omega. The lowest rank. Let me carry your books like you carried everyone else's. Let me earn a single percent of forgiveness."

Behind us, the Stoneclaw girls had gathered, watching.

Theo looked at me. "Your call, little sis. Rite of Three. You can punish him, forgive him, or reject him again forever."

I looked down at Jaxon Thorne - the boy who made the entire school laugh at me yesterday. Now kneeling in mud, in my mother's pack, where curvy girls lift logs and laugh.

My wolves whispered: Make him feel it.

I knelt down too, so we were eye level, separated by the white flags and the river.

"Do you remember what you said?" I asked softly. "Word for word?"

He nodded, tears finally spilling. "I reject you, fatass."

"Say it again," I said.

He flinched.

"Say it again, Jaxon. But this time look at what you're rejecting."

I stood up. I took off Theo's hoodie.

Underneath, I was in a red sports bra and leggings, sweaty, muddy, my stomach soft, my thighs big, my arms strong from carrying stones. My body. The body he rejected.

The body that held two wolves.

His eyes went wide. Not with disgust. With awe.

"I..." his voice broke. "I can't. I can't say that anymore because it's not true. You're not - Alina, you're an Alpha. You're more Alpha than me."

The silver mark on my wrist flashed bright white, and for a second, Jaxon's chest glowed too - where his mark of me should have been, but was empty.

The Rite was listening.

"First punishment," I said, and my voice wasn't cruel, it was calm. Like an Alpha. Like my mother. "You will go back to Silverpine. You will tell the entire academy what your father did to me for ten years. You will tell them your perfect Luna Giselle drugged you, and that you were still the one who chose cruelty. You will clean the Omega attic where I lived, with your own hands. And then you can come back and kneel again."

Jaxon nodded frantically. "Yes. Yes, anything."

"And Jaxon?"

"Yes?"

"If you ever call any girl 'fatass' again - even as a joke - I will use this mark to make you feel every second of humiliation I felt that night. Do you understand?"

"I understand, my -" He stopped himself. "I understand, Alpha Alina."

I turned around. I didn't look back.

But I felt him. Through the bond. Feeling proud of me.

And I hated that a small part of me liked that he was proud.

Behind me, Theo muttered, "Damn, little sis. That was hot. In a terrifying Alpha way."

From the cabin, my mother shouted: "Alina! Giselle is on the phone! She says she's running away from Silverpine!"

The day wasn't over.