His Rejected Curve

Chapter 3 The White Wolf

The woman who was supposed to be dead pulled me into a hug that smelled like shea butter and forest rain.

Exactly like my own shampoo.

"Alina," she kept whispering into my curly hair. "My Alina. You got so big. So beautiful. So strong."

I couldn't speak. For eighteen years I had a small framed photo of Alisha Hart on my Beta father's dresser. He told me she died protecting me from a rogue. He told me to be small and quiet so I wouldn't end up like her.

She was not dead. She was warm. She was curvy. She was me, twenty-five years older.

Theo stood awkwardly by the truck, carrying my suitcase. "Mom, maybe inside? It's cold and... you know, she's probably in shock."

Inside, the cabin was not like Silverpine at all. No marble. No cold stone. Quilts. Books everywhere. A huge fireplace. Three mugs already steaming.

Mama Sage had been right about one thing: Omegas are revered here, not mocked.

"Sit," Alisha - my mother - said, pushing a mug of hot chocolate into my hands. Her hands had the same silver crescent mark as mine, but faded. "Drink. You need your strength. Your wolves have been sleeping too long."

"My wolves?" I finally managed. My voice cracked. "Plural?"

Theo and my mother exchanged a look.

"Tell her," Theo said.

Alisha knelt in front of me and took my hands. Her hands were soft and plus-size, just like mine. Not thin like Giselle's.

"Alina, do you know why they called you plus-size at Silverpine?" she asked.

"Because I... because I eat too much. Because I'm not like Giselle."

"No." Her eyes flashed silver. "Because you were carrying two wolves in one body. Luna and Liora. Twin souls. It only happens once every five hundred years. A White Alpha female."

I stared at her. "That's... that's not possible. White Alphas are a myth. And I'm an Omega. I failed every strength test."

"You failed because Darius Bello wanted you to fail," she said, and her voice turned to ice.

"Darius? The Alpha King?"

"He knew what you were from the day you were born," she said. "I was his Beta's mate. When you were born with a white tuft of hair and silver eyes, he knew. A White Alpha female will always outrank an Alpha male. Always. If you became Luna, you would not obey Jaxon. You would rule him. Darius couldn't have that."

"So he..."

"He told your father to put you on an Omega diet. To keep you in the library. To let the other pups mock your size so you would make yourself small," Alisha said, tears falling now. "He told me if I didn't leave and fake my death, he would kill you as a baby. So I ran. I ran to Stoneclaw, pregnant with Theo by my second-chance mate. I left you behind to protect you."

The hot chocolate mug shook in my hands.

All those years I starved myself. All those years I wore black to look thinner. All those years I thought my body was a flaw.

My body was making room for power.

"The mark," I whispered, looking at my wrist. The silver crescent was still glowing faintly. "Jaxon -"

"The Rite of Three," Alisha nodded. "When a male marks a rejecting female by force, the Goddess gives her three choices. You have twenty-nine days left, Alina."

"Three choices?"

"One: Forgive Jaxon and become his Luna - but he will be your subordinate. He will kneel to you. Two: Accept Theo as your brother-Alpha and become Alpha of Stoneclaw beside me. Three: Reject them both and become a Rogue Queen. No mate. No pack. Just you and your wolves."

Theo snorted. "Mom, don't scare her. Option three hasn't happened in two hundred years."

"Good," Alisha said, staring at me. "Maybe it's time it happened again."

That night, I slept in a real bed for the first time in four years - not an attic cot. Theo gave me his room. My mother braided my hair like I was five again.

And I dreamed of wolves.

Not one wolf. Two.

A pure snow-white wolf, elegant and calm - Luna. And beside her, a second wolf, bigger, grey-white with silver tips, fierce and protective - Liora.

We were crowded, little one, Luna whispered in the dream. That's why you felt big. You were carrying us both.

Time to stop hiding, Liora growled. Time to show them.

I woke up at dawn with my nose bleeding silver.

---

At Silverpine Royal Academy, 200 miles away, Jaxon Thorne hadn't slept in two days.

This is what the rejection sickness does when the Moon Goddess rejects your rejection.

He felt everything I felt.

When I cried in the truck, he had doubled over in his dorm bathroom, clutching his chest.

When I hugged my mother and felt warm for the first time, he felt a flash of warmth so intense he punched the wall.

And when, at dawn in Stoneclaw, I shifted for the first time on purpose - into my true form, a giant white wolf bigger than any male, howling with two voices -

In Silverpine, Jaxon Thorne fell to his knees in the middle of the training grounds in front of the entire school and howled back.

A broken, agonized howl.

His father, Alpha King Darius, watched from the high balcony and finally understood.

He hadn't suppressed an Omega.

He had created an enemy Alpha.

---

In Stoneclaw, I shifted back, naked and shivering and laughing, wrapped in Theo's blanket.

My mother howled with pride.

Theo high-fived me. "Damn, little sis. You're huge."

I looked down at my body - my thighs, my stomach, my hips - the same body they mocked yesterday.

For the first time, I didn't see fat.

I saw power. Room for two wolves.

The silver mark on my wrist pulsed hard.

And then the border alarm rang.

A guard burst in. "Alpha Alisha - there's someone at the border. He says he's the Alpha Prince. He says he's not leaving until he sees her."

Theo stood up. "Jaxon? Already?"

My mother looked at me. "The Rite has started, Alina. What do you want to do?"

Outside, past the trees, I could feel him. Cedar and storm rain. Frantic. Guilty. Obsessive.

My mate who said "I reject you, fatass" was now standing at my new pack's border, begging to get in.

I pulled Theo's big hoodie over my red dress, over my glowing mark, and said:

"Let him wait on his knees."