REJECTED BY THE ALPHA, CLAIMED BY HIS BEAST

The cellar reeked of blood. Old, congealed, dried blood. Burnt silver. And him. I stood at the top of the steps with the tray in my hands that I did not want to carry. My hand trembled so badly that the water spilled over the edge of the tray. 'Please, Elena, 'Mara pleaded from behind me, her face pale. 'No one else will go. He killed Jace and Mark and Fen when they tried to feed him. If he breaks the chains tonight, he will come upstairs. Please. You are invisible to him. He cannot see omegas.' He couldn't say " trash, I wanted to say. I am Elena Vale. I'm 20 years old, and I am wolfless. I didn't shift today on my 20th birthday as all the other girls in the pack did. I sleep in the attic where the roof leaks onto my bed. I clean the floors of this pack house till my knees blister and my hands bleed. My mother died pushing me out as one of the many pieces of trash. My father didn't give me his last name. The only possession I have in this world is a broken half-heart necklace that doesn't close. My mother left it to me. I'm the pack trash. I'm omega. I'm it. Worthless. And now I was ordered to go down and feed the monster because my life was the cheapest one here. The steel door at the bottom of the stairs was slightly open, the lock melted and running. Inside, the wall had deep claw marks, revealing the brick. From where he had tried to get out. I shouldered open the door. Three bodies. Jace. The one who threw his soup on my head yesterday and said, 'Omegas don't waste food, right, trash?' His throat was ripped out, a crimson smile. His eyes were open, staring at the light bulb that was swaying from the ceiling in the center of the room. I would have vomited. I would have run, if not for the fact that in the middle of the bodies, chained to the back wall, was Lucas Black. Alpha of the Red Moon pack,30. The most feared Alpha in the south. I've seen him from the kitchen door, always from a distance. Black hair, wide shoulders that block the view of the doorway, scars on his back. Girls like Venassa threw themselves at him, but he never looked at them. Twenty ex-girlfriends and no Luna, because they said he was broken. Tonight he was not an alpha. He was naked, barefoot, his black pants torn. Thick silver bands were bolted into the concrete, piercing his wrists and ankles. Where the silver met his skin, it burned. The smoke made my eyes watery. Blood ran from his arms and his chest. His whole body shook, and the bands screamed, crackling, as he pulled against them, trying to get free. Trying to kill again. The tray in my hands clattered. He heard it. He turned his head sharply towards me I couldn't breathe. His eyes were not the brown they were in the pictures on the pack wall. They were gold, glowing. There was no humanity left in them, only beast. Fangs. Claws, longer than my fingers, dripping with blood that wasn't his. Blood on his lips. He saw me. Small omega, dirty dress, shaking, and he roared. The sound that came out of his lungs was a physical blow to my ribs. The stone walls trembled. Dust fell from the ceiling. He lunged at me. The chains screeched. CLANG, and stopped him six inches from my face. So close I could feel the hot breath of his nostrils on my skin. So close I could see the pain in his beast eyes. He snarled, showing his teeth, trying to scare me. Trying to make me run. The way all the others did. They ran from him. I did not run. Because beneath the snarl, I heard it. A whimper. A sound trapped deep in his chest, low and sad, like the cry of an abandoned animal that no one wanted to hear. Ten years ago, on a full moon, Alpha Lucas had what was supposed to be his fated mate. A girl he loved. But the beast in him raged, and in his madness, he tore her apart with his own hands. That was why he chained himself in this cellar on full moons to keep himself from hurting anyone. That was why he would never have a Luna, because he had killed the one that was supposed to be his. Looking into his eyes, seeing the pain in them, knowing what he was doing to himself, I didn't see a monster. I saw a boy who had been hurt so badly that he was trying to hurt the world around him. And I saw, for the first time in 20 years, a boy no one wanted to hear. 'You're hurting yourself,' I whispered, and I didn't know where it came from. His own kind, the voice said. Trash like me, they said. But it was the kindest thing I had heard in my life, and it came from me. He jerked harder, blood squirting from his wrists, smoking silver, and growled for me to leave. 'Stop,' I said, and tears blurred my vision. 'Please, you're burning!' He didn't stop. I thought his bones would snap, and a part of me, that part that had been beaten into me for 20 years, screamed that this was wrong. That I was trash. That Venassa didn't kick my bucket because I was weak, and I should run while I still had the strength. But another part of me, the part that had watched him, beaten and broken, and had hated it, said it was time to stop running. I threw the tray with all my might. It hit the wall, making the meat splatter. I walked up to him, into the mess of blood, into the space he had taken, if his chains would hold. If the silver didn't burn me. If he didn't kill me first. My whole body shook, but my voice did not. I looked into his beast eyes, tears streaming down my face, and for the first time, I did not beg like the omega he wanted me to be. I commanded like the Luna that no one wanted. 'Down.' It was a soft word that slipped out of me, and it was not my voice that came out, but something deeper. Something stronger. Something in me, 20 years of me, wanted to scream, "Kneel before me!" The whole cellar stopped. The snarling, the chains, the swinging bulb. His whole body trembled, as if I had struck him with lightning, and those beautiful, feral, killing eyes widened in surprise. No one had ever spoken to him like that. No one had ever told his beast what to do. Muscle by muscle, his knees buckled, and with a howl, Lucas Black, the most feared Alpha in the south, knelt before me. The Alpha of the red moon pack, on his knees in a cellar, covered in his own blood, for a 20-year-old omega. The chains lay at his feet, useless. My knees almost gave out, and my heart was beating so fast. Then, for the first time in 20 years, I smelled myself. Rain. On the concrete floor. Sweet and strong. 20 years of no scent, and now it filled the whole cellar. "Good," I whispered, crying, and my hand came up on its own. I touched his cheek, hot and sweaty. He flinched, but did not pull away. He leaned into my hand like a starving man, his eyes fluttering shut, and a deep, rumbling purr came out of him. It vibrated in my hand, in the floor, in the deepest part of me where my wolf should have been. No one had ever purred for me. No one had ever wanted my touch. I was always the one no one wanted. I knelt beside him until we were face to face. His mouth was open, and he was breathing hard, looking at me as if he had never seen anything so beautiful in his life. "Elena," I told him, so he would know whose pet he was. "My name is Elena Vale." His hand, the one that was on fire, came up. I should have been afraid. His claws could tear my face off. Instead, so gently it hurt, he tucked a strand of my hair behind my ear. His claw scraped the broken half-heart necklace, the only thing my mother had left me. "Ele....na," he whispered, his voice hoarse from his howls. As if it was his new name, and he carved it into his beast's memory. Boots echoed in the distance. "ALPHA! SILVER SENSOR BROKE! WE'RE COMING IN ARMED!" Beta Jona. A wave of panic ran through me. If they saw me here, pack trash alone with their feral Alpha, Vanessa would tell them I bewitched him. The Elders would make me into a slave and sell me to the rogues as a witch. I tried to get up, "I have to go—" His hand shot out and grabbed my ankle. Iron, possessive, not harming. Taking. Claiming. 'Don't,' he snarled, half-man, half-beast. 'Let me go, they can't see—' The steel door burst open with a loud bang. Jona, along with four other warriors, all armed with silver guns, froze at the center of the room, seeing the three bodies on the floor: their Alpha, chained and bleeding and smoking from the silver, and me. A small omega, dirty maid dress, tears on her cheeks, trapped between his bare chest and his shaking hands, her dress soaked in his blood, her scent of rain filling the cellar. No one said a word. Then Lucas looked up. His eyes were still the feral gold, and he looked at his Beta, his warriors, the people who had always treated me like dirt, and growled one sentence that made me freeze for ten stupid, beautiful seconds, thinking I was worth keeping. His. "Mine. She's mine now." I thought that was a happy ending. I was wrong. An hour later, he was showered, dressed in a black suit, and his pretty brown eyes were cold and human again. I stood in the center of the pack hall in my dirty dress, my necklace trembling in my hand. He passed me as if I was not there. 'Alpha,' Jona whispered, 'the omega who tamed you—' 'I, Lucas Black, reject you, Elena Vale, as my mate and Luna,' said a cold voice that echoed in the hall, in my heart. 'I, Lucas Black, reject you, Elena Vale, as my mate and Luna.' My necklace snapped to the floor, the half-heart breaking in two. He didn't look at me. "I don't want an omega.”