The Rejected Luna's Three Mates

The Rejected Luna's Three Mates Chapter 1: Rejected on My Birthday By the time the clock struck midnight, I would be rejected, banished, and dead in a ditch. I just didn't know it yet. What I knew at eleven that night was that the Silvermoon great hall smelled like roasted venison and expensive perfume, and that I had been scrubbing the same spot on the floor for twenty minutes because it was the only way to avoid looking at the high table. Tonight I turned eighteen. In the pack, that meant a shift, a ceremony, and a mate. For everyone else, anyway. I'd waited all day for my wolf. Nothing. Not a flutter, not a whisper. Just the same quiet, empty space inside me I'd carried my entire life. "Lyra!" Marcy's voice cracked across the hall like a whip. "Wine. Alpha's table. Move." She shoved a silver tray into my hands. I didn't argue. Arguing with Marcy was like arguing with a wall that had opinions. So I walked. Head down, shoulders in, the way I'd walked every day since I was old enough to understand what wolfless meant. People moved aside as I passed. Not out of respect. They just didn't want to touch me. I was halfway across the hall when the smell hit. Pine smoke. Cold rain. Something deeper underneath, like a forest at midnight, that went straight down my spine and lit every nerve on fire. I stopped so fast the wine sloshed. Mate. I didn't hear the word. I felt it, like a hook sinking under my ribs and pulling. My knees went weak. The tray shook. Slowly, I lifted my eyes. Dominic Hale stood at the head of the table with a glass in his hand, and the entire world rearranged itself around him. I'd known who he was my whole life. Everyone had. Alpha of Blackthorn at twenty-two, the youngest in a century. Undefeated. Untouchable. He had the kind of face that belonged on a coin, all cut cheekbones and dark hair and a mouth that never seemed to smile. I'd watched him from the kitchen windows for years. Dreamed about him, if I'm honest, in the stupid, secret way a girl dreams about something she knows she'll never have. And he was looking straight at me. The glass slipped from his fingers. It shattered against the stone, and the whole hall went quiet. "Mine," he said. Just one word. Low. Rough. Like it had been dragged out of him. My heart nearly stopped. I took a step toward him. I couldn't help it. Every part of me was pulled toward that voice, that scent, that impossible hope blooming in my chest. He feels it too. He feels it, and he's going to claim me. Right here. Then he blinked, and something in his face closed. It was like watching a door slam. One second his eyes were burning. The next they were cold, flat, unreadable. His jaw locked. His hand curled into a fist. "No," Dominic said. I stopped. "No," he said again, louder, and turned to face the room. "Everyone, listen. The Moon Goddess has made her choice. And I refuse it." A ripple went through the crowd. Somebody gasped. "I, Dominic Hale, Alpha of Blackthorn, reject you, Lyra Vance, as my mate and my Luna." The pain was instant and enormous. It ripped through me like claws through paper. I'd read about rejection once, in an old book, but nothing had prepared me for the real thing, the way it felt as though someone had reached into my chest and torn out a handful of everything that mattered. I dropped the tray. I didn't even hear it hit. I folded over, clutching my ribs, a sound coming out of me that didn't feel human. Then the laughter started. Marcy first. Then the others, spreading through the hall like fire through dry grass. "Did she actually think?" "Look at her! She's crying." "A wolfless Luna? Please." I forced my head up. Dominic was already turning away. I stared at his back, at the broad line of his shoulders, at the way his hands shook at his sides. "Why?" My voice came out scraped raw. "You felt it. I saw you feel it." He didn't turn around. "You're nothing, Lyra. I need a Luna who can fight beside me. You can't even shift." Every word landed like a slap. And then my father walked into the light. Alpha Garrick Vance. The man who'd never once called me daughter in public. He took one look at me, on my knees on the floor, and his face twisted with a disgust I knew by heart. "Enough," he said. "You've humiliated this pack for eighteen years. Tonight you humiliate us in front of our allies." "Father," I whispered. "You will not call me that. Guards." Two warriors seized my arms. I didn't fight. I couldn't. I let them haul me across the floor, past the laughing faces, past Marcy's smirk, and out into the cold. The last thing I saw before the doors swung shut was Dominic. He'd finally turned. He was looking at me. And he looked like a man watching his own heart carried away. They dumped me at the border like trash. "Don't come back," the guard said. "Next time, we won't be so kind." The gates slammed. The lock clanged. Then silence, and the black forest stretching out in front of me, and rain beginning to fall in thin, cold needles. I walked for a long time. I don't remember where. My dress was torn, my shoes were gone, and the hole in my chest was so big I thought I might fall through it. At some point I stopped walking and sat down in the roots of an old oak, and that was when I started to cry. Not pretty crying. The kind that hurts. The kind that shakes your whole body. "I hate you," I whispered into the dark. "I hate you, Dominic Hale." It tasted like a lie. And then, somewhere deep inside me, something moved. Slowly. Like a door creaking open after eighteen years. Heat spread through my veins. My fingers started to tingle. A strange, wonderful ache rolled up my spine, and I gasped, because I knew that ache. I'd read about it. I'd dreamed about it every night since I was twelve. No. It can't be. Not now. A branch snapped behind me. I froze. Golden eyes opened in the dark. One pair. Then three. Then a dozen, circling, silent, patient. Rogues. The biggest one stepped forward, lips peeling back from yellow teeth. "Well, well," he rasped. "A little Silvermoon rabbit, all alone." I scrambled backward and hit the tree. Nowhere to go. He lunged. And a voice, a woman's voice, ancient and furious, filled my entire skull: Finally. Let me out.