The Alpha's Rejected Wolfless Mate

Chapter Two: MINE

The word didn't echo. It detonated.

"MINE."

My eyes widened in shock.

Every wolf in that hall who was still standing dropped to their knees. The sound of hundreds of knees hitting cold stone at once was like thunder rolling through the hall.

My father, who had just sold me for fifty thousand dollars like I was cattle, hit the ground face-first and stayed there, his forehead pressed to the floor, his whole body trembling.

I didn't. I couldn't.

Kael's hand was still on my chin, his claws barely grazing my skin, holding me in place.

His touch was the only thing keeping me standing because my legs had turned to water.

His eyes were still black. Not gold anymore. Pure, endless black, with a thin ring of burning red around the edge. Fenrir. His wolf was in control now.

I had heard stories about Alpha's losing control to their wolves when they found their mates. I thought they were just stories to scare pups.

It was real. And it was terrifying. And somehow, it was focused entirely on me.

"Look at me," he ordered, his voice deeper, rougher than before, layered with his wolf's growl.

I was already looking. I couldn't look away even if I wanted to.

The moment our eyes locked the second time, pain shot through my chest.

Not pain.

Fire.

A white-hot wire snapping from my heart to his, so violent, so sudden, that I gasped and grabbed his massive wrist with both of my small hands to steady myself.

His nostrils flared again. He leaned down, slowly, his nose brushing my neck, right over my pulse where my thin, wet gown had slipped off my shoulder.

He inhaled.

Long.

Deep.

Obsessive. Like a starving man smelling food for the first time in years.

The entire hall was silent.

A hundred wolves watching in horror and disbelief as the feared Butcher of Blood Moon scented a wolfless, worthless girl like she was the only air left in the world.

"You lie," he murmured against my skin, his warm breath making my bruised body shiver uncontrollably. "You are not wolfless. You are caged."

I felt dizzy, my head spinning from his scent and his words. "What? What are you talking about?"

He pulled back just enough to look at me, his black eyes searching my face like he was looking for something hidden underneath my skin.

"Your wolf is in there," he said just loud enough for me to hear. His thumb stroking my jaw. "Screaming. Trapped. Didn't anyone tell you silver wolves don't wake until their mate touches them? Didn't anyone tell you your bloodline was hunted to extinction because Alphas were afraid of how powerful you would become?"

Silver wolves. The extinct royal bloodline.

The bedtime story my mother used to tell me when I was three years old, before she died.

She used to say my silver hair meant I was special, that I was descended from the first Luna. I thought it was just a story to make me feel better about being different.

My father made a choked, strangled noise from the floor. "Alpha Kael, you said fifty thousand for the girl. We had a deal. We had an agreement. Take her and—"

Kael didn't even look at him. He didn't even acknowledge that my father existed. He kept his burning black eyes locked on me.

"Jax."

A tall man with a scar across his jaw and cold eyes stepped forward from the shadows behind Kael. His Beta. He was also huge, though not as huge as Kael.

"Pay him double," Kael said, his voice flat and filled with absolute disgust. "So he never thinks he can ask for her back. So he never thinks he can breathe the same air as her again. And then get him out of my sight before I kill him for touching what is mine. For selling what is mine."

Jax tossed a heavy black leather bag at my father's feet. The zipper burst open. Cash spilled out onto the stone floor. Way more than fifty thousand. It was a mountain of money.

My father scrambled for it on his hands and knees, his hands shaking, grabbing bills like a starving dog. He didn't even look at me. Not once.

Kael saw it. His jaw clenched so hard I heard his teeth grind together. His claws dug slightly into my chin, not enough to draw blood, but enough to claim. To mark.

Then he did something that made every wolf in the hall gasp in unison, a collective inhale of shock.

He shrugged off his black leather jacket — the one marked with the huge silver emblem of the Blood Moon sigil on the back, the one no one was ever allowed to touch, the one that was said to be stained with the blood of his enemies — and draped it over my shoulders.

It was still warm from his body. It smelled like smoke and snow and pine and something wild and masculine that made my head spin.

It swallowed me whole, covering my thin, bruised, see-through gown.

Covering me from their stares. Covering me from the cold.

It was the first warm thing I had felt in eighteen years.

"She is Luna now," he announced, his voice loud enough for the entire pack to hear, for the entire hall to shake with the power of an Alpha's command.

His hand slid from my chin to the back of my neck, possessive, burning, claiming. "Anyone who looks at her without bowing their head, I will take their eyes. Anyone who touches her without permission, I will take their hands. Anyone who speaks of her past life, of her being wolfless, of her being worthless, I will take their tongue. Is that understood?"

A chorus of terrified, submissive "Yes, Alpha" shook the walls. Even Seraphina whispered it, her face pressed to the floor, her perfect hair now dirty.

Bianca, however, was not as smart as her mother.

She let out a shrill, jealous, enraged sob. She scrambled up from the floor, her face red and twisted with hate. "No! She's wolfless! She's nothing! She's garbage! You can't make HER your Luna! I'm the heir of Silver Creek! I'm beautiful! I'm the one with a wolf! I'm supposed to be Luna! Not her!"

Kael finally, slowly, turned his black, endless eyes to her.

One look.

Just one look from the Blood Moon Butcher.

Bianca choked on her own words and collapsed backward, whimpering, her legs giving out, her own wolf submitting so hard in terror that she started to shift uncontrollably, her nails turning to claws against her will.

He looked back down at me instantly, as if looking at anyone else for more than a second was a waste.

His thumb stroked the rapid, frantic pulse in my neck. His eyes were still black, but the red ring was fading, just a little.

"You can cry for him later, little wolf," he whispered, his voice so low only I could hear it, so soft it didn't match the monster everyone said he was. "You can mourn the father who sold you. But tonight, you ride with me. Tonight, you come home."

Home. I hadn't had a home since my mother died.

He lifted me. One arm under my knees, one arm around my back — he picked me up like I weighed nothing, like I was made of feathers. My arms instinctively went around his thick neck to hold on.

The contact — my bare skin on his, his jacket around me — made that white-hot wire in my chest snap again, harder this time.

This time, I felt it MOVE. Something deep inside me, something that had been sleeping, caged, chained for eighteen years, cracked open with a roar.

My back arched violently in his arms. A sound tore out of my throat.

It was a howl. A silver, piercing howl that made every wolf in the room howl back without wanting to.

My eyes — I felt them change, felt them burn, felt them turn to liquid silver.

Kael stopped walking.

He stared down at me in his arms, and for the first time since he entered this hall, for the first time in probably ten years, the Butcher of Blood Moon, the man who feared nothing, looked completely, utterly shocked.

Because my eyes had turned solid silver, glowing like the moon itself.

And from deep inside me, from that hollow space that had been empty for eighteen years, a voice that was finally, finally awake after a lifetime of silence, whispered inside my head, clear as a bell, powerful as a queen:

Finally. You found him. Our mate. Our Alpha.

Kael's arms tightened around me like steel bands. Like he heard her too. Like his wolf heard my wolf.

And just as he turned to carry me toward the raging storm waiting outside, toward his waiting pack, toward my new life, the huge wooden doors behind us burst open a second time with a deafening crash, and a woman's shrill, hate-filled scream cut through everything, through the mate bond, through the howling.

"KAEL! YOU CANNOT MAKE THAT WOLFLESS b***h YOUR LUNA! I AM YOUR FIANCEE!"