THE CROWN SHE NEVER WANTED

The moon was full the night Alpha Ryker Stormfang destroyed her. Elena Ashwood stood in the center of the Great Hall, in front of the entire pack, wearing the white dress her mother had sewn for this exact moment. The moment she became Luna. The moment everything she'd worked for finally clicked into place. Instead she was standing there watching Ryker's face go cold. "Ryker." Her voice came out smaller than she wanted. "Say the words." He looked at her like she was a stranger. Like three years of promises had never happened. "I can't do this," he said. The hall went silent. Two hundred wolves, all of them holding their breath, all of them watching her world collapse in real time. "What do you mean you can't do this? We're standing at the altar, Ryker. You asked me here." "I mean I reject you." He said it flat. No emotion. Like he was reading off a grocery list. "Elena Ashwood, I reject you as my mate and future Luna." Someone gasped behind her. She thought it might be her aunt. She couldn't turn around to check because if she turned around she was going to fall apart in front of everyone, and she was not going to give this pack that satisfaction. "Why," she said. Not a question. A demand. Ryker's jaw tightened. "You're not strong enough to lead this pack. I need a Luna who can stand beside me in war. Not someone who cries when a wolf raises its voice." "I have never cried in front of you." "You're crying now." She wasn't. Her eyes were burning but she refused to let a single tear fall, not here, not in front of the council, not in front of the girl standing three feet to Ryker's left with her hand halfway to his arm like she'd been waiting for this exact moment her whole life. Vanessa. Of course. "You picked her," Elena said quietly. "I picked the pack," Ryker said. "Vanessa's father commands two hundred warriors. Yours commands a bakery." The words landed like a slap. Around the hall she could hear the whispers start, the way whispers always start, quiet and then not quiet at all, spreading through the crowd like fire finding dry grass. Weak. Worthless. Unfit. She'd spent her whole life being told she wasn't enough for this pack, not strong enough, not powerful enough, not born into the right bloodline. She'd told herself Ryker was different. She'd told herself he saw her. She'd been wrong. "Fine," she said. Ryker blinked. Whatever he expected her to say, that wasn't it. "Fine?" he repeated. "You want a Luna who can stand beside you in war." Elena reached up and pulled the ceremonial pin from her hair, the one that marked her as his intended, and let it drop to the floor between them. It hit the stone with a sound way too small for how much it meant. "Then go find one. I hope Vanessa's father's two hundred warriors keep you very warm at night." She turned and walked out of the Great Hall with her spine straight and her chin up, and she did not let herself break until she was three miles into the forest, alone, finally, where nobody could see her fall apart. She sat against a tree and cried until there was nothing left in her. By morning she was gone. She packed one bag, took the money she'd saved from three years of working the pack's medical tent, and left before the sun came up. She told herself she wasn't running away. She told herself she was just leaving somewhere that had never wanted her in the first place. She didn't look back at the pack lands. Not once. Three years later, Elena stood in a market square in the eastern territories, haggling over the price of dried herbs, when a man in gray robes approached her with a look on his face like he'd seen a ghost. "Elena Ashwood," he said. She stiffened. Nobody out here knew her real name. She'd gone by Elle for three years, worked in a healer's shop, kept her head down, built herself a small quiet life that had nothing to do with packs or Alphas or rejection ceremonies. "You have the wrong person," she said, and turned to leave. "You have your mother's eyes," the man said. "And her mark. Right there on your wrist." Elena froze. Her hand went instinctively to the crescent shaped birthmark on the inside of her left wrist, the one she'd covered with a bracelet for as long as she could remember because it made the pack elders look at her strangely. "Who are you,"