Rejected by My Alpha

THE ALPHA’S SECRET

I ran until my lungs burned.

Then I ran farther.

Usually, running stripped the world down to something simple. Breath. Movement. Instinct. It made difficult choices easier to live with. But not tonight. Tonight, every stride only sharpened what I had done.

I reject you, Seraphina Voss.

The words kept repeating in my head with the exact coldness I had forced into them. They had needed to sound merciless. That did not make them easier to carry.

The bond had struck me seconds before I looked up in the courtyard. The moment my eyes found her, I understood two things at once.

Seraphina Voss was my mate.

And she carried the silver shimmer of a Veilborn.

No one else would have noticed. I did because my father had made sure I knew what to look for. Years ago, in the locked room beneath his study, he had shown me forbidden records about hidden bloodlines. Packs erased. families hunted. Wolves taken alive for what they carried.

Veilborn.

The second I saw that shimmer on Seraphina’s skin, every calculation changed.

If I claimed her publicly, she would be marked before sunrise. Not by ordinary enemies. By the people who had spent decades hunting her bloodline. People are powerful enough to buy Alphas. Cruel enough to disappear entire families.

I had perhaps four seconds to decide.

Claim her and paint a target on her back.

Reject her and make her worthless in the eyes of anyone watching.

Worthless girls survived longer.

That was the strategy. The logic. The choice I made.

I hated it before I finished speaking. I hated it more when I saw her face and realized she would carry that wound for the rest of her life.

At the eastern border, I stopped.

The Veilwood waited beyond the boundary stones, dark and ancient. My wolf was restless beneath my skin. Then I saw the tracks.

Small.

Fresh.

Leading inward.

She had gone into the forest.

Fear clenched through me with brutal force.

I moved toward the stones, then stopped. If I followed, I would leave scent and tracks. If anyone found proof that I had pursued the rejected omega into forbidden territory, they would start asking questions I could not allow.

Sometimes being Alpha meant doing nothing while every instinct demanded action.

This was one of those times.

I pressed my hand to the ground. Still warm. She had entered only minutes ago.

That kind of woman does not disappear quietly, I thought. Seraphina had stood in front of the entire pack with her soul breaking open and still managed to hold her dignity like a weapon.

If the Veilwood accepted her, she would return changed.

If it didn’t, there would be nothing left to return.

Back at the estate, I unlocked the hidden cabinet beneath my father’s maps and pulled out the leather-bound record I had not touched in years. The page I needed was already marked.

If a Veilborn female survives awakening, the mating bond cannot be destroyed. It can only be delayed.

I read the next line, and for the first time that night, real dread settled into me.

When she returns, she will know who betrayed her.

I closed the book and stared into the dark.

If Seraphina came back alive, she might hate me.

And I would deserve every bit of it.

"What do you think will happen next"?