Alpha King’s Regret: Reborn To Reject Him

LILY 

Not in a fight. Not with teeth in someone’s throat. I died on the cold stone of his bedroom, bleeding between my legs, one hand shoved against my belly as if pressure alone could keep something inside that was already leaving.

Kael stood over me.

Alpha Prince of Bloodmoon. My mate. The crown was not on his head yet, but his shadow already filled the room.

He did not kneel. He did not call for the healers.

He looked at the brown stain spreading into the edge of his rug and spoke to his Beta as if I were a task on a list.

“Take her away. She was just a vessel. The pup is gone anyway. I have no use for her anymore.”

Flat. Bored. The voice he used when a report was late.

I remembered begging. I remembered the door staying open after they dragged me out, so the Hall could hear that an omega had been removed and the Prince had not been inconvenienced.

I also remembered the winter before any of that.

I was sixteen. He was twenty-two and already sitting in his father’s chair when the old King was away. The north patrol list had been left unsigned, and if it stayed unsigned the men on that line would not eat. I sat outside his office until dawn with the paper on my knees. He stepped over my feet on his way to council, glanced down once, and said, “Leave it with Jace.” He did not ask my name. He did not ask why an omega was still in the corridor after the lamps were put out. Three years later he would call me a vessel. The bond did not invent that. It only gave him a cleaner word for a habit.

Then I woke up.

Same kind of cold. Different floor.

Omega quarters. Back of the pack house. Thin blanket that never reached my feet. Cracked mirror Sienna had broken last year and told the housekeeper I had done it. Smell of damp and old smoke that no scrubbing ever lifted out of this wing.

My chest was heaving. There was no blood. My legs were dry. My hand went to my belly before I was fully sitting up. Flat. Warm. Intact.

The calendar hung crooked. My handwriting.

April 11th. Today.

June 11th circled in red. Gathering Day.

I knew that date the way I knew the stain on his rug. It was the day he would stand in the Great Hall and discard me in front of the pack, with Rorik behind him and the law already written. I had died in August, a few months on, alone on that floor. I had been sent back with two months I had not had the first time. I did not thank the Moon goddess for it. She had been silent when my mother died. When I was left in the wood alone and almost died. When Sienna’s friends locked me in the cold room and told the kitchen I was sulking. Silence did not become kindness because it arrived late.

I put my feet on the stone. This time they held.

“I got you,” I whispered. The words scraped. “This time I got you.”

A cup steamed on the desk. Sienna’s hand on a folded note.

For your nerves. Drink before the Gathering. You will need it.

Mint on top. Under it, the sweet rot I had learned too late. Wolfsbane and moonflower, small enough that a healer who was not looking would call it a fever tea. She had brought it every morning for a year. Sat on my cot. Called me sister. Said I ran cold. An omega does not refuse a ranked wolf. I had swallowed it until my wolf forgot how to answer and my scent went dull. Dull enough that no one in the Hall would smell Luna on me. Dull enough that a pup, if one took, would look like a weak body failing.

I carried the cup to the window and poured it into the dirt. The patch went dark.

The second the liquid left my hand, my wolf slammed forward.

She had been quiet since I failed to shift cleanly at sixteen. Curled in the back. Shallow breath. That was the story the pack told. Wolfless. Useless. Safe to ignore. Tonight she did not stay curled. Heat ran down my arms. My nails darkened for a heartbeat. My teeth sharpened and split my lip.

A basket hit the floor in the hall. It was Myra.

She pushed the door an inch. She never knocked when her nose had already answered.

“Lily.”

“I am not drinking it.”

She looked at the empty cup, then at the wet earth outside. “If you stop, your scent will change before the Gathering. Sienna will smell it. So will he.”

“Let them.”

“And if you are already with his child, stopping will wake more than your wolf.” She kept her voice low enough that the corridor would not carry it. “I am not asking how I know to warn you. I am asking what you did with mere two months and a law that says an omega cannot be Luna.”

“Leave before he can say it in the Hall,” I said. “And take proof, so they cannot call it a wolfless girl’s lie. Those are what the two months will give me.”

She studied me the way she studied a fever that might break. “Proof gets omegas killed if the seal is east. You know whose daughter writes in that book.”

“I know whose Prince has been tired at every council since winter,” I said. “Same cup. Same hand. If I die again, I die with the pages on the stone, not in my throat.”

Her mouth tightened. She nodded once. “Hide the cup. If she asks, you drank it. And if your scent sharpens, you stay out of the kitchen when she is in it.”

She closed the door.

The first week without the tea, I was sick every morning. Cold sweats. Hands that would not hold a bowl. Myra left yarrow on the step and did not ask questions in daylight. My scent changed anyway. Sharper. A guard at the stair turned his head as I passed and then pretended he had not. Sienna started watching the cup. I started leaving a rinsed one on the desk so she would see what she expected.

I did not wait for the drums to prepare.

The blue dress meant for the Gathering went to market. I had ironed that dress for hours the first time, trying to look like someone a Prince might hesitate over. The coin bought yarrow and the antidote from Myra’s locked shelf, and nothing I could not carry. A man called Marcus had pressed passage paper into my palm months ago, after the cold room, when he still thought kindness was a private thing. One female and a child. Neutral ground. No questions. I kept it under the floorboard.

The ledger pages came later, the night Sienna drank herself stupid because Kael had ignored her at council. Her bag fell open. I took what I could carry. Dates. Amounts. Luna Fund gold written as fever tonic and spent on wolfsbane, moonflower, moonroot. A last line in different ink: The same herbs in the Prince’s evening water, so he stayed dull and needed the antidote only I could bring him. East seal on two of the receipts. Her looping hand on all of them.

I did not need the Hall to love me. I needed it unable to pretend.

On June 11th the drums started, low and steady.

I tied my hair back. Boot on. The backpack sat on one shoulder. Yarrow. Antidote. Passage paper. Pages folded small at the bottom.

The Great Hall smelled of pine smoke and too many bodies. Elders in their circle. Warriors shoulder to shoulder. Pups on mothers’ laps, because Gathering was also a lesson. This is how a Prince discards what the law does not allow. Sienna sat in the front row in a new red dress, legs crossed, smiling as if the white chair had already learned her scent.

Kael stood in the middle.

Twenty-four. Broad shoulders. Black shirt open at the throat. Gray eyes, wolf held down hard. Rorik stood close enough behind him that I caught the end of it as I came in.

“Do it clean. An omega cannot be Luna. Your cousin has High Hill behind him if you do not produce an heir with a ranked wolf. East will not keep feeding a Prince who hesitates. Elder Rodrick was plain about that this morning.”

So it was not only pride. It was grain. Votes. A cousin waiting for a vacant seat. Sienna was not only jealous. She was her father’s guarantee.

Kael looked at me the way he had looked at the stain on his rug.

“You. Step forward.”

Sienna’s mouth shaped the words. Go on, Lily.

Still pretending to be concerned for me. The first time, I had stopped where omegas stop, two steps outside the circle, and cried until he had an easy speech.

This time, I walked past Jace, past the council table, into the middle, close enough to smell pine and cedar and the faint bitterness under both. The same bitterness that had been in my tea. He had been drinking it. He did not know. His wolf was too busy being held down to tell him his own cup was wrong.

He opened his mouth.

I did not give him the chance to speak before I did.

“I, Lily of Bloodmoon, reject you, Kael, Alpha Prince of Bloodmoon, as my mate.”

The Hall stopped. Sienna’s smile died. Tomas’s staff hit stone. Rorik went the color of ash.

Then the bond cracked.

Not a clean snap. A hot wire yanked through the center of my chest. White burst behind my eyes. My knees hit the floor. The backpack spilled yarrow across the stone. The sound that left me did not sound like mine.

Kael went down on one knee. Both hands clawed at his chest. Claws tore his vest. The roar that came out of him flickered the fire and sent pups crying into their mothers’ skirts. Blood ran from his nose and tapped the stone.

“Kael.” Jace caught him before he folded all the way.

“She is attacking him,” Sienna shouted. The chair scraped. “Dark craft. Take her now.”

Tomas slammed the staff again. “No one touches her. It is a bond break. Law says let it break. Interference makes the speaker a criminal.”

Pain moved through every mated wolf in the Hall. Hands to ribs. Mates reaching for each other. I pressed my free hand to my belly and held it there through the next wave. Flat. Warm. Still there.

The weaker one was supposed to die. The small life under my palm pushed back, angry and alive.

Something else tore with the bond. A cold empty place opened behind Kael’s eyes that had not been there when he walked into the Hall. As if a piece of him had been pulled loose and had nowhere to land but the woman who had just refused him. I did not have a name for it. I felt it sit behind my ribs, small and wrong.

I got up. Blood on my lip. I spat it onto the stone and gave the Hall the speech he had come to make.

“I, Alpha Prince Kael of Bloodmoon, reject you, Lily, as my mate and Luna. You are weak. You are wolfless. You are an omega who will never shift. You were just a vessel.”

No one breathed.

His mouth stayed open. His eyes had gone black.

Sienna found her voice first. “What the fuck is he saying?! She cannot say that. Only an Alpha speaks those words. Kael, are you going to let a wolfless girl put your rejection in her mouth?” 

“Sit down,” Jace said.

Elder Mara leaned forward, hands tight on the armrest. “Where did you hear that filth?”

“From him,” I said. “Ask your Alpha Prince what he planned to say to me tonight in front of all of you.”

Kael stared at me. Sweat at his temple. Breath like a man who had run the border. “I never said that to you.”

“You will,” I said. “I am only saving the Hall the wait.”

Sienna laughed, too loud. “She is hearing voices. Reject her and be done. East is watching. High Hill is watching.”

He did not look at her. His eyes were on my hand.

“Vessel? You just said Vessel” he said, only for me.

Gold cut through the black. Shock, not performance. His wolf surged so hard I felt it in the cold place behind my ribs, confused, reaching for a woman it had been ordered not to want.

“Now watch this vessel walk,” I said, for the beams, the pups and Rorik.

I turned. The circle opened without an order. Warriors stepped back. A few of them looked at their Prince on his knee as if the law had moved under their feet.

Sienna grabbed my arm as I passed. Red nails dug deep enough to leave half-moons. Blood beaded.

“You think this saves you, you little bitch? You think anyone wants a used omega? You are nothing.”

I yanked my arm free. Hard. Her nails scratched.

“I hear you, Sienna,” I said, loud enough for Elder Rodrick to hear. “The whole Hall hears you. And they will hear your ledger pages too. Check her bag if you want to know where the east pack funds went.”

I kicked the bag, light. Pages fanned out across the stone, white on gray. Sienna’s handwriting. Dates. Amounts. Poison notes.

Sienna’s face went white. Her father’s hand tightened on her wrist.

“That is a lie. She is lying. My prince. It is fake. She forged it.”

I kept walking. Past the fire. Past the elders shouting my name. Past Jace holding Kael up by the shoulders.

I pushed the big doors open. Cold night air hit my bloody lip and felt clean.

From behind me, Kael’s wolf howled. Long. Rough. Not the angry howl from before the Gathering. Scared. Lost.

Last time, that sound made me hide under a thin blanket and cry until morning.

Tonight I kept walking toward the north border, toward neutral ground, toward keeping this pup alive even if I had to crawl the whole way.

In my last life, his door had slammed.

This life, it was the Great Hall doors slamming open because the Alpha Prince left the circle to follow me.

Footsteps. Coming fast. Boots on stone.

Let him come.