Chapter Three : Pain That Binds Us

Moana’s POV

The forest was so quiet that I could hear the snow falling on the leaves.

I was on my knees in the cold dirt. The golden light was still glowing between my chest and Alpha Eldrick’s heart.

It felt warm, like a soft blanket, but I was shaking with fear. I looked up at the high stone ledge. Eldrick stood there, looking down at me. His face was not kind. It was full of a dark, angry fire.

"Please," I whispered, though my voice was too small for him to hear.

I wanted to tell him that I was not my father. I wanted to tell him that I had worked hard for ten years to show I was a good wolf. But the words stayed stuck in my throat.

Eldrick took a step closer to the edge of the rock. He looked at the golden cord. Then he looked at the hundreds of wolves watching us.

"Look at her," Eldrick shouted. His voice was like a crack of thunder. "Look at the mate the Moon Goddess has given to your Alpha."

A woman in the front row laughed. It was a mean, sharp sound.

"She is a servant!" she yelled. "She cleans the toilets! She is the daughter of the man who tried to kill you, Alpha!"

"She is a stain on our pack!" another man barked.

I pulled my arms around my body. I felt so small. I felt like a bug that everyone wanted to step on.

The golden light pulsed once, twice, trying to pull me toward him. My wolf, the small, quiet animal inside me, wanted to run to him. She wanted to shift and howl and lick his face. She thought we were finally safe.

He is our mate, my wolf whispered in my mind. He will protect us. But Eldrick did not want to protect me, my mind raced.

"Silence!" Eldrick roared. The pack went quiet instantly.

He turned his golden eyes back to me. They were cold and hard, there was no love in them. There was only disgust.

"Moana Ashclaw," he said.

My name sounded like a curse when he said it.

"You think because the moon chose you, that you are my Luna? You think you will sit on a throne next to me?"

I looked up at him, tears running down my face.

"I... I don't want a throne," I swallowed hard. "I just wanted to be seen."

"I see you," he spat. "I see a traitor. I see the blood of the man who tried to end my life. I see a girl who is too weak to even stand up straight."

He lifted his right hand. The golden cord began to shake. It felt like someone was pulling on my heart with a hook. It hurt. It hurt so much I had to gasp for air.

"Eldrick, wait!"

I looked over. It was Kaelen, the Beta. He moved toward the ledge, his face looking worried.

"The bond is sacred, Eldrick. The Moon Goddess does not make mistakes. Maybe there is a reason…"

"The reason is a test, Kaelen!" Eldrick yelled, turning to his Beta.

"The Goddess is testing my strength! She wants to see if I will be weak and follow a bond, or if I will be a strong leader and protect my pack from bad blood."

Kaelen looked at me, and for a second, his eyes were soft. He looked like he felt sorry for me, but he was only the Beta. He could not stop the Alpha.

Eldrick looked back at me. He stood very tall. He looked at the red moon in the sky, then down at the dirt.

"I, Alpha Eldrick Blackthorn," he began.

The air in the forest began to scream. A wind picked up, blowing the fire from the bonfire in every direction. The golden light between us started to turn gray, It was fighting him and didn't want to break.

"No," I cried out. I reached my hand toward him. "Please, Eldrick! It hurts!"

He did not care. He didn't even blink.

"I reject you, Moana Ashclaw, as my mate and as the Luna of the Blackthorn Pack," he shouted.

The sound was louder than a gunshot.

The golden cord did not just fade away. It exploded. It felt like a bolt of lightning hit me right in the center of my chest. I flew backward, hitting the hard ground.

The pain was like nothing I had ever felt. It felt like my heart was being ripped in half. It felt like my skin was being burned by acid.

I let out a scream that sounded like a dying animal. I curled into a ball in the mud, clutching my chest, trying to hold my soul together.

On the ledge, Eldrick groaned. He stumbled back, clutching his own chest. His face went pale. Rejection hurts the Alpha, too. It is a sin against the moon. But he stood up quickly. He forced himself to look strong.

The light was gone. The forest was dark again. The only light came from the red moon and the orange fire.

"The bond is broken," Eldrick said. His voice was shaky, but he sounded proud. "I have cast the traitor out. She is nothing to me. She is nothing to this pack."

The wolves began to howl. It was not a happy howl. It was a howl of victory over an enemy. They were celebrating my pain.

Sela walked up to me while I was still on the ground. She looked down at me and kicked dirt onto my dress.

"Did you hear him, rat?" she whispered so only I could hear.

"He hates you. We all hate you. You should have died with your father."

I couldn't move, I couldn't breathe. Every time I took a breath, it felt like glass in my lungs.

This was the ‘Bond Sickness.’ When a mate is rejected, the body starts to die. The heart thinks it has lost its other half.

I looked up at the ledge one last time.

Eldrick was walking away, he didn't look back, and he didn't check to see if I was okay. He walked into the dark trees with his head held high.

Kaelen stayed for a second. He looked at me lying in the mud, and opened his mouth to say something, but Elder Marek stepped next to him.

"Leave her," Marek said. His voice was cold.

"She is a rejected thing now. She must find her own way back to the cellar. If she survives the night, she has floors to scrub in the morning."

One by one, the wolves left the clearing. They laughed. They talked about the party they would have later. They left me alone in the dark.

I stayed in the mud for a long time. The fire died down until it was just gray ash. The red moon went behind a cloud.

My chest felt cold and empty. The warm, golden feeling from before was gone, It was replaced by a big, black hole.

“We are alone,” my wolf whimpered. She was crying. She was hiding in the darkest corner of my mind. She didn't want to come out ever again.

I forced myself to sit up. My hands were shaking so hard I could barely use them, and my vision was blurry from the tears. I looked at the spot on my chest where the light had been. There was a small, red mark there now. It looked like a burn.

It was the mark of a rejected mate.

I stood up slowly. My legs felt like they were made of water. I had to hold onto the trees so I wouldn't fall.

I began to walk back toward the pack house. I didn't go to the front door. I went to the small, wooden door that led to the cellar. I walked down the stone steps into the dark.

I crawled onto my small bed of straw. It was cold and smelled like dust.

"I am Moana," I whispered into the dark. "I am not a traitor. I am not a ghost."

But as I closed my eyes, all I could hear was Eldrick’s voice.

“I reject you Moana Ashclaw.”

The words echoed in my head over and over. I went to sleep feeling the fire in my chest, wondering if I would even wake up the next day.

In the morning, I woke up on my straw bed in the cellar.

The morning sun did not feel warm, it felt like a cold weight pressing against my eyes.

I didn't feel like myself, my chest felt like it was filled with broken glass. Every time I took a breath, a sharp pain shot through my ribs. This was the Bond Sickness. My wolf was silent and cold in the back of my mind. She was mourning the mate who had thrown us away.

"Get up, rat!"

The voice was loud and mean. I opened my eyes and saw a guard standing at the top of the cellar stairs. He was kicking the wooden door.

"The Alpha wants to have his breakfast, and the floors in the main hall are filthy," the guard shouted. "Do not make him wait. He is in a very bad mood today."

I tried to sit up, but my head spun. My stomach felt sick. I wanted to stay in the dark and cry, but I knew what would happen if I stayed. If I didn't work, I wouldn't eat, and they would throw me out of the pack lands, and the wild rogues would kill me.

I stood up slowly and put on my old, torn boots and walked up the stone steps.

The Pack House was busy. Wolves were talking about the ceremony from last night. They were laughing about how lucky the Alpha was to escape a mate like me.

I kept my head down. I didn't want them to see the red burn mark on my chest or that I was dying inside.

I went to the kitchen, grabbed a bucket of water and a heavy scrub brush. My hands were already shaking.

"The Alpha is in the grand dining hall," the cook said. She didn't look at me. Nobody wanted to look at a rejected mate. It was like I was a bad omen.

"He is waiting. Go."

I walked to the dining hall. The doors were large and made of dark wood. I pushed them open and stepped inside.

The room was huge, and a long table sat in the middle, filled with meat, bread, and fruits. Eldrick was sitting at the head of the table, while Kaelen was sitting next to him.

The moment I entered the room, the air changed.

The bond… even though it was broken, was still there like a ghost. As I got closer to Eldrick, the pain in my chest changed. It stopped being sharp and started to feel like something dull. My wolf moved just a little bit. She wanted to be near him. She was a fool.

Eldrick looked up.

And I noticed he looked terrible. His golden eyes had dark circles under them, his hair was messy, and his skin looked pale.

He was holding a cup of coffee, but his hand was shaking. The rejection was hurting him, too. The Moon Goddess was punishing him for what he did to me.

"You're late," Eldrick growled. His voice was deeper and more jagged than yesterday.

I didn't look at him. I dropped to my knees near the door and started to scrub the floor.

"I am sorry, Alpha," I whispered.

"Speak louder!" he snapped, slamming his cup onto the table. The sound made me jump.

"I cannot hear you when you mumble into the dirt like a fool."

I swallowed hard. "I am sorry, Alpha. I was slow to wake."

Kaelen looked at Eldrick.

"Eldrick, take it easy. She looks sick. We all feel the weight of the broken bond. You can't tell me you aren't feeling it, too."

"I feel nothing!" Eldrick shouted. He stood up so fast his chair fell over and walked toward me.

I stayed on my knees. I stared at the bucket of soapy water, but I could feel his heat as he stood over me. He was so big, so powerful. My body wanted to lean into him, but my mind remembered the look of hate in his eyes.

He reached down. His large hand grabbed my chin and forced me to look up at him.

His touch felt like fire. It burned, but in a way that made the Bond Sickness go away for a second.

My heart beat faster. For a tiny moment our eyes met. I saw a flash of pain in his golden gaze. I saw a flicker of something that wasn't hate. It was a soul-deep hunger.

But then, he saw the red mark on my chest, the mark he gave me, and his face suddenly turned hard again. He let go of my chin like I was made of poison.

"You look like a corpse, Moana," he said, sounding disgusted.

"Is this how you plan to serve me? By dropping like a weakling in my hall?

"I am doing my work," I said, but I noticed my voice was getting stronger, it felt like his presence was giving me energy. That was the cruelest part of the bond. I needed the man who hated me just to stay alive.

"You are doing it poorly," Eldrick said.

He turned to Kaelen. "Why is she still here? Why hasn't she been moved to the outer borders?"

“Huh?” Kaelen breathed.

“Yes! I need this piece of dirt to be sent out of my territory immediately… and now. I don't want to see her anymore!”

“But you know that’s impossible… Alpha.”

“Why?”

"Because she is the only one who knows how to manage the old records," Kaelen said calmly. He stood up and walked over to us.

"And because if you send her away now, the bond will snap. You’ll both die of a broken heart before the week is out. You know the laws, Eldrick. A rejected mate must stay within the pack walls for one month to let the soul settle."

Eldrick growled. It was a sound of pure frustration. He hated that he was tied to me.

"Fine," Eldrick spat. He looked at me again.

"Clean the floor. Then go to the library. I want all the maps of the North border cleaned and organized by tonight. If you miss one speck of dust, you will sleep in the stables with the horses."

"Yes, Alpha," I said calmly.

He turned and walked out of the room, his steps heavy. He looked like he was carrying a mountain on his back.

Kaelen stayed behind. He looked down at me, not with hate, but with a question in his eyes.

"Moana," he said softly.

I kept scrubbing.

"Yes, Beta?"

"I saw what you did last night," he said. "When the light connected you to him. You didn't look like a traitor. You looked like you were finally coming home."

I stopped scrubbing. I looked at the gray water in my bucket.

"It doesn't matter what I looked like. He rejected me. The home is gone."

Kaelen knelt down on one knee. He was being much kinder than an Alpha’s Beta should be to an Omega.

"Eldrick is a man of rules, he thinks your father’s blood is in your veins, but the moon does not give an Alpha a mate that will destroy him. She gives him a mate that will complete him."

"He doesn't want to be complete," I said. "He wants to be alone."

"He is in pain, Moana," Kaelen said. "The rejection is eating his wolf alive. He is trying to be strong, but he is breaking."

"So am I," I whispered.

Kaelen reached out and touched my shoulder. It was a friendly touch, not a mate touch. "Go to the library when you are done here. It is quiet there. I will send some bread and tea. You need to eat."

"Thank you, Beta," I said.

Kaelen left, and I was alone in the big hall.

Just then, someone kicked my bucket over, making grey water from it to splash all over me. I looked up, and it was Sela, Elara, and Ava.

“You filthy thing…” Sela hissed, and the others burst into cruel laughter.

I gripped the scrubbing brush so tight my knuckles turned white. My heart pounded as my breaths came in quick, shallow bursts.

“What do you want?” I managed to speak out, my voice trembling.