003

Chapter 3

A violent shiver raced down my spine. My jaw went slack. Goosebumps flooded every inch of my skin, and for one dizzying second the floor seemed to tilt beneath me.

Rejection. The word alone was unbearable. I kept waiting for him to laugh, to say it was all some cruel joke, to pull me into his arms and tell me none of it was real. The punchline never came.

I forced myself forward, reached up, and pressed trembling fingers to his cheek, desperate for even a scrap of the softness he used to give me so freely.

"Please tell me this is a joke," I whispered, voice breaking apart on every word.

He shoved me away hard enough to send me stumbling backward.

"Don't touch me!"

I caught myself just before I hit the floor. The push hadn't been full strength — but the disgust behind it burned worse than any bruise ever could.

When I looked up, pure hatred stared back at me. I regretted meeting his eyes the instant I did.

"I don't understand the lies you're telling yourself," he said coldly, pulling the Beta's daughter tighter against his side. She rested her head on his shoulder like she'd always belonged there. "You saw us. What's the problem?"

His words landed like another physical blow. My knees buckled again. Fresh tears poured down my face, hot and endless.

Around us, his friends laughed like this was entertainment staged just for them. Kieran wore a smug little smile while I stood there breaking apart piece by piece in front of an audience.

Some pathetic, desperate part of me still hoped he'd suddenly admit it was all a prank. I had never hurt him. I had given him everything — my body, my heart, my future — without holding a single piece back.

Where had I gone wrong?

The music stayed off, leaving his cruel words hanging in dead silence and slicing straight through what remained of my heart.

"She's actually obsessed," someone muttered. A broken sob tore loose from my throat before I could stop it.

I spun and ran for the door, cursing the day our paths had ever crossed. Tears blurred everything, especially the memory of him casually declaring our sacred bond had simply been forced on him — like it meant nothing. Like I meant nothing.

"Do me a favor on your way out," Kieran called after me, sneering. "Grab those flowers you left in my room."

I didn't slow down. I didn't look back.

I would never step foot in that room again as long as I lived. I was completely, utterly destroyed. It would have been kinder if we'd never met at all.

The public rejection, the laughter of his friends echoing behind me — none of it compared to the fact that school started again tomorrow, and I'd stupidly told everyone I was the future mate of the most powerful Alpha heir in the region.

After a long, tear-soaked walk through streets gone dark and quiet, I finally reached home. My parents sat on the couch, laughing and teasing each other the easy way true mates do. My mother's bright laugh filled the living room; my father made her smile wider with some quiet joke I couldn't hear from the doorway.

I froze on the step. Watching them felt like salt poured straight into an open wound.

If only I'd never let myself dream of a future with Kieran. Maybe then this pain wouldn't feel like it was splitting me clean in half.

He had been everything I'd ever wanted. I used to fall asleep imagining our life together, our future pups, our pack. That dream was ash now — nothing left to hold onto.

"Lyra?" My mother's voice snapped me out of the haze.

I flinched and stepped inside, eyes swollen and red. I couldn't even tell anymore if it was still evening or already the edge of morning.

Mom rushed to me and pulled me into a crushing hug, worry carved into every line of her face.

"What's wrong, sweetheart?"

Dad was on his feet instantly, hunter instincts flaring hot and immediate.

"Did someone hurt you? Tell me everything. Right now."

In that moment I almost wished someone had hit me. A bruise would have been so much easier to explain than this.

My father's hands had already curled into fists at his sides, knuckles pale, like his body was preparing for a fight his mind hadn't caught up to yet.

"Please talk to us," Mom whispered, stroking my hair while wiping at my tears with her thumb.

Even though I was nearly eighteen, they still treated me like their little girl. All they'd ever wanted was my happiness. Tonight, they couldn't give it to me. Nobody could.

"I'm the rejected fated mate of the Alpha's son," I forced out, the words tasting like broken glass. "He's chosen the Beta's daughter instead."

Both of them went rigid. Anger flashed hot and immediate across my father's face. My mother's jaw clenched so hard I heard her teeth grind together. Their fists curled tight, like they were already halfway to tearing someone apart.

"And he told me to stay away," I added, voice cracking wide open, "so I wouldn't make his new mate uncomfortable."

Dad dragged a hand down his face, then walked straight to the bar, grabbed a bottle, and dropped hard onto the couch. He took a long, bitter drink.

"There's nothing we can do," he said flatly. "We can't force an Alpha heir to accept a mate he doesn't want. It doesn't work that way. It never has."

"Mom, please — talk to him. Or talk to his father. Ask what I did wrong."

"Stay away from him," Dad ordered, voice sharp as a blade. "Don't approach him. Don't give the Alpha a single reason to come after this family."

"So that's it?" I whispered. "My mate is just — gone? He didn't even formally reject me. Not in front of the pack. Not with the words."

"Sometimes it doesn't need the words," Dad said quietly, some of the anger draining out of his voice and leaving something closer to grief behind it. "Sometimes the choice is the rejection."

That landed harder than anything Kieran himself had said all night. I pressed the heel of my hand against my sternum, like I could physically hold myself together if I just pushed hard enough.

Mom pulled me close again, rubbing slow circles into my back.

"I'm so sorry, baby. You have to accept it and keep moving forward. Someone better is out there for you. I promise you that."

Suddenly Dad shot to his feet. The bottle slipped from his hand and shattered against the floor, glass scattering everywhere.

His face had gone bone white.

"A vampire," he growled, low and lethal.

Mom's eyes went wide with shock. A message had clearly come through on the pack mind-link, sharp and urgent enough to hit both of them at once.

"There's a vampire inside the pack!" she shouted.

Both of them shifted in a blur of fur and fangs, fierce howls tearing out of their throats and rattling the windows.

"Go to your room and stay hidden!" Mom ordered as they raced for the door. "An intruder has breached our territory — do not leave this house!"

They were gone before I could get a single word out — two of the pack's best hunters, vanishing into the night to protect their people, leaving me alone with a heart already shattered into more pieces than I could count.

Werewolves and vampires had been blood enemies for centuries. I had no hunter rank yet, nothing to offer, no way to help. All I could do was sit in the dark, wondering what a lone vampire was doing inside our borders — and how much more my life could possibly fall apart before sunrise.

Outside, distant howls rose and fell across the neighborhood, hunters calling coordinates to each other through the pack mind-link. I pressed my hand flat against the cold window glass and listened to my whol

e world keep collapsing, one siren-sharp howl at a time.