Eighteen Candles for Morgan

Spurn’s POV

The next morning was our eighteenth birthday, though only Morgan’s name mattered inside Moon Howlers. From the moment the sun rose, the pack house belonged to her. Servants carried flowers through the halls. Warriors hung decorations in the ballroom. My mother’s voice floated from room to room, sharp and excited, giving orders for Morgan’s party as if the entire pack existed to celebrate her first breath. No one mentioned that I had been born ten minutes after her. No one looked toward the basement and wondered if I was waiting for my wolf too. They locked me downstairs for most of the day, then summoned me only after the party was over so I could clean up the mess left behind. I had heard the celebration through the floorboards for hours. Music. Laughter. Morgan’s delighted squeals as she opened gift after gift. Every cheer landed inside me like proof that my life had been measured, weighed, and thrown away before I ever had a chance to become anything else. I sat on my cot with my knees pulled to my chest and waited for something I already feared would not come. My wolf. Eighteen was supposed to mean freedom inside my own skin. It was supposed to mean the first shift, the first run, the first true voice inside my head that belonged only to me. But as the hours passed, there was nothing. No warmth. No stir of fur beneath my skin. No whisper of a name. Only the same cold basement, the same hunger, and the same silence that had followed me my whole life.

When the basement door finally opened, Morgan’s voice cut down the stairs. “Get up here and clean. The party is over.” She did not say happy birthday. No one had. I climbed the stairs on legs that felt too weak for my own body and stepped into a world of torn ribbons, half-empty cups, cake smeared across plates, and discarded wrapping paper glittering under the lights. It looked like joy had exploded in every corner of the room and left me to sweep up the pieces.

Morgan stood near the door in a new dress, glowing with attention. “Hurry up,” she snapped. “Everyone is going outside for my first shift. Do not embarrass us by being seen.”

I watched everyone leave for the tree line, laughing and calling for Morgan as they prepared for her first shift and her first pack run. No one looked back for me. No one wondered whether I would shift too. As I suspected, my wolf never came. I was eighteen, wolfless, and still a slave. The Moon Goddess must truly hate me. I was alone in the wreckage of the party, gathering cups, plates, and torn decorations, when the most wonderful scent drifted through the room. I froze. Strawberries and cream. Sweet, warm, impossible. It filled my lungs and made something inside me reach for it before my mind could stop it. I lifted my nose and breathed it in, my heart suddenly pounding so hard it hurt. Then a low growl rolled through the room. “Mate.” My breath hitched in my throat. I was afraid to look up because I already knew that voice. Dominik. Of course it was Dominik. For one impossible second, pain and hope collided inside me. The Moon Goddess had given me a mate. Maybe she had not forgotten me after all. Maybe someone was finally meant to see me and choose me. Then Dominik’s face twisted with disgust, and that hope died before it had even learned how to breathe. “No. Not you.” His words landed colder than any slap. “You are not my mate. You cannot be my mate.” He spat the words like I had dirtied him just by existing. Before I could make my body move, before I could decide whether to run or beg or stand there and shatter, he was rejecting me.

“I, Dominik Moonfang, of the Moon Howlers Pack,”

“reject you, Spurn Sanders, of the Moon Howlers Pack,”

“as my mate and my Luna.”

Something broke inside me. It was not soft or quiet. It tore through my chest like invisible claws, ripping at the bond I had only just felt. For one terrifying second, I thought I might fall to my knees in front of him, and the thought alone gave me the strength to stay standing. I would not let him see me break. I would not give him the pleasure of knowing he had found one more way to hurt me. I forced my spine straight, swallowed the pain until it burned down my throat, and accepted his rejection with the last shred of pride I had left.

“I, Spurn Sanders, of the Moon Howlers Pack,”

“accept your rejection, Dominik Moonfang, of the Moon Howlers Pack, and reject you as my mate.”

The words tasted like ash, but I said them clearly.

Dominik staggered as if my words had shoved a blade between his ribs. His hand flew to his chest, fingers clawing at the front of his shirt while his breath tore out of him in a harsh, broken sound. The cruel confidence drained from his face so fast it almost did not look like him anymore. Sweat broke across his forehead. His knees bent, just slightly, before he forced them straight again. I felt the pain too, deep and vicious, like the bond had hooked into my heart and ripped backward, but I locked it behind my teeth and refused to let him see even a flicker of it. Dominik’s eyes flashed gold, then darkened, his wolf pushing forward in panic and fury. For one heartbeat, he looked almost afraid.

“What did you do?” he rasped.

I lifted my chin, even though the movement made the pain in my chest sharpen until my vision blurred at the edges.

“I accepted,” I said. “Then I rejected you back.”

His jaw clenched hard enough for the muscle to jump. A low growl dragged from his throat, but it broke halfway through, turning into something closer to pain than anger. He braced one hand against the table behind him, knocking over a stack of plates. They shattered across the floor, loud in the empty room, and still he could not take his eyes off me.

For the first time in my life, Dominik Moonfang looked like something had hurt him badly enough that rank could not hide it. His breathing was uneven. His skin had gone pale beneath the flush of rage. One hand still pressed to his chest, like he could hold the broken bond together by force alone.

A dark, wounded part of me wanted to be glad. After every cruel word, every shove, every laugh he had given the others permission to throw at me, maybe he deserved to feel a fraction of what he had made normal for me. But satisfaction did not last. It could not. The bond hurt too much. Hope had hurt more.

Dominik took one step toward me, then stopped as if the movement sent another wave of pain through him. His face twisted, not with disgust this time, but with something uglier because he did not know what to do with it. Loss. Fury. Denial.

“You do not get to reject me,” he said through clenched teeth.

The words should have made me afraid. Maybe they did. But beneath the fear was something smaller and sharper, something that had survived every basement night and every name they threw at me.

“You already threw me away,” I said quietly. “I only made sure you could not pick me back up when it suited you.”

His face went blank. Then another tremor went through him, visible this time, shaking from his shoulders down into the hand still gripping the table. He looked away first. Not me. Him. And that small victory should have felt larger than it did.

I turned away before anything else could show on my face and forced myself back to the mess. Cups. Plates. Broken decorations. One task after another. If I stopped moving, I would fall apart, and I refused to leave the pieces of myself at Dominik’s feet.

By the time I finished cleaning after Dominik rejected me, the party room looked almost untouched. That was the cruel part. The evidence of my pain disappeared so easily. Cups went into trash bags. Plates were stacked and washed. Decorations were swept from the floor. By morning, no one would know my mate had found me there and thrown me away beside the leftovers. I was the only thing still broken.

In the basement, I curled on my cot and pressed my fist against my mouth. Only then did I let the tears come. Not because Dominik rejected me. Not only because the bond hurt. I cried because for one impossible second, I had believed the Moon Goddess had remembered me. I had believed she had finally given me someone who would see past the rags, the scars, the name, and the basement. Then even that hope had turned its face away.