Rejection and rage

**POV: Selene**

She was not going to cry.

Selene Callum had not cried since she was nine years old and she was not about to start tonight in front of the entire Silvermoon Pack because of some brown-haired omega who had no business breathing the same air as Caden Silvermoor.

She stood at the edge of the ceremony grounds and watched Caden walk back toward his father and she kept her face completely smooth. Blank. Beautiful. She had practiced that face in the mirror for years and it had never failed her. It was not going to fail her now.

But inside.

Inside was a different story entirely.

She had been so certain. That was the part that burned the most, the part that dug into her chest and twisted. She had spent three years positioning herself beside Caden. Three years of calculated smiles and perfectly timed touches and making herself indispensable to his world. She knew his schedule. She knew his habits. She knew the way he took his coffee and the specific silence he needed after a hard training session and the rare occasions when something almost like warmth crept into those grey eyes.

She knew him.

And the Moon Goddess had given him to Aria Voss.

Aria Voss. Who wore clothes that did not fit properly and ate lunch in corners and flinched every time someone raised their voice near her. Aria Voss who had spent three years at Crestmoon Academy being exactly what she was, a nothing, an omega, a girl shaped like an apology.

Selene pressed her nails into her palm until the sting grounded her.

"Selene." Owen appeared at her side, the man the goddess had assigned to her, his face carrying that careful hopeful expression that made her stomach turn. He was not ugly. He was not cruel. He was ordinary in every single way that mattered and she could not stand to look at him. "I know tonight was not what either of us expected but maybe we could talk. Get to know each other. The bond does not have to be"

"I already rejected you," she said without looking at him. "That is not a conversation. That is a closed door. Do not stand near it again."

She heard him walk away.

Good.

She turned her attention back to Aria who was standing with that loud-mouthed friend of hers, Mara, near the edge of the grounds. Selene watched the way Aria held herself, spine straight despite the trembling Selene could see in her hands from twenty feet away. She watched the way Caden had stepped in front of Aria when Bren the warrior had opened his mouth. She watched the way Caden's eyes had found Aria across the grounds without even trying.

The bond.

She understood it intellectually. She had studied it the way she studied everything she considered a threat. The mate bond was primal, chemical, written into wolf biology at a level deeper than thought or choice. It pulled. It demanded. It did not care about three years of carefully constructed proximity or the plans of a girl who had worked harder than anyone to earn her place.

It did not care about deserving.

That was the injustice of it. Selene had deserved Caden Silvermoor. She had earned him with every calculated day, every social ladder she had climbed, every lesser wolf she had stepped over to position herself exactly where she needed to be. She was the daughter of Marcus Callum, pack elder. She was the most desired girl at Crestmoon Academy. She was everything a future Alpha needed standing beside him.

And the goddess had chosen an omega who could not even look people in the eye.

Her phone buzzed in her hand.

She looked down at the screen. An unknown number. A message that was only four words long.

"I can help you."

Selene stared at it for a long moment. Around her the ceremony grounds were emptying, pack members drifting back toward their homes carrying their joy and their shock and their gossip about the omega who had been chosen. Nobody was watching her. Nobody ever watched the person who did not get what they wanted.

She typed back one word.

"Who are you?"

The response came immediately.

"Someone who wants what you want. The omega was removed. The bond is broken. The pack was disrupted. We have more in common than you think, Selene Callum. Think about it tonight. I will be in touch."

She should have deleted it. She knew that. She was smart enough to know exactly what kind of message that was and exactly what kind of person sent messages like that in the dark after a pack ceremony.

She did not delete it.

She looked across the grounds one final time. Aria was leaving now, Mara's arm around her shoulders, the two of them disappearing into the tree line. Small. Quiet. Unremarkable.

Caden was watching her go.

That was the detail that finished it. That single detail, Caden's grey eyes following Aria Voss into the dark, pulled something loose inside Selene's chest and let something colder and harder take its place.

She looked down at her phone.

She saved the number.

She told herself it was just information. Just a contact. Just an option she was not committing to yet. She was not a fool and she was not reckless and she was not the kind of person who burned things down without a plan.

But she was also not the kind of person who lost.

She had never lost anything in her life.

She was not about to start with Caden Silvermoor.

She slipped her phone into her pocket and walked off the ceremony grounds alone, her head high, her face smooth, her heart a locked room full of something dangerous that had not yet decided what shape it wanted to take.

Behind her, the moon hung full and bright and completely indifferent.

It had already made its choice.

Now Selene was going to make hers.