HE REJECTED ME, SO I TOOK HIS CROWN

VALERIA.

“Oh, for the love of the Moon! Stop itching!" I grunted.

My skin crawled. It was a literal, maddening itch that burrowed deep beneath my flesh.

For three years, I had bathed in a toxic, botanical serum of my own creation. Three years of suppressing the crushing, dominant Alpha aura of the Blood Moon Heir until I registered as nothing more than a weak, scentless, unremarkable Omega.

My natural scent—wild pine and petrichor—had been suffocated beneath the dull, powdery smell of crushed nettle and chamomile. Honestly, it was disgusting.

I scratched absentmindedly at my collarbone, the drab, oversized cotton of my dress irritating the sensitive skin there.

Just one more night, I told myself, letting out a shaky breath. Just a few more hours, and the disguise dies forever.

My phone vibrated in the pocket of my cardigan. I pulled it out, the harsh glow of the screen illuminating the dimly lit hallway of the Silvercrest pack house.

[Dad: Three years are almost up. Do you admit defeat, Vee?]

I couldn't help the arrogant, fiercely competitive smile that stretched across my face. My father, Evander Pierce, the reigning Alpha of Blood Moon Pack, had sworn that a man like Julian could never love me for my soul.

He insisted that men only bowed to power, or sought weakness to control. I was about to prove him wrong. Men could love too.

Tonight was the full moon mating ceremony. Tonight, Julian was going to claim me. And tomorrow, I would shed this pathetic Omega skin, reveal my true title, and hand my father the ultimate victory.

My fingers flew across the keyboard.

[Me: Then you’re going to be so disappointed, Dad.]

I slipped the phone back into my pocket, my heart hammering a frantic, exhilarating rhythm against my ribs. The pack house was eerily silent, the halls emptied as the rest of the Silvercrest members gathered in the ceremonial clearing by the lake.

I didn't want to wait for the ceremony. I wanted to surprise him. I wanted to see the look in his hazel eyes when I finally told him the truth—that the girl he had chosen was actually a Queen.

I reached the heavy oak door of his private quarters. I didn't bother to knock. My hand gripped the brass handle, twisting it and pushing the door wide open.

“Julian, I have to—”

The words died in my throat, choking me.

It hit me in a suffocating, sickening wave. The heavy, unmistakable stench of slick sweat, raw arousal, and intertwined pheromones. Julian’s signature sandalwood scent was entirely overpowered by a cloying, sickeningly sweet vanilla.

My best friend’s vanilla.

My vision tunneled. The room seemed to tilt on its axis. Tangled in the expensive silk sheets of Julian’s bed, skin flushed and lips swollen, was Elara. My confidante. The girl who had held my hand when I cried over him. The girl who had helped me pick out this miserable, drab dress I was wearing right now.

Julian’s head snapped up. His chest was heaving, his blonde hair sticking to his forehead.

“Valeria!” He scrambled backward, practically falling off the mattress, but the damage was permanently, irrevocably burned into my retinas.

I stood paralyzed in the doorway, the doorknob biting into my palm. This isn't real. It's a joke. A sick, twisted joke. But my suppressed wolf whined in agony, clawing at my ribs. It was real.

“What is this?” My voice didn't even sound like my own. It was a hollow, breathless rasp. “Julian… what is this?”

Instead of dropping to his knees, instead of begging for forgiveness, Julian’s posture stiffened. His narcissistic arrogance, the fatal flaw I had spent three years making excuses for, slammed down like an iron gate.

“Don't look at me like I'm the villain here, Valeria!” he snapped, hastily pulling on a pair of sweatpants. He ran a hand through his hair, his jaw tight. “I didn't plan this. It just… happened.”

“It just happened?” I repeated, the numbness slowly giving way to a freezing, agonizing disbelief. “Three years, Julian. You told me you loved me yesterday. We were supposed to go to the ceremony tonight.”

“And I meant it!” he argued, taking a step toward me, his hands raised in mock surrender. “But you don't understand. The Moon Goddess… she spoke today. When the moon crested the horizon, it hit us. Elara is my fated mate, Valeria. My fated mate. You know the laws. I can't defy the Goddess!”

“Fate?” I choked out a bitter, jagged laugh, stepping into the room. The scent was making me nauseous. “You’re blaming the Goddess because you couldn't keep your hands off my best friend?”

“Valeria, please.”

The soft, delicate voice came from the bed. Elara pulled the white silk sheet up to her collarbone, her large, doe-like green eyes brimming with thick, practiced tears. She looked like the absolute picture of a tragic, helpless victim.

“I’m so sorry, Val,” Elara whimpered, a tear slipping perfectly down her flushed cheek. “I didn't want you to find out like this. I fought it. I swear to you, I fought the pull. But the bond… it’s too strong. We can't be separated.”

Liar. The word screamed in my mind. You manipulative, venomous liar.

“Shut up,” I snarled, my nails digging crescent moons into my palms. “Don't you dare speak to me.”

Elara flinched, shrinking back against the headboard, and that was all it took for Julian to make his choice. His protective instincts flared—not for me, the woman who had worshipped him for over a thousand days, but for the traitor in his bed.

“Watch how you speak to her!” Julian barked, stepping between me and the bed. “She didn't ask for this either!”

“Are you actually defending her?” I demanded, the heartbreak finally bleeding through my stoic armor. A hot, pathetic tear slipped down my cheek. I hated myself for it. I hated my weakness. “Julian, I gave you everything. I hid in the shadows for you. I loved you!”

“And I appreciate that, I do,” Julian said, his voice dropping into a patronizing, condescending tone that made my blood boil. “But be realistic, Valeria. Look at you.”

He gestured to my plain cardigan, my sensible shoes, my utterly unthreatening posture.

Elara sniffled, twisting the knife with masterful precision. “It’s about the pack's future, Val. You know that. Julian is the Future Alpha. He needs a strong Luna by his side. Someone who can command respect. Someone who can give birth to a powerful heir.”

She looked at me with faux pity, her green eyes cold and dead underneath the tears. “You’re just an ordinary, weak Omega. You have no rank. No aura. You could never survive the political pressures of the High Table. You’re too weak, Valeria. It wouldn't be fair to the pack… or to you.”

Weak. The word echoed in my skull. If I dropped my botanical disguise right now, the sheer force of my Blood Moon aura would snap both of their necks under the atmospheric pressure alone. My inner Alpha roared, demanding blood, demanding I show them exactly what a ‘strong Luna’ looked like.

But as I looked at Julian, seeing the validation wash over his face at Elara's words, the urge died. He didn't deserve my truth. He didn't deserve my power.

“She’s right,” Julian said, his voice hardening into ice. He reached back, intertwining his fingers with Elara’s. “I need a true Luna. Not a desperate hanger-on.”

The final, crushing blow didn't come from his words. It came from his eyes.

Julian’s irises flashed, his inner wolf physically surfacing. The beast looked out at me from behind his human face. It didn't look at me with regret. It looked at me with pure, unadulterated disgust. It sneered at my chemically suppressed scent, wrinkling its nose at the ‘Omega’ standing in its territory.

“You are nothing,” his wolf’s eyes said.

My hyper-independence, the titanium wall I had spent my life building, violently reasserted itself. The heartbreak instantly calcified into a chilling, absolute apathy. I swallowed the lump in my throat, forcing my spine completely straight. I wiped the single tear from my cheek. I would not let them see me break.

“I see,” I said, my voice eerily calm, devoid of any tremble. “Then I wish you both exactly the miserable fate you deserve.”

Without another word, I turned on my heel. I didn't run. I walked out of the room with the measured, regal grace of the Queen they would never know, leaving the suffocating stench of their betrayal behind me.

But the moment the heavy front doors of the pack house slammed shut behind me, the dam broke.

I lost. The realization hit me like a physical blow to the stomach. My father was right. It was all a lie. Love was a transaction, and I had bankrupted myself for nothing.

The fucking nerves on both of them. And that freaking whore tried to sell me in on some future Alpha and heir bullshit? Like I was so incapable and she was? What gave her the bloody rights?

Blinded by a fresh, hot wave of unshed tears, I broke into a dead sprint. I didn't care where I was going, only that I needed to get off Silvercrest territory. I plunged blindly into the dark, perilous neutral woods that separated the pack borders.

A storm had been brewing all evening, and the sky finally ripped open. Freezing, torrential rain lashed against my skin, soaking through my thin cardigan in seconds. I stumbled over exposed tree roots, the mud sucking at my shoes, the branches whipping my face.

“Argh!” I screamed into the howling wind, a feral, agonizing sound that was instantly swallowed by the thunder. “Who the hell is that?"

The heavy rain was doing more than soaking my clothes. My skin began to burn. The thick layer of botanical scent-blockers I had applied hours ago was beginning to wash away in the downpour. My suppressed aura was starting to crackle, leaking out into the night air like a frayed live wire.

"Oh, fuck!” I blurted out.

Suddenly, the shadows between the massive pine trees shifted.

I skidded to a halt, my boots sliding in the mud. The hair on the back of my neck stood up.

A low, guttural growl vibrated through the wet earth. Then another. And another.

Out of the darkness, yellow eyes blinked open. Six massive, mangy wolves stepped out from the tree line, completely encircling me. Rogues. Mercenaries without a pack, driven mad by isolation and bloodlust.

“Well, well, well,” the largest one taunted, shifting seamlessly into his human form. He was covered in jagged scars, his eyes manic. “Look what wandered out of the safe zone. A little lost Omega, crying in the rain. How cool is that?”

He took a step closer, inhaling deeply. He frowned, his head tilting. “Smells sweet. Smells like… wait. What is that?”

He could smell the barrier thinning. He could smell the Alpha blood fighting to the surface.

“Don't touch me,” I warned, my voice dropping an octave, the grief inside me instantly converting to pure, freezing rage.

The rogues laughed, a horrific, grating sound. “Or what, little girl? You're going to scream for your Alpha? Nobody is coming for you out here.”

Nobody is coming for me. The words echoed Julian’s betrayal. A deadly, terrifying calm washed over me. I closed my eyes, tipping my face up to the freezing rain. “Fine, I thought.” Let them come. “I need something to kill.”

I mentally reached for the seal on my aura, preparing to shatter it completely. I was going to drop the disguise. I was going to rip these rogues apart with my bare hands and bathe in their blood.

But before I could snap the mental lock, the world went completely silent.

The howling wind stopped. The rain seemed to hang suspended in the air. The atmospheric pressure in the clearing dropped so violently and so rapidly that my ears popped.

It was a suffocating, terrifying wave of absolute, crushing dominance that slammed into my chest, stealing the oxygen straight from my lungs.

The rogue leader’s smug smile vanished. He choked, grabbing his own throat as he was physically forced to his knees by the sheer weight of the aura.

Then, the treeline exploded.

A towering, monstrous wolf—pitch-black and the size of a warhorse—erupted from the shadows. It didn't howl. It didn't warn them. It moved in a blur of visceral, cold-blooded violence.

The massive beast slammed into the rogue leader, its jaws snapping shut around the man’s neck with a sickening, wet crunch. The rogue’s head was nearly severed from his shoulders. Blood sprayed in a hot, dark arc across the muddy forest floor, splattering against the trunk of a pine tree.

The remaining five rogues scrambled, whining in absolute terror, but the black wolf was a god of death. It tore through them in seconds. Claws shredded flesh. Fangs crushed bone.

It was a massacre of legendary, terrifying proportions. In less than a minute, the clearing was dead silent again, save for the heavy, rhythmic panting of the monster standing in the center of the carnage.

My breath hitched. I was frozen, my back pressed against the rough bark of a tree.

The black wolf slowly turned toward me. The beast’s fur was matted with rogue blood, the crimson dripping from its lethal jaws onto the mud. I'm not gonna lie, it was sexy as fuck!

As it locked eyes with me, the wolf began to shift. Bone cracked and reformed, muscle shifting until a man stood in its place.

He was a towering wall of muscle, standing easily at six-foot-five. His chest heaved with the exertion of the slaughter, his skin marked with faded, jagged battle scars. He was lethal. He was terrifying. And he was hot.

He slowly lifted his head, his messy, charcoal-black hair plastered to his forehead by the rain.

His eyes found mine. They were a smoldering, glowing amber.

The second our eyes met, a literal shockwave ripped through the clearing. The intense, violent adrenaline of the slaughter collided with the magnetic, undeniable pull of the full moon above us. It wasn't a spark. It was a detonated bomb in my soul.

“Mate.” My inner wolf screamed the word, tearing at her cage. The bond slammed into us with the force of a freight train, so heavy, so absolute, and so devastatingly powerful that my legs simply gave way.

My knees hit the bloody mud at the exact same second his did.