Chapter 4: Mates, Mates!

Dominic’s thumb froze against my bottom lip. The heavy warmth in his silver eyes evaporated in a split second, replaced by a cold, hard mask of sheer disbelief.

"You’ve got to be kidding me, right?" his voice was flat, dangerously quiet. He stared down at me as if waiting for me to laugh, to tell him it was all a sick joke.

I shook my head, desperately clutching the velvet throw tighter around my shivering body. "I'm not kidding. I can't do this, Dominic. I want to go home. The deal is over."

"The deal is over?" He scoffed, stepping back. The sudden loss of his body heat made me cold. He dragged a hand through his dark hair, a bitter, dark chuckle escaping his throat. "We haven't even started, Elara. Don’t you want revenge? Don't you want to watch Ryker crawl on his knees after what he did to you tonight?"

"I don't know!" I cried, the tears finally spilling over my lashes, hot and stinging. "I’m confused! He’s my fated mate, Dominic. The pain in my chest... it feels like I'm dying. I just want to go back to my bed. I want to pretend none of this ever happened."

Dominic stared at me, his jaw clenching so hard a muscle ticked. He looked at my tear-stained face, my trembling shoulders, and the raw vulnerability I couldn't hide. 

The predatory Alpha in him wanted to keep me, to lock me in his room and force me to forget the boy who had broken me. But instead, his shoulders dropped in a heavy sigh.

"Fine," he muttered, his voice devoid of the teasing warmth from before. "If you want to run back to the pack that treats you like garbage, I won't stop you. Dress. I'll have the driver take you back."

Thirty minutes later, I was stepping out of the black SUV at the edge of the Icefang borders. The ride had been dead silent. Dominic hadn't even looked at me.

I snuck back into my small, secluded cottage on the edge of the pack lands—the one place where my stepsister Cynthia couldn't find me.

 I crawled into my cold bed, still wearing the green dress Ryker had rejected me in, and cried myself to sleep.

Coward, a voice echoed inside my mind.

I gasped, my eyes flying open in the dark room. Lupine?

My inner wolf, usually quiet and timid, was pacing restlessly in the shadows of my mind. Her silver coat was bristling with a terrifying energy.

We had him, Elara, Lupine growled, her voice echoing with a fierce, burning anger. We had Dominic. We had the power to make them suffer. The moon goddess gave us an opportunity, Why did you run?

"Because it hurts!" I sobbed silently into my pillow. "Lupine, Ryker is our fated mate. The Moon Goddess chose him for us. Maybe... maybe if I go to school tomorrow and beg him... maybe if I promise to work harder, to lose weight, to be the perfect Luna, he'll take us back? He was just angry tonight. He had to be."

Foolish girl, Lupine hissed, her eyes glowing with absolute disdain. He rejected us. He held our stepsister and called her his chosen mate. He will never want us. We need blood, Elara. We need revenge!

"No," I whimpered, pulling the covers over my head. "I can't. I'm going to talk to him tomorrow. I have to try."

The next morning, the hallway of Silverfang High was a chaotic buzz of students. The moment I walked through the double doors, the whispers started.

"There she is."

"The rejected Omega."

"I heard she tried to throw herself at Ryker, and he chose Cynthia instead."

I kept my head down, clutching my books to my chest like a shield. My heart was in my throat as I walked toward the lockers, searching the crowd for Ryker’s golden hair. I just needed to talk to him alone. Just one conversation.

But before I could find him, the heavy double doors at the main entrance of the school were thrown open.

A sudden, dead silence fell over the entire hallway.

Five boys walked in, and they looked like they had just stepped off a dark runway. They weren't wearing our school colors; they wore the sleek, black varsity hockey jackets of the Blackwood Reapers.

At the front was Dominic. He looked devastatingly handsome, his dark hair messy, his silver eyes scanning the hallway with supreme, predatory boredom.

 On his right was Asher, the team's goalie—tall, with a smirk painted on his tanned face, his golden-blonde curls falling perfectly over his forehead. 

On Dominic's left was Kaelen, a massive, dark-skinned enforcer with a deadly scar cutting through his eyebrow, looking like he could snap a steel bar with his bare hands. 

Behind them walked Zane and Tristan, the twin forwards—one with a silver lip ring, the other with tattoos snaking up his neck, both laughing at some inside joke as if they owned the entire world.

They were ridiculously hot, carrying a lethal, bad-boy energy that made half the girls in the hallway gasp and the guys instinctively step back.

My breath caught in my throat. Why were the Blackwood Reapers at our school?

Suddenly, a violent, deafening howl erupted inside my head.

Lupine didn't just pace—she clawed at the walls of my mind, her voice screaming with a frantic, wild, and utterly overwhelmed intensity.

MATES! Lupine roared, her voice shaking my very soul. ELARA! MATES! ALL OF THEM! MATES!

My books slipped from my fingers, crashing loudly to the linoleum floor.

Five pairs of dark, dangerous eyes instantly snapped toward the sound—and locked directly onto me.