Chapter Two

Phoebe's pov

I went back into my house. I just couldn't stand the ridicule and mockery from all of them anymore. I cried my way to my bed, and the question kept circling in my head: how could he call me fat? It was so rude of him. And then he went and held my sister's hand. There had to be more to this.

I lay down in my beautiful dress, the dress I had chosen with so much hope, and at that point I concluded that this life wasn't meant for me. The normal life that everyone else seemed to get, where a girl sits somewhere and waits for her prince charming to come and claim her, was never going to be mine.

Outside, they had all laughed at me until I couldn't think straight. Their eyes had been all over me. Now they had a real reason to laugh. They had been laughing at me for my size all these years, and now someone had rejected me for the very same reason. Wasn't that great?

I pressed my face into the pillow and let the tears soak it, wishing the bed would swallow me whole.

Someone knocked on my door. It was open, so all I had to do was tell him to come in. Oh, for goodness' sake, it was my father.

"I heard what happened," he said.

I sat up straight to look at him. His voice sounded warm, so I thought he was going to say something heartwarming, something to ease the pain. For a second, I let myself hope that my own father would hold me.

"Yes, you heard right, Dad. The Prince rejected me. So yeah..." I felt so ashamed of myself that I couldn't lift my eyes.

"You know what this means, don't you? You don't get another chance to be claimed by an alpha, or anyone of that calibre, until next year, when we hold another festival," my father said. He was only reminding me of my misfortune.

"Yes, I know, Dad."

"Then why didn't you make it this time? Why didn't you do your best to be claimed? You are worse than you were last year, and yet no one claimed you. Why are you so unlucky?" he ranted, almost losing his breath.

I stood up from the bed to let him rant because I was afraid of the tone of his voice and of what he might do to me. My hands trembled at my sides.

I looked at him in surprise as he pointed his finger at me. "You are such a disgrace to this family. You sit here with your unlucky body, and the same Prince has come to claim your sister," my father said.

My mouth fell open, and my heart began to beat faster. It was true. The Alpha Prince had come for my sister and not for me.

I would never recover from this, I thought.

My mother came in to calm my father down. "Come on, darling, enough of the shouting. Let's go celebrate with our lovely daughter Dahlia," she said.

She didn't even glance at me. Not one look. It hurt more than my father's shouting did.

My father was still furious. He pointed at me again.

"You have until next year to put yourself in order. If you don't get claimed by then, you'll be out of this house, because I will give you away to someone, anyone, who has need of you," he said.

Those words hit me like a spear to the chest. He was really going to get rid of me, like an old coat that no longer fit.

My parents left my room, and my father slammed the door as if it was also one of the things that had offended him. The walls shook, and then the silence came down, heavy and cold.

When did I start needing validation for my own body? I was losing my mind, spinning in circles over what would happen to me if I was never claimed. Where would I go? Who would want me?

I crept to my room window and peeped through. I could still see what was happening at the festival.

It was not a nice view. All the ladies were around him, taking pictures, but he refused to let go of my sister's hand.

But if the goddess had fated the two of us together, and he chose to reject it, then the union between him and Dahlia was not genuine. The goddess had not approved it. He could do whatever he wanted because he was the Alpha Prince, but he could not mark her.

His father should have been ashamed of him for disrespecting the culture and tradition of Crescent Heights because of his ego. Or maybe his father would support him. At that point, I thought anything was possible, as long as I was the one who got hurt.

A few hours after the drama, another wolf arrived. The attention he got was almost equal to Julian's, so I stayed glued to the window to see who it was.

He came out of his car and didn't say hello to anybody. He looked very proud, like a man who had come on a mission and was focused only on getting it done.

He was handsome and young too, the very picture of prince charming. He was the kind of man that a wolf in her teens would want on her eighteenth birthday, and the kind a twenty-three-year-old wolf would desperately want, especially one who had been rejected more times than she could count.

His pink lips and blonde hair stirred up desires in me that I had no right to feel.

We had been hearing rumours of a young Alpha coming to our pack for the festival, apart from Julian, but we didn't think he would show up. It turned out to be true.

He stepped into the middle of the arena where the ceremony was taking place and raised his hand, and the music stopped.

I could feel his aura from where I stood.

"I am Hendrick Stormwell, from the Nova pack, and I'm here to claim a mate for myself from the Wildheart family."

Everyone began looking at each other. They all knew that the most beautiful and elegant sister, Dahlia, had already been chosen.

Julian stepped forward boldly. "Sorry, she's taken already," he said to Hendrick with a smile.

"There are two of them, so I heard," Hendrick said out loud, not even looking at Julian's face.

Julian laughed. "You can't possibly want her. She's... oh my goodness." He kept laughing.

I couldn't watch anymore. I stopped looking and went to sit back down, hugging my knees.

A few minutes later, one of the lady wolves came to call me in my room.

"You're needed outside," she said.

I took no confidence with me. There was none left.

As I approached the arena, with all eyes on me again, Hendrick saw me and said aloud, "She's the one!"

Everyone's jaw dropped, mine included. He was seriously claiming me. That alone stole the entire show.