Marked and Rejected

Ivara’s POV

The stone floor was the only thing keeping me from screaming.

I had lost count of the days and there was no window in this cell, only a small slit near the ceiling where thin light crawled in each morning and disappeared each night.

I knew it had been a while because my dress was stiff with dirt and my wrists still bear the marks of the ropes they used to drag me here.

Footsteps echoed outside, more than usual, voices laughing, excited and I pressed myself against the bars and listened.

“The Moon Goddess Ceremony is tonight,” one guard said to another.

“Every unmated wolf in the pack will find out who their true mate is. Can you imagine? A night like that only comes once.”

My chest tightened. The Moon Goddess Ceremony.

I remember hearing about it as a child, how the goddess herself lit a path between true mates, how the whole pack gathered to watch the reveal.

I never thought about it much once I married Draven, since married wolves didn't take part.

But I was not married anymore and my papers were signed. My cell door was locked.

I almost laughed at the cruelty of it.

Even if I weren’t sitting in a cage accused of poisoning a woman I never touched, no one would want me now.

Not after everything Selara’s whispered about me through this pack.

The door to my cell creaked open sooner than I expected and two guards stood there, and their faces were unreadable.

“Get up,” one said. “The Alpha wants you at the ceremony.”

“Why would he want a prisoner at a ceremony for finding mates?” I asked, and my voice was raw from disuse.

The guard’s mouth twitched, it was something close to pity.

“Consider it part of your punishment. He wants the pack to see what happens to a woman like you. Alone. Forgotten. Not even the goddess would want you.”

I didn't fight them as they dragged me out into the night air.

My legs felt weak beneath me, but I held my head up as they walked me through the crowd gathered in the central courtyard.

Faces turn to stare, some pitying, some smug, all of them convinced already of what I supposedly did.

Draven stood at the front, and was Selara beside him and she was wrapped in silver silk, looking every bit like the Luna I used to be.

I refused to look away from them even as they pushed me to the edge of the circle where the other unmated wolves stood waiting for the goddess’s light.

The elder began the chant, old words I didn't fully understand, and one by one, the moonlight above split into thin silver threads, reaching down to touch each wolf, searching, testing, moving on when there was no match to be found.

I then stood there with my chin lifted, and I waited for it to pass over me the way it passed over the others.

But It didn't.

The light stopped and it moved around me slow, gentle, and warmed in a way nothing has felt warm in weeks, and then it stretched out across the courtyard and wrapped around Draven like a rope pulling him toward me.

The crowd gasped as one.

“That’s not possible,” someone whispered.

Draven’s eyes went wide, staring at the silver thread connecting us, at the mark now blooming pale and unmistakable along my collarbone where no mark had ever been before.

For one heartbeat, just one, something in his face broke open, something that looked almost like the man from that anniversary night.

“Ivara,” he breathed.

For the first time in weeks, hope clawked its way back into my chest.

Maybe the goddess saw what he refused to. Maybe this changed everything.

Then Selara screamed and she droppe to her knees, clutching her stomach, gasping like she could not breathe.

“She’s doing it again! She’s using her dark magic, forcing the bond onto him! Draven, she’ll kill me, she’s trying to control you!”

“That’s not true,” I said, and my voice shaking. “Draven, look at me, this is the goddess, this isn’t magic, this is real..”

“Enough.” His voice cut through the courtyard like a blade, and the warmth I saw in his face a moment ago was gone,

It was replaced by something hard and disgusted. “I don’t know what trick you’re playing, but I won’t let you hurt her again.”

“Draven, please..”

“I reject you.” The words hit the crowd like thunder, gasps rippling outward.

“I reject this bond. I want nothing to do with a liar and a killer.”

Tears spilled down my face before I could stop them. Somewhere in the crowd, a guard shouted, holding up a golden necklace I had never seen before.

“Found in her cell,” he announced. “Matches the one stolen from Lady Selara’s chambers last week.”

“I have never seen that in my life,” I said, but no one was listening anymore.

The crowd hurled insults, calling me a thief, a witch, a killer, and Draven watched all of it without a single word in my defense.

“Take her to the rogue lands,” he said finally, turning his back to me. “I never want to see her face again.”

They dragged me through the forest for what felt like hours, past the border markers, past the last torches of Ashveil land, until they threw me down in the dirt of rogue territory and left me there without looking back.

I didn't move for a long time, the cold seeped into my bones, and somewhere in the trees I heard them before I saw them, low growls circling closer, hungry and patient.

The first rogue lunged out of the dark and I didn't even have time to scream.

Pain ripped across my side, hot and blinding, and something inside me finally snapped.

It didn't feel like fear anymore, it felt like fire waking up after years of sleeping.

My bones cracked and reshaped faster than I had ever felt them move, and when I opened my eyes again the world looked different, sharper, drenched in silver moonlight I could suddenly read like a map.

A power surged through me, it was wild and furious, nothing like the wolf I thought I knew.

I didn't remember every moment of what happened next.

I remembered teeth, I remembered the taste of blood that was not mine.

I remembered rogues twice my size falling one after another beneath a strength I never knew I carried, a strength that felt like it belonged to someone else entirely.

When it was over, I was standing in a circle of bodies, chest heaving, my own blood mixed with theirs, and the last thought I had before the ground rushed up to meet me was a single, terrified question.

Where did that power come from?

When I opened my eyes again, I was somewhere warm, wrapped in furs, a fire crackling nearby.

A man knelt over me, broad and scarred, his eyes a shade of gold I had never seen on any wolf in my pack.

“You’re lucky to be alive,” he said, his voice low, rough like gravel.

“My scouts found you standing over a dozen dead rogues before you collapsed. Do you have any idea what you are?”

I didn't answer, I didn't have an answer.

His hands moved gently over the wounds on my stomach, and then he stopped.

His whole body went very still and he pressed his palm flat against my abdomen, listening to something only a wolf’s sense could hear.

“You’re pregnant,” he said.

The words didn't fully land before I was already begging.

“Please, I need to go back. My mate, he’s back at Ashveil, please, send me back to him…”

His eyes darkened, something fierce and unreadable moved behind them.

“No,” he said. “I’m never sending you back to the people who did this to you.”

He then rose to his full height, and even wounded, even afraid, I felt the raw power radiating off him like heat from a flame.

“Tell me the name of the pack that left you to die in rogue territory.”

“Ashveil,” I whispered.

Something shifted in his expression, dark and final, like a door closing.

“Then Ashveil should prepare for war.”