Chapter 2– Worse Than Exile

Lori's POV

"Stone the whore! She defiled the Alpha's bed!"

Someone from the crowd roared in anger, and everyone else follows until over a hundred thousand werewolves were changing it. I was still on my knees, clutching my chest in pain from the searing pain of Silas' rejection when the first rock hit my shoulders. I barely registered the pain because it was nothing compared to the agony of the rejection.

"You should have stayed faithful, Omega." A woman from the crowd, whom I recognized as someone I had healed last winter when her child had fever, spat on my face. "Silas gave you everything, and you threw it away for what? A few coins and a stranger's bed?"

"That's not what happened!" I scrambled backward, trying to avoid more stones and whatever it was that were being pelted towards me by the entire crowd. The lights blinded my eyes that I stumbled around before I slipped and fell, but I didn't stay down for long. "I don't remember that night! I was drunk... Janie, tell them! Janie, you know I would never..."

But Janie was wrapped in Silas's arms, her face buried against his chest. When she lifted her head, her eyes were wet with tears I no longer believed were real.

"I loved you like a sister," she whispered, loud enough for the microphones to hear the sound of her broken voice, which only caused more rage from the crowd. "And you've been cheating on the man who saved you? How could you, Lori? How could you?"

"You know the truth!" I screamed. "You were there that night! You gave me the drinks!"

"I gave you drinks to celebrate your mating anniversary," Janie said, her voice trembling with fake sorrow, and she shook her head. "I didn't know you would use them as an excuse to betray Silas. I didn't know you were capable of this."

Liar! Liar! liar! liar!

How could she? How dare she? After all we had been through together since we were young, why was Janie doing this to me? Why was she betraying me this way??

No one was listening to m because the pack had already made up their mind and more things came hurling. My forehead caught a heavy sneaker on my forehead, and blood trickled down from it immediately.

"Please stop!" I cried. "I'm pregnant! Please, the baby—"

"She's lying!" someone else shouted. "Everyone knows she's barren! The Alpha said so himself! She is only trying to gain your sympathy, but she deserves death!"

Another stone hit my back, then my ribs, then my head at the spot where I was already bleeding. My head was spinning and I was stumbling around on the ice blindly. Through the chaos, I saw Silas raise his hand and the throwing stopped instantly as they all recognised the Alpha Command.

"Enough," he said quietly. "She's not worth the mess."

He stepped toward me, and for one desperate, delusional moment, I thought he was going to help me up. I thought he had realized his mistake. I thought my mate, the man who had once promised to protect me from anything, was finally going to save me.

Instead, he crouched down and grabbed my chin, forcing me to look at him.

"You will leave this arena," he said softly, so only I could hear. "You will leave this pack. You will take nothing with you... not your clothes, not your healer's tools, not a single coin. Everything you have belongs to me, and I am taking it back. If I ever see your face again, I will not be so merciful."

"Silas, please." Tears streamed down my cheeks. "I didn't do what they're saying. I don't remember that night. Someone must have... Janie must have..."

"Don't you dare speak her name." His grip tightened until I whimpered. "Janie is a thousand times the woman you'll ever be. She's carrying my heir. She's my true mate. You're nothing but a mistake I should have never made."

He released me and stood up to his full height, looking down at me as if I was some kind of mutt and nuisance.

"Warriors, remove her!" He commanded harshly, with rage dripping from his voice. "Strip her of anything with the pack's insignia and escort her to the border. If she resists…" He looked down at me with empty eyes. "Kill her."

I was being grabbed like a doll from a lot of hands I couldn't count, and getting dragged out of the stage. The crowd started roaring in anger once more and more things were hurled, those who were down below stretched out their hands to get their pound of flesh, and the warriors didn't stop them. They were also hitting me as they shoved me through the tunnel, past the locker rooms where I waited for Silas after so many games. My dress was ripped from my body until I was almost naked, someone tore the pack pendant from my neck, and someone else yanked the mating ring off my finger hard enough to dislocate it.

I was too numb to fight back.

"This is what happens to Omegas who forget their place," one of the warriors muttered as they shoved me toward the service exit. "You were lucky the Alpha ever looked at you. You should have been grateful instead of spreading your legs for anyone just because they have a dick."

"Keep walking," the lead warrior said. "The border is twenty miles north. You're not welcome anywhere in pack territory. If we find you by morning, we'll finish what the crowd started."

The door slammed shut behind the arena, and I was alone in the dark, almost naked but the babies in my belly and the shattered pieces of my heart.

That was when my legs gave out. I collapsed against the dumpster, and I cried. Everything hurt. The rejection. The betrayal. The knowledge that Janie, my Janie, had planned this. She had set me up and smiled in my face while sharpening the knife for my back.

And Silas... My mate... My Alpha... The man I loved with every fiber of my being had looked at me with such hatred and disgust. He called me damaged goods and told the warriors to kill me if I resisted.

He had chosen Janie, instead.

I don't know how long I sat there crying. But eventually, I heard deep footsteps approaching, and I looked up expecting warriors. Expecting to be cut down dead because they had found me again.

Instead, I saw a man.

He was tall, broad-shouldered and dressed in a dark coat that probably cost more than everything I had ever owned.

Coach Dante Dominic.

Why was he here? To finish me off for destroying the reputation of his top player?

I knew him by reputation. Everyone did. He had been a hockey legend before he retired and became a coach. Silas spoke about him with a mixture of fear and reverence. The man was untouchable and was only seen during trainings, games, and after, he completely vanished. No one even knew where he lived.

And he was standing in front of me, with a cigarette in his mouth, looking down at my broken body with an expression I couldn't read.

"You're still alive," he murmured under his breath and bent low and picked my mangled body in his arms. "That is good.”