The Rejection

Alpha Jackson's POV

Four years.

That was how long I had been away from Night Howl. Four years of business, politics, and pack alliances — and through all of it, one thought had followed me like a shadow.

Get home. See her.

Now I was finally here, and the pack house felt exactly as I had left it. The familiar stone walls. The smell of pine and earth. The warmth of people who had been waiting for their Alpha to return.

I walked through the doors and the room erupted.

Cheers. Applause. The sound of my pack welcoming me home after too long away. I smiled, shook hands, pulled people close — and for a moment, it genuinely felt good to be back.

"Son."

My father's arms wrapped around me first, tight and firm the way they always were. Over his shoulder I could already see my mother waiting her turn, eyes wet with the tears she was too proud to let fall early.

"Welcome back." She held me like she was afraid I might disappear again.

"It's good to be home," I said, and I meant it.

Oliver stepped forward next, hand extended, chest puffed with the quiet pride of a beta who had held things together in his Alpha's absence.

"Welcome back, Alpha. The pack has waited for you."

"I'm glad to be back, Oliver."

I scanned the room as the greetings continued — familiar faces, some older, some changed — until my eyes landed on Elsie, watching me with that particular smile she had always kept specifically for me. Hopeful. Possessive.

We were nearing the end of the year. Neither of us had found our fated mate, which meant the pressure to choose was building. I knew what my parents wanted. I knew what the pack expected.

I just didn't want it.

An Alpha with his fated mate was stronger. That was simply the truth of our world. A chosen mate was a compromise — and I had never been a man who settled.

I nodded at Elsie without encouragement and kept scanning the room.

Something was missing.

*Someone.*

"Where is Ava?"

The question fell out of my mouth before I had fully decided to ask it. The room went quiet in that particular way that told me I had said something unexpected. Oliver blinked. My mother's expression tightened.

Elsie answered first.

"Ava doesn't live here anymore, Alpha."

"Why?"

"Our parents disowned her. After her eighteenth birthday — she never shifted. She has her own place now. Somewhere far." She said it like she was reporting the weather. Casual. Final.

I felt something twist in my chest.

I had watched Ava from a distance for years before I left — carefully, quietly, the way you watch something you know is rare. She had never noticed me, but I had noticed everything about her. The way she moved. The way she existed at the edges of every room like she was apologising for being in it.

I had spent four years telling myself that when I returned, I would speak to my father about making her my chosen mate rather than Elsie. I had held onto that plan like a quiet promise.

"She failed to morph?" I turned to Oliver. "What does that mean exactly?"

"It means she has no wolf, Alpha." His voice was flat. Dismissive. "She is a disgrace to this pack and always has been."

The others nodded like he had said something reasonable.

My mother touched my arm. "Don't waste your concern on someone that irrelevant. Come — let me get you settled."

I didn't move.

"Call her here," I said. "I want to meet her."

The objections came immediately — from Oliver, from my mother, from people I hadn't even spoken to yet. Reasons stacked on top of reasons, all of them variations of the same message.

*She doesn't belong here. Don't bother. She's nothing.*

I let them talk.

Then I said it again.

"Call her to the pack house. Now."

********

I waited in the main hall, standing near the window with a patience I didn't entirely feel.

My wolf, Jax, was restless. Pacing. Eager in a way that made the back of my neck prickle with something I couldn't yet name.

What is wrong with you? I asked him silently.

He didn't answer. He just kept pacing.

Then I smelled it.

Flowers and something warm underneath — soft and sweet and completely unlike anything I had encountered before. It drifted through the room and wrapped itself around me before I could think to pull back.

My head turned toward the front door.

It opened.

She walked in with one of the omegas beside her, head slightly lowered, shoulders drawn in — making herself as small as possible, the way she always had. But even like that, even trying to disappear, she was the only thing in the room I could see.

The scent deepened.

My feet moved before my mind gave them permission.

"Mate."

The word came out of me like a breath. Involuntary. Undeniable.

Her eyes snapped up to mine — wide, startled, and then, slowly, filled with something devastating.

*Hope.*

I could see it happening in real time. Years of rejection and shame dissolving in her expression, replaced by the fragile, terrified belief that everything was about to change. That the moon goddess had finally chosen her. That she was finally wanted.

I hated that I could read it so clearly.

Behind me, my mother's voice cut through the silence.

"What? How is this *possible?*"

I had no answer.

How could I? An Alpha. Mated to a wolfless she-wolf. It was the kind of thing that didn't happen — the kind of thing that couldn't happen, by every rule our world had ever written.

"A-Alpha Jackson."

Her voice was barely above a whisper. She was trying to meet my eyes and failing, her fingers curling at her sides.

I needed to hear it from her directly. Not from Oliver. Not from Elsie.

"Are you wolfless?" I asked. "Like they say?"

Her chin dropped.

I watched her fight the tears with everything she had. A small, quiet battle happening right in front of me, and my wolf whimpered at the sight of it — aching to close the distance, to reach for her, to pull her somewhere safe.

“Don't,” I told him.

"Answer me, Ava."

"Yes." Her voice cracked. "I failed to shift on my eighteenth birthday. I don't have a wolf."

The room exhaled around us.

And just like that, the future I had quietly carried home with me — the plan, the hope, the quiet promise I had made to myself across four years — collapsed.

Because this wasn't a choice anymore. This was fate, and fate had made a mistake.

“How is this fair?” I thought. “What did I do to deserve this?”

Jax snarled at me. “Mark her. It doesn't matter. She's ours.”

But it wasn't just about me. It was never just about me.

If I accepted a wolfless Luna, every pack in the kingdom would see it as weakness. Challenges would come. Blood would follow. Everything my father had built and everything I had spent years preparing to protect — all of it, at risk.

Because of a girl with no wolf.

"You know what you have to do, son." My father's voice landed heavy behind me. "For the sake of the pack."

Ava looked up at him, confused, still clinging to a hope she hadn't yet been given reason to release.

I turned to my father. I held his gaze for one long moment.

Then I nodded.

I reached out and took her hand. Her fingers were cold. She didn't pull away — she trusted me, even now, even still.

That made it worse.

“Forgive me,” l I said silently to Jax. He howled.

"I, Alpha Jackson Edgar —" my voice was steady, even as something inside me broke, "— reject you, Ava Wellington, as my mate."

The hope in her eyes didn't disappear slowly.

It shattered.