Rejected by Five, Claimed by Ten Alpha Kings

The whole pack had come to watch Nora Whitlock get thrown away.

Silver Hollow's courtyard blazed with lantern light under the Harvest Moon. Hundreds of wolves stood in rings around the old stone dais, whispering, and in the center of it all, a girl in a stained red dress knelt in the dirt with blood running into her eye.

"Nora Whitlock," boomed the Beta. "Five mates have come forward to reject you. Does anyone speak for her?"

Nobody did.

On the dais, Savannah Whitlock stood in white silk, glowing like she'd been lit from inside. Eighteen years ago, rogues had snatched her from the cradle. Now she was home, and the pack had decided in a week that the golden daughter was worth ten of the silver one.

"I reject you, Nora," said Dominic Ashford, not even looking at her.

"I reject you," said Rhett Calloway, with a shrug.

Gideon Frost, Jasper Wolfe, and Silas Granger followed, one after another, like men reading a grocery list.

Nora's skull rang. She had hit the stone steps hard when they shoved her down, and something inside her head had cracked wide open. Another woman's life poured in: forty-one years old, a scavenger, a fighter, a survivor of the Collapse who had died in a flooded subway tunnel with the Dead clawing at her boots.

And now she was here, in this girl's body, with this girl's memories.

The memories were ugly. Nora had been a quiet, overlooked child until Savannah vanished. Then the pack had suddenly needed her. They fed her a nightly tea, "for her nerves," and the tea made her weak and foggy while her spirit was siphoned off, bit by bit, to feed her mates' wolves. For years she'd soothed five temperamental alphas-in-waiting and thought it was love. Meanwhile Savannah's return had been planned for months. The tea had been the pack's way to keep Nora easy to discard.

Nora lifted her head and almost laughed.

Feelings were the cheapest currency there was. She had traded dignity for a can of peaches in the Collapse. She wasn't about to cry over five men who couldn't even look her in the eye.

"The rejections are noted," said the Beta. "Nora, by pack law you will now be stripped of rank and escorted..."

"I invoke the Right of Reckoning."

Her voice was hoarse, but it carried. The courtyard went silent.

The Beta frowned. "That law hasn't been used in sixty years."

"But it's still on the books." Nora wiped blood from her eyes and pushed herself to her feet, swaying. "Any wolf cast out by her pack can demand a full accounting of what the pack took from her. In front of a witness."

"There is no witness."

"There is."

Every head turned.

At the edge of the courtyard, beneath a dead oak, stood a man in a long dark coat. He was tall, with black hair and a scar through one eyebrow. He wore the silver badge of the Pack Council's Enforcers, and in the lantern light his eyes shone gold.

Nobody had noticed him arrive.

"Alexander Blackthorne," the Beta whispered. His face had gone gray.

The Enforcer stepped forward. "The Right of Reckoning is valid. Proceed, Miss Whitlock."

So she did.

She named the nightly tea and the herbs in it. She named the spirit that had been drained from her and given to five men. She named every favor the pack had taken in her name. When the Beta sputtered, Alexander held up one gloved hand and the courtyard fell silent again.

When she finished, the pack stood frozen. Several wolves looked sick.

Alexander turned to the five men on the dais. "Did you know about the tea?"

Dominic's jaw twitched. "We were told it was medicine."

"Then you are fools. Fools are not forgiven by the Council, merely fined."

The ruling came in three parts, and Nora watched it like a card game she already knew the end of.

First, the pack would release her from every oath and obligation, in writing.

Second, the Council would pay her restitution from Silver Hollow's treasury: five hundred thousand dollars a year for six years, plus the deed to her late mother's cabin on Lake Larch, which the Alpha had held back.

Third, each of the five men would be fined one million dollars for "negligence in a mate bond," payable to her within the week.

Savannah's smile had curdled. "This is ridiculous. She's a C-minus. She's nothing."

"She is a C-minus who has just cost your pack six million dollars and an inquiry," Alexander said mildly. "I would not call that nothing."

He handed Nora a pen.

She signed with a steady hand. The five men flinched as the old bond cords snapped inside them. She felt them snap in her own chest too, a clean tearing that left her gasping.

And in the hollow where they'd been, something warm and enormous turned over and opened one eye.

Her wolf.

Nora slipped the pen back into the Enforcer's hand. "Thank you."

"The opening ceremony at Moonstone Academy is this Saturday," Alexander said, low enough that only she could hear. "Every unmated female with a spirit rank of C or higher must attend. I assume you intend to be there."

"I do."

"Good." His gold eyes held hers a beat too long. "I'll see you there, Miss Whitlock."

He walked into the dark, and the night swallowed him.

Behind her, five men and a sister watched her go, and not one of them knew she was already smiling.