Birthday Blues

♤

The slap cracked through the servant’s hall before the sting bloomed. Luna’s head whipped to the side, her cheek flaming.

“Eighteen,” Selene purred, her crimson nails digging into Luna’s jaw, forcing her face upward. “And you still smell like dishwater and despair.”

Luna didn’t flinch. She’d learned stillness was the only armor she had. Around them, the kitchen staff averted their eyes, hands busy with rolling pins and porcelain. The air was thick with the scent of sugared dough and silent pity.

“The Alpha’s son requests your presence,” Selene said, her smile a razor’s edge. “He’s in a… celebratory mood.”

A cold knot tightened in Luna’s stomach. Kael. Of course.

She was marched through the polished corridors of Silvercrest Manor, her worn shoes silent on marble. The pack heirs lounged in sun-drenched parlors, their laughter liquid and cruel. She felt their gazes like physical touches—dismissive, hungry, amused.

The grand study doors swung open.

Kael Silvercrest dominated the room, not just with his size, but with a presence that stole the air. He was golden, all sun-streaked hair and predatory grace, leaning against his father’s massive oak desk. His amber eyes tracked her entrance, a wolf spotting wounded prey.

“The birthday girl,” he drawled. The circle of his future Betas chuckled on cue.

“You summoned me, Alpha Heir?” Luna kept her voice flat, her eyes on the intricate pattern of the rug.

“It’s a tradition,” he said, pushing off the desk. He moved with a lethal, languid ease that made her pulse skitter traitorously. “The Omega of the Year gets a birthday gift. From me.”

He stopped a breath away. His scent—iced pine and dark spice—wrapped around her, confusing her senses, stirring something low and dormant in her belly. Her wolf, Absolution, twitched beneath her skin, a feeble stir of protest.

“Look at me, Luna.”

Her eyes lifted. His gaze was a physical weight.

“Your gift,” he whispered, his breath warm against her ear, “is a lesson. You are nothing. You will always be nothing. No matter what… foolish hopes your omega heart clings to.”

The words were practiced, designed to maim. But it was the proximity that was the true violation. His heat seared through her thin uniform. Her body, betraying her utterly, thrummed with a sharp, unwelcome ache. She hated him. She feared him. And some cursed, primal part of her wanted to bare her throat.

A low chuckle rumbled in his chest. He saw it. He always saw the shameful conflict in her eyes.

“Pathetic,” he breathed, the word a caress.

He stepped back, and the spell broke, leaving her cold and trembling.

“Now,” he announced to the room. “The other part of the tradition. The Omega serves the Alpha Heir at his birthday feast. In the attire we provide.”

Selene stepped forward, holding not the ceremonial silks of a serving girl, but a maid’s uniform—starched, stiff, and deliberately humiliating. It was the uniform of the lowest kitchen scrub.

The laughter this time was open, ravenous.

Luna’s fingers trembled as she took the rough fabric. The dread was a solid thing now, a stone in her throat. This was her eighteenth birthday. The day her mate bond was supposed to awaken, if the Moon Goddess was kind.

The Goddess, it seemed, had a vicious sense of humor.

The feast was a symphony of light and arrogance. Luna moved through the great hall like a ghost, a tray of crystal goblets heavy in her hands. The gown she’d been forced into chafed at her neck and wrists. Every clink of silverware, every burst of laughter, was a needle in her skin.

Kael held court at the high table. A stunning, dark-haired she-wolf from a visiting pack hung on his every word, her hand resting on his arm. Luna watched his easy smile, the way he leaned into the touch. A hot, sharp twist—something between rage and raw, gouging pain—lanced through her.

Her tray wobbled.

“Clumsy.” Selene appeared beside her, pinching the soft skin of Luna’s arm under the sleeve. “Spill one drop on the Alpha Heir’s guest, and you’ll lick it off the floor.”

The pain was bright, clarifying. In that moment, the noise faded. The only sound was the frantic beat of her own heart and a sudden, resonant pull deep in her core. It was a chord plucked, a wire pulled taut across her soul.

Her eyes snapped to Kael.

As if feeling the shift, he turned. His gaze locked with hers across the crowded, glittering room.

Time splintered.

The world dissolved into scent and sensation. Iced pine and dark spice. Power, raw and compelling. The bond didn’t snap—it unfurled, a blazing, golden thread connecting her sternum to his. It sang, a note of pure, terrifying destiny. It was beautiful. It was his.

Her lips parted. The word was torn from her, a secret spoken to the universe, a truth she could no more contain than stop her own heart.

“Mate.”

It was less than a whisper. But in the sacred space of the bond, it was a thunderclap.

Kael’s face changed. The charming mask shattered. His eyes widened, then narrowed, flooding with a revulsion so profound it felt like a second slap. The connection between them didn’t feel like fate. It felt like a sentence.

He rose slowly from his seat. The hall fell silent.

His voice, when it came, wasn’t a roar. It was a clean, cold blade, wielded with precision for maximum slaughter.

“You?” he said, the single word dripping with disgust. “A stinking, worthless omega? You think the Moon Goddess would chain me to you?” He laughed, a short, brutal sound. “I, Kael Silvercrest, future Alpha of this pack, reject you, Luna Hartley. I reject the bond. I reject you.”

The golden thread didn’t just break.

It exploded.

Agony. White-hot, shattering, all-consuming. It wasn’t emotional. It was cellular. It was her soul being ripped in two. Luna crumpled, the tray of goblets shattering on the marble beside her. A scream lodged in her throat, turning into a silent, gaping wound.

Through the haze of pain, she saw him. Unmoved. Perfect. A king who had just crushed a bug.

But deep within the ruin, in the marrow of her bones where the agony was greatest, something else stirred. Something old. And furious. It uncoiled, a shadow darker than the bond’s light had been bright.

A single, warm trickle ran from her nose. She touched it with a shaking finger.

The liquid that came away shimmered under the chandelier light. Not red.

Silver.

As the world went black, a final, ancient whisper echoed in the vault of her skull, a promise and a threat from the wolf she thought was dormant: “Enough.”

To be continued…