CHAPTER 3: THE THREE WORDS

The words came out of him like something being torn from a living body.

"I, Alpha Kael of Silver Ridge, reject Amara as my fated mate and Luna of this pack."

The bond did not break. It detonated.

White heat tore through my chest like a fist of lightning closing around my spine. My vision went black, then red, then white. Every nerve fired at once and a sound ripped from my throat that I did not recognize. Not a scream. The sound a wolf makes when part of its soul is being amputated without warning.

My knees hit the stone. Inside me, my wolf was howling, so anguished and so raw that it did not feel like a separate consciousness anymore. It felt like me. The deepest, truest part of me, screaming while three hundred wolves watched in silence.

I could feel them. Not their eyes, though those were everywhere, pressing against my skin like hands. I could feel the particular hush of people witnessing a thing they knew was wrong but had decided to allow. Some of them would go home tonight and tell their mates about the omega who collapsed in a borrowed blue dress, and they would shake their heads and say it was sad, really sad, and then they would eat dinner and forget.

The pain peaked. A hook tore loose behind my ribs, and then the bond went silent.

Not quiet. Silent. The space that had hummed with Kael's heartbeat for five days was suddenly, horrifyingly empty. Like a room stripped bare with the lights off and no way out.

My palms were flat against the stone. Heat was radiating from them. Not the feverish heat of pain. Something deeper, something that pulsed in rhythm with my heartbeat and pressed outward through my skin like it was trying to escape. The stone beneath my fingers was warming.

I pulled my hands back and buried them against my thighs.

Not here. Not now. Whatever my body was doing, it could not happen in front of three hundred wolves who were already looking at me like I was refuse to be scraped from the floor.

Elder Yemisi's voice cut through the silence. "The rejection has been spoken and witnessed. The fated bond is severed by right of the Alpha." She paused. "Does the rejected party accept the severance?"

The hall waited. Three hundred wolves watched the omega on the floor and waited for her to whisper yes and crawl away so they could move on with the replacement bonding and the celebration and the rest of their lives that did not include her.

I raised my head.

Kael was staring at me. Face like concrete. Jaw locked. Fists at his sides. Every inch the Alpha who had done what he intended and felt nothing about it.

But his eyes were wet.

One fracture in the mask. His eyes were glassed over with something he was fighting so hard to contain that the veins in his neck were standing out and his chest was barely moving. If he breathed too deeply, the whole thing would shatter.

The ghost of the bond reached for him anyway. Like a severed hand still trying to grip.

I got to my feet. My body knew how to stand when standing was impossible. Nine years of being an omega had given me exactly one skill, and I used it now.

I looked at Elder Yemisi.

"I accept the rejection."

My voice carried. It did not sound like mine. It sounded like it came from somewhere deeper, somewhere the pain had not reached yet.

"But I want it on record," I said, "that the Moon Goddess chose this bond. Not me. Not him. The Goddess. And what has been broken tonight was broken by the will of wolves, not the will of heaven."

The silence that followed was not the same silence as before. Before, it was the passive silence of spectators. Now it was the stunned silence of people who had just watched a piece of furniture stand up and start talking.

Omegas did not make statements at formal ceremonies. Omegas did not invoke the Moon Goddess in front of the Elder council. Omegas did not look their Alpha in the eye after being publicly rejected and speak as if their words carried the same weight as his.

Sera's smile vanished. Beta Conall's eyes widened. Elder Yemisi's hand tightened on her staff.

And Kael flinched. One involuntary micro-movement, as if something behind his ribs had shifted and he could not stop it. Beneath the flinch, buried so deep I almost missed it, something else crossed his face. Something that looked, impossibly, like awe.

Elder Yemisi's jaw tightened. "The record will reflect the rejected party's statement. The replacement bonding will now proceed."

I turned and walked back down the center aisle. Bare feet on cold stone. Borrowed dress. Three hundred wolves parting around me in silence because they did not know what else to do with a woman who had just been destroyed and refused to look like it.

I made it to the great hall doors. I stepped into the corridor.

And then Beta Conall's voice rang out behind me.

"By order of the Alpha, the rejected omega Amara is hereby subject to immediate transfer. Seventy-two hours to vacate Silver Ridge territory." A pause. "Escorts will be assigned to ensure compliance."

My feet stopped.

Seventy-two hours. Three days to leave the only home I had known for nine years. Three days before they shipped me to a labor pack in the north where omegas worked until their wolves went silent and their bodies gave out.

Three days.

And whatever was inside me was waking up.