Chapter 1; Pretty Ugly

POPPY’S POV

The universe had a sick sense of humour.

I always knew that but tonight, it decided to really prove its point.

My name is Poppy Voss, and I was rejected by my mate in front of half the pack.

Not in a way that would let me pretend it hadn't happened when I woke up tomorrow morning with puffy eyes and a splitting headache. 

No, Alpha Damon Reyes looked me dead in the face, in the middle of the pack bonfire, surrounded by flickering the orange light and fifty witnesses, and said the words every female wolf dreads hearing.

"I, Alpha Damon Reyes, reject you, Poppy Voss, as my mate."

Just like that… like I was a parking ticket he didn't want to pay for. The worst part? My sister was standing right next to him.

Lena. My beautiful, golden-haired, everyone-loves-her sister. 

She had her hand on his arm and this small, satisfied smile on her lips like she expected it to happen. 

The bond snapped in my chest like a rubber band stretched too far. 

The pain was right underneath my ribs and I pressed my hand there without thinking, like I could hold myself together if I just pushed hard enough.

Nobody moved to comfort me. The crowd just watched. 

Some of them looked away and not out of kindness, but out of secondhand embarrassment. 

A few of the girls near the back were already whispering, hands cupped over mouths, eyes sliding in my direction.

I stood there for exactly four seconds then I walked away.

The bonfire party continued behind me, their laughter and music trailing as I kept walking. 

It was almost as if no one cared for what happened to me.

Mom was in the kitchen when I got home. She didn't look up from her mug when I walked in, which was fine, because I didn't want her to look at me.

But she did anyway. Her eyes travelled up and down my body in that critical look she gave me my whole life.

The one that said ‘you are a disappointment’ without using any of those words.

"You look terrible," she snapped.

I glared at her, unable to hide my dissatisfaction. "Thanks, Mom."

"Those eyes." She shook her head slowly, like my eyes were personally offending her. "I don't know where you got them from but they’re disgusting.”

My eyes were pale… almost silver, with these thin dark rings around the iris. 

I was always told by my pack members that they looked unusual. It didn’t help that my skin was pale too, porcelain-white against the warm brown tones of the rest of my family. 

I stuck out in every family photo like a typo. Lena had brown eyes and she looked like my parents. 

While I looked like a mistake someone forgot to correct. 

"The Alpha rejected me tonight," I said, because I was tired and in pain and some small, stupid part of me wanted her to care. “I found out he was my mate at the start of the party.” 

She wrapped her hands around her mug. "I'm not surprised," she said quietly. “Go to your room and sleep early. You have to do our laundry tomorrow, remember?”

Right… along with my heap of many chores. Because my parents were rich enough to afford everything but a house help. 

I sucked my bottom lip into my mouth, biting hard enough to draw blood. I nodded once and walked upstairs because I was not going to cry in front of her.

The moment I got to my room, I slipped out through the window, careful not to make any sound. 

This was routine for me whenever the house was starting to get overwhelming. I just had to be back before 7am, and they would be none of the wiser. 

There was nowhere in mind that I wanted to go to but somehow, the bar crossed my mind. The Hollow sat at the edge of town where the pack territory started bleeding into the neighboring village. 

I wandered into the dingy looking place, eager to get enough drinks to knock me out until everything blurred into a nightmare. 

I took a stool at the far end of the counter and ordered a whiskey. The bartender kept refilling my glass without commentary, which I appreciated.

I was on my third drink, feeling the warm fog settling behind my eyes, when someone sat down next to me.

I didn't look up right away. I was busy having a very deep one-sided conversation with myself about the general unfairness of existence.

"Rough night?"

His voice was low and it caused shivers to run through my spine. I finally looked up and immediately forgot how to form words.

He was… damn it! 

I was having the worst night of my life and running on rejection and my mother's disappointment. I did not need this man sitting next to me looking like that.

He had dark hair, a strong jaw and eyes so bright they were almost golden. They were looking at me with this quiet attention that made my stomach flip severally. 

"You could say that," I managed.

He almost smiled. "Want to talk about it?"

I shook my head. "I want to forget about it, actually."

He was quiet for a moment then he raised his glass toward mine. "Then let's forget together."

I don't know how many hours passed after that. We talked, drank and he laughed at something I said. He told me his name was Grey. 

Just Grey, no last name offered. I didn't push.

I told him about Damon. Not everything, but enough. He listened without that awful look of pity I'd been dreading all night.

"He's an idiot," Grey said simply.

I huffed and took another sip of my whiskey. "He rejected me in front of fifty people."

"Confirmed idiot." He added.

I laughed and it surprised me so much that I laughed harder, and for a minute the night felt less like a wound.

By midnight, we were the last two people at the bar. By midnight and ten minutes, he was looking at me in a way that made it very hard to remember why I should be sad.

By midnight and fifteen minutes, I had made a decision.

A reckless one. But I was a twenty-two year old virgin, I had just been rejected and humiliated and told by my own mother that she wasn't surprised, and Grey was looking at me like I was worth looking at.

So when he asked, quietly, if I wanted to get out of there…. I said yes.

What happened next was a blur. He took me to a motel not too far from the bar, and the lights from outside bled softly through the curtains.

I stood in the middle of his room and he stood in front of me, close enough that I could feel the heat coming off his skin. 

His hand came up slowly, giving me every chance to step back but I didn't. His fingers brushed the side of my face and he looked at me like he was seeing something rare.

"You have very unique eyes," he murmured, almost to himself.

I suddenly felt like shutting them. "People usually don't like them," I whispered.

"People are wrong." He whispered and then he kissed me.

I stopped thinking about Damon, and Lena, and my mother's voice, and all fifty faces watching me fall apart by the bonfire.

I stopped thinking about all of it and I let Grey worship my body like no one had before.