TWO

He

CHOSE

To

Have

You.

CHOSE. CHOSE.

The Mad Alpha of the rival pack chose to have me.

Whispers fill the assembly halls. I can feel every stare stabbing into my back, but none of it compares to the weight of Alpha Silas’s gaze.

He looks down on me with a sneer now. “Shocking, isn’t this?”

Through the blur of my eyes, his face warps, vision distorted, “While I had been thinking what to do with you all year long," he continues, loud enough that it carries over the whispers. "While you were mooning over me.

While you were busy loving me, thinking you were my Luna, I was thinking about how much I hated you…”

All of a sudden, my chest hurts too much to breathe, and the room won’t stop spinning.

True to his words, I feel his hate.

Quite literally. Over the years, I’ve felt people’s hate towards me in a way that it feels like a physical weapon.

At first, I thought I was losing my mind and my insecurities were getting to me. But even without my wolf senses, when a pack member glared from the distance, I immediately knew.

Sometimes, the feeling was so real that I half-expected to see a bruise.

And other times, I’d mirrored this, not on purpose, but it becomes some sort of picked on radar when you’re constantly hated and despised by the people who you serve. .

However, never for once, all through the years of being Alpha Silas’s mate had I ever felt his hatred for me.

On my knees now, with the way he spills the words, I realise I’ve been loving—to the hardest—a man who had always been disgusted by the mere existence of me.

“Every pathetic, hopeful glance.” Silas continues, unaware of the damage his words do to me. “Every time you brought me water, every time you offered me your body, every time you looked at me like I was a god—I was privately calculating how long it would take to crush that hope and finally be rid of your useless human scent!”

I flinch from the growl, my fingers trembling over my thighs.

Then, with a tilt of his head, “Good thing that we have someone to get you off my hands now, uh?”

Finally, I find my voice, but it's with a burst of anguished sobbing. “WHY?”

“Why?” He echoes incredulously.

“WHAT DID I EVER DO TO DESERVE THIS?”

My fingers are trembling, my chest is burning, my head is spinning, hot tears are spilling down my cheeks.

“I SERVED—”

“Service isn’t enough to keep an Alpha.”

Snivelling, sobbing, shaking, I force the words out. “I WAS GOOD.”

“For the most part, yes,” Alpha Silas agrees easily, “but we all know you were only good to make up for your incompetence and your lack of a wolf.”

Public humiliation. That’s what I get in exchange for three years of service, of being the perfect Luna, the perfect bed warmer.

Public humiliation, and being given away to the Alpha of the rival pack like a piece of candy.

Alpha Silas continues speaking, something about Alpha Rhys “desires” for me but I don’t listen, I can barely hear through the hum of pulse behind my ears or see through the tears in my eyes.

I don’t look at him.

Or the taller Alpha who had come to collect.

Or the trembling omegas on the lineup with me.

I don’t even ask the questions I should. My mind won’t stop spinning long enough to. My stomach won’t stop churning, my heart won’t stop racing.

Within seconds, I’m covered in sweat as questions tumbles in my head one after the other.

Desire?

Why would someone like him desire me?

For my lack of a wolf?

The humiliation I’d made out of myself at the game tonight?

Alpha Rhys Jaeger is known as the “Mad Alpha”, mentally deranged Coach who keeps himself off the ice during the games but keeps his pack hockey players in check. While he stands beside Alpha Silas, he looks more calm than the rumors portrayed, towering over even Silas’s pure muscles and height of 6 '2.

Everyone knows about him.

Or… thinks they do.

They say he doesn’t have control when he shifts. That he’d killed Alphas during games, that he doesn’t keep wives, but sex slaves and trophies.

That the Lunas he’s won from other Alphas never make it past a month in his house. Some say he locks them up. Others say he parades them around like a joke, offering them to his men for pleasure and torment.

I don’t know what’s true, I just know I can’t stay on my knees any longer.

When I stand, the pain in my chest only grows. My eyes dart through the crowd, searching for my father’s face like a child searching for comfort in the middle of chaos.

He isn’t hard to spot in the crowd of hundreds. Blue eyes that mirror the shape of mine, grey hair thinning at his temples, face blank.

Instantly, the realisation that he’s not going to defend me dawns hard.

Cheryl, my younger sister, has her head tipped over his shoulder, arms crossed, mirroring his same fucking look.

Unlike me, Cheryl shifted when she was sixteen, three years younger than me and she's very different. While my hair is brown, hers are platinum blonde. Apart from the contrast in our looks, she’s always been the stronger one.

The favorite.

At just nineteen, she’s one of the best shifter hockey players our pack has to offer.

Everyone in the pack loves her, adores her, even Silas used to joke that the goddess made a mistake—that Cheryl should’ve been his mate instead of me.

The instant our eyes meet, she mindlinks me. “Guess the goddess finally fixed her mistake, sister.”

Then, with her hand wrapped around my father’s arm, they both turn away.

I can’t breathe as I watch them dissappear into the crowd.

Desperate for someone—anyone—to be on my side, I turn back to Silas, searching his eyes for warmth.

But he doesn’t even spare me a glance as he addresses the pack, “And let no one mistake this for an allegiance between the Ragriz Pack and the Paxon Pack, as we all know that this is just a fulfillment of a bet and keeping my word. Wren Russo, the daughter of Beta Russo, from a lineage of coaches, has failed us exceptionally, and she has put our pack to shame! And for this, we shall strip her of all her dignity!”

The overwhelming hatred in his voice finally gets to me.

I scream till my throat burns, “Just a game! WHY SO MUCH HATE! WHAT DID I DO TO DESERVE THIS!”

Sobs wreck my body, shoulders quaking, temples throbbing, but Silas doesn’t even flinch. He waits for my screaming to subside, then, with a voice devoid of any emotions, he begins the rejection ritual:

“I, Alpha Silas Deveraux of the Ragriz Pack, reject you, Wren Russo, as my mate.”

With tears splattering over the floor, I force out the words from the depth of my gut. “I, Wren Russo, accept your rejection!”

The impact is immediate.

The shockwave of the breaking bond seems to blow through the room.

Even with the supposed lack of my wolf, pain flares in my chest, and I sway from the sudden sting of the pang.

Alpha Silas lets out a guttural grunt of: “What the fuck…?” Brows pulled high over wide eyes.

Gasps fill the Hall, murmuring, questions.

Before the confusion solidifies, from the corner of my eyes, I catch a movement before I register who moved.

Red cotton shirt, dark jeans, huge frame covering the distance between us in a single, impossible stride.

He is suddenly towering over me, eclipsing Silas, eclipsing the whole room, strong arms steadying me back to my feet.

I'm breathless, and I can see that he's heaving too.

Alpha Rhys of Paxon pack.

His eyes, this close, aren't as dead as they'd been when I walked into the room but I see the impatience in them…

He looks like he’s fuming now, face red, fingers trembling on the small of my back, he steers me in the direction of the door. “In twenty minutes, gather your things.”