CHAPTER ONE-THE REJECTION

The barn at Wolf Creek smelled like hay and gasoline and cheap perfume.

They’d hung fairy lights from the rafters for me. Someone’s old bedsheets were tacked up to hide the rusted tools. My birthday. My Shifting Ceremony. Eighteen years they’d all been waiting to see what I was.

I stood in the middle of it in a borrowed dress.

It wasn’t mine. Nothing ever was. Mrs. Holloway from the main house had let me borrow her daughter’s old graduation dress, white lace with a zipper that stuck at the back. It was two sizes too big and I had to keep pulling the sleeves up over my wrists. My hands wouldn’t stop sweating.

“Amelia Quinn,” Alpha Stone called from the front.

I flinched. Everyone was looking.

Kaden’s father stood up there in his clean denim shirt, his beard trimmed. The Alpha. Next to him was Kaden. My Kaden.

He was in a black button down shirt, sleeves rolled up to his elbows. He wouldn’t look at me. He stared at the floor like the wood grain was the most interesting thing in the world.

“Come forward, girl,” Alpha Stone said.

My knees were jelly. I walked. The white lace dragged in the dirt. I could hear the whispers start up already.

That’s her. The wolfless one.

Eighteen and still nothing. What a waste.

Omega trash in a white dress.

I reached the circle. The moon was high through the open barn doors, big and yellow and full. This was supposed to be the moment my wolf finally came. Mom always said she would. She said my wolf was just shy.

Kaden finally looked up.

His eyes were brown, warm brown. The same eyes that had watched me fall off my horse when I was nine. The same eyes that had kissed me behind the stables last winter when he told me he felt the bond snap into place. That I was his.

He mouthed one word. Breathe.

I closed my eyes.

I tried to call her. I begged. Come on. Please. Just this once. Please come out.

I waited for the burn in my spine, the crack of bones, the pain everyone says comes with your first shift. Nothing. Just the wind coming through the barn and my own heartbeat hammering in my ears.

I opened my eyes. Nothing had changed. I was still just Amelia in a too big dress, shaking.

A laugh broke out. Then another. Then the whole barn was laughing.

Alpha Stone’s face twisted. “Enough,” he snapped, but he wasn’t looking at them. He was looking at me, with pure disappointment. “Step back, Amelia.”

“No,” Kaden said suddenly. His voice cracked. Everyone turned.

Kaden stepped forward. He reached for me. His hand was shaking too.

Alpha Stone grabbed his arm. Hard. I saw his fingers dig into Kaden’s bicep. He leaned in close and whispered something low and ugly into his son’s ear, but in that silent barn, I heard it.

“Reject her or lose the title. You will not bring a wolfless, useless Omega into this Alpha house. Do it now, Kaden. Or I will strip you of that ranch and that name tonight.”

Kaden froze. His eyes went wide. He looked at his father, then at me. For a second, one real, stupid, hopeful second, I thought he was going to say no. His mouth opened. I thought he was going to say my name.

“Ameli—”

His father’s grip tightened. Kaden winced.

Kaden’s jaw clenched. The muscle in his cheek jumped. He looked at me again and his eyes were wet.

“Don’t,” I whispered. I didn’t even know what I was saying. “Kaden, don’t.”

He swallowed hard. And then he said it.

Loud enough for the moon herself to hear.

“I, Kaden Stone, Alpha heir of Wolf Creek, reject you, Amelia Quinn, as my mate and Luna.”

It wasn’t just words.

It was a blade.

The place on my neck where his mark should have been, where I’d dreamed his mark would be since I was twelve, lit up like someone had pressed a hot iron to it. I screamed. It wasn’t a human scream. It was raw and broken and it tore out of my throat. I fell to my knees in the dirt, clutching my neck. The white lace pooled around me, now filthy.

The bond, that warm little string that had hummed between us for eight months, snapped. I felt it snap inside my chest. Like a rubber band breaking.

Gone.

I couldn’t breathe. The barn was spinning. The fairy lights blurred.

Kaden made a sound like he was going to be sick. He tried to step to me, but his father held him back.

“Let that be a lesson,” Alpha Stone announced to the crowd, like I was a lesson now. “The pack comes first.”

No one helped me up. Mrs. Holloway looked away. The girls who used to braid my hair were giggling behind their hands.

I got up myself. My legs barely worked. I ran. Out of the barn, out of the circle, out into the Montana night with that stupid white dress tearing on the fence posts.

It was raining. Of course it was raining. Cold, hard October rain that soaked through the lace in seconds and stuck it to my skin. I ran down the long dirt driveway of Wolf Creek Ranch, barefoot because I’d kicked off the borrowed heels, mud up to my ankles.

I didn’t know where I was going. My mom’s old trailer was three miles down the road but I couldn’t go there. Not like this.

Headlights cut through the rain.

A big black Ford, lifted, mud spattered, came rumbling up the driveway from the main road. It stopped right in front of me. I almost ran into it.

The window rolled down.

A man. Not Kaden. Older. Beard trimmed short, black cowboy hat low over his eyes, a black shirt that looked expensive even wet. His eyes, God, his eyes were gray, like storm clouds. And they were looking at me like he already knew everything that had just happened in that barn.

He took one look at the dirt on my dress, the red mark still smoking on my neck, and his jaw tightened.

He leaned over and threw the passenger door open.

“Get in, Luna.”

Only remaining dash is inside dialogue (“Ameli—”) where Kaden gets cut off mid-word — that’s an interruption mark, not a hyphen, so I left it since removing it would make the line read as a typo rather than him being stopped mid-sentence. Let me know if you want that changed too.