Chapter 1: Rejected

I stood in the middle of the Moonlit Hall in the dress Damian picked out himself, the one he said made me look like a queen, and I actually let myself believe tonight would be the night he finally said the words I'd been waiting three years to hear.

I was wrong.

"I reject you as my mate."

Five words. That's all it took to end everything.

I stood in front of everyone. Five hundred wolves. My own pack. His pack. The elders. Everyone who mattered in this kingdom was in that hall, and every single one of them was staring at me while Damian Kade said those words like he was reading a grocery list.

My chest went tight, like something had reached inside and squeezed. I kept waiting for it to feel like a mistake, like he'd laugh and say he was joking, but he just stood there, waiting for me to accept it and walk away quietly.

I didn't cry. I promised myself I wouldn't, and I didn't.

"On what grounds," I said. My voice barely shook. I was proud of that.

Damian didn't even look sorry. He looked bored, like I was a meeting he wanted to end early. "You know why."

I did know why. Everyone in that hall knew why. My pack was weak. My bloodline was dying. And Selene Draven was standing three feet away from him in a blue dress, smiling like she already owned the crown on his head.

Three years. Three years of training beside him, learning pack law, sitting through council meetings until my eyes burned just so I could stand next to him and understand his world. Three years of him promising me a future that apparently meant nothing the second someone better came along.

I was never going to be enough for him. I think some part of me knew that the day he chose me. I just didn't think he'd do this in front of everyone.

"Say the real reason," I said. "Not for me. For them."

His jaw ticked. He glanced at Selene, then back at me, like he just wanted this part over with so he could get to the part where he married her.

"You're weak," he said, loud enough for the whole hall to hear. "I need a Luna who can stand beside a king. Not one who needs to be carried."

The laughing started before he even finished talking.

I know that sound. I'd heard it in smaller doses for months, wolves whispering behind my back, wolves who smiled to my face and rolled their eyes the second I turned around. Now they didn't even bother hiding it. Selene didn't hide it either. She just stood there grinning at me, not even trying to act sorry. She won. I lost. That's how everyone in that hall was going to remember tonight.

Then I felt it happen.

The bond between us just snapped. No warning, no build up, just gone. For three years there had been a small hum in the back of my mind, this quiet feeling like I wasn't alone even when I was standing by myself. I never really noticed it until right then, when it disappeared and left this ringing silence in its place.

My legs almost gave out. I locked my knees and stayed standing, because I refused to fall in front of these people.

Here's the thing none of them knew.

They all called my bloodline weak. Dying. My grandmother used to tell me stories when I was little, and I thought they were just stories, the kind you tell a kid to make her feel special. She never told me the whole truth. She couldn't, not without putting a target on my back. All she said was that our family carried something rare, something we had to keep hidden, something that could get us killed if the wrong people ever found out.

I never understood what she meant until my whole chest lit up like something inside me had just opened its eyes.

Heat spread under my skin. My vision sharpened so fast it almost hurt, and suddenly I could see every thread in Selene's dress from across the hall. I could hear heartbeats. Dozens of them. Racing, slow, nervous, excited. I could pick each one apart like they were standing right next to me.

Something was waking up inside me. Something old.

Damian turned his back on me like I wasn't even worth another second of his time. He reached for Selene's hand and the crowd started clapping, actual clapping, like this was some kind of celebration and not the worst night of my life.

I felt my hands curl into fists at my sides. Three years of my life, gone, and he couldn't even give me a full minute before moving on.

I wanted to scream. I wanted to run. Instead I just stood there and let this strange heat keep spreading through my body, and for the first time all night, I wasn't scared.

I was something else.

"You'll regret this," I said. Quiet. Calm.

Damian didn't even turn around. Nobody in that hall thought I meant it. Why would they. I was just the rejected Luna, the girl from the dying bloodline, standing alone while her mate walked away with someone else.

But something in my chest was burning now, spreading down through my arms, curling around my spine like it had been waiting years for this exact moment.

My grandmother's warnings came back to me all at once. Never let them see what you really are. Never let it out. If they ever find out, they will hunt you like they hunted the others.

I always thought she meant something small. A stronger wolf gene, maybe. A little extra speed or strength that ran in our family and made the elders nervous. I used to lie awake as a kid wondering what was so wrong with us that we had to hide it, why my own pack looked at my family like we were something to be pitied instead of respected.

I was wrong.

Because right there, in front of everyone who had just watched me get thrown away like garbage, my body started to change. Not the normal shift I trained for years to control. Something bigger. Something my bones weren't ready for, ripping through me faster than I could stop it, faster than I even understood.

Gasps broke out across the hall.

Someone screamed.

I looked down at my own hands and watched them stop looking like hands.

Damian spun around so fast he nearly tripped over his own robe, and for the first time all night, he wasn't looking at me like I was nothing.

He was looking at me like he was afraid.

"That's not possible," someone whispered behind me. Then another voice. Then another, until the whole hall was a wall of noise, wolves backing away, wolves grabbing each other, wolves staring at me like they were staring at a ghost that had just crawled out of a three hundred year old grave.

I didn't know what I was turning into. Not fully. Not yet.

But I knew one thing for certain as the last of my human shape burned away and something ancient and golden-eyed took its place.

They should have never rejected an Aurelian.