01

They rejected me on the night I was meant to be claimed.

"I, Kade Mercer, Alpha of Bloodmoon—" His voice broke in front of three hundred witnesses. Then he turned away from me and spoke the other name. "I name Celeste Vane."

"I reject you, Wren Halloway."

The rite was never finished. The bond was never severed. They threw me to the rogue lands to die — but I lived. My wolf woke. Three years later, I am walking back into Ashford with one plan: burn his empire to the ground.

He wants me back. I want his ruin. Let the games begin.

The moon is so full tonight it looks photoshopped.

That is the thought I have while standing in the claiming circle with my hair done up like a wedding and my stomach trying to climb out through my throat. My mother spent an hour on the braids, her fingers quick and sure the way they are when she is stitching a wound, and she did not say a single word the whole time. That should have been my first clue. My mother always talks.

Three hundred people ring the clearing, shoulder to shoulder, breath fogging in the October air, and every single one of them is looking at me like this is already decided. Like it is a formality. Like the Alpha of Bloodmoon is about to take my hand and speak the claiming words and the whole pack gets to exhale at once, because finally the weird wolfless healer's daughter has a place that makes sense.

He stands across the circle in a dark shirt with the sleeves pushed up, forearms bare in the cold, and the moonlight catches his eyes and turns them gold. Amber. I have loved that color since I was fourteen and too stupid to know what a mate bond actually costs.

I have felt it pulling at my ribs since I was seventeen. A low hum under everything, like a power line in the distance. He felt it too. I know he did. He told me so last spring behind the smokehouse, his hands on my face, woodsmoke in his hair, and he said, "It's you, Wren. It's always been you." I believed him. God help me, I believed him.

Elder Halvorsen steps forward and reads the old words in a voice like gravel in a bucket. My hands will not stop shaking. I press my palms flat against my borrowed dress to hide it. The dress belongs to Priya from the kitchens. The shoes belong to someone whose feet are half a size smaller than mine. Everyone said, "Don't be silly, borrow whatever you need," like a girl with nothing can be dressed up into something a pack is proud to claim.

Kade's gaze finds mine across the space between us, and something in it stops my heart.

Not love. Fear.

Kade steps forward. The crowd goes silent enough to hear pine needles drop.

"I, Kade Mercer," he says, "Alpha of Bloodmoon —"

His voice breaks.

It just — stops. Cracks right down the middle, on the breath before my name, where my name should be. A ripple goes through the elders behind him. Halvorsen's head comes up sharp. Someone shifts their weight and a twig snaps like a gunshot in the quiet.

Kade's jaw works. A muscle jumps in his cheek. He does not look at me. He turns his head — away from me, toward the Vanes' section of the circle — and when he speaks again the words come out flat and fast, like he has to force them out before something inside him can stop him.

"I name Celeste Vane."

Silence. Real silence. The kind with weight.

Celeste steps into the circle in a dress the color of moonlight and a smile that could cut glass, and she takes the place that was mine, and I am still standing here with my hair done up like a wedding while the Alpha of Bloodmoon speaks the rejection rite over me in front of everyone I have ever known.

"I reject you, Wren Halloway." His hands are fists at his sides. His voice is shaking so hard the last word barely lands. He sucks in a breath like a man going under water. "I —"

He stops.

He turns away. Fully, physically turns away from me, shoulders hitching like he has been punched in the gut, and the rite hangs there unfinished in the cold air. Halvorsen takes a half step forward and stops. The elders exchange looks I am not supposed to see. The final words — the severing words, the ones that would cut the bond clean and end this — never come.

But it doesn't matter. Everyone heard enough.

Maren Vane is on her feet before anyone else, and her voice carries over the clearing like a blade. "The law is clear. A rejected mate holds no rank, no claim, no shelter. She leaves Bloodmoon territory before dawn — with nothing."

Nothing. I look down at the dress I borrowed. The shoes that pinch. Nothing is about right.

My mother is somewhere in the crowd. I do not look for her. I will not give Maren Vane the satisfaction of watching me search. I will not cry. I will not cry. I will not —

"Go," Halvorsen says, not unkindly. "Girl. Go before this gets worse."

So I go. I walk out of the circle in borrowed shoes across frozen grass, past faces I have known my whole life — Priya crying into her hands, old Tom staring at his boots, kids I used to bandage up after scrapes pressing into their mothers' sides — and nobody moves. Nobody says my name. Celeste's laugh follows me, bright and silver, and behind it I hear Kade make a sound like something tearing.

The gates of the Bloodmoon compound swing shut behind me with a sound like a coffin lid. I stand alone on the dirt road under a moon so full it looks fake, with nothing but the clothes on my back and a bond that is trying to snap.

It pulls. It strains. It reaches for something on the other side of the dark that is not there anymore, and the pain of it not breaking is worse than any clean cut could ever be, because some stupid, stubborn part of me keeps waiting for the snap that would mean it is really over.

It never comes.