the rejection

The same moon that watched Nadia awaken shone over another kingdom that night.

It crossed forests, mountains, and frozen rivers until it found another girl standing beneath its light.

She wasn't about to die…She was about to hear three words that would ruin her life.

Lyra’s Pov

Let me tell you something no one ever tells you when you're the plus-size girl with a beautiful sister.

You learn to make jokes. Not because you're funny, but because jokes become your armor. If you laugh at yourself first, it hurts less when they laugh at you.

My name is Lyra Thorne, and I've been building that armor for eighteen years.

Tonight, I'm going to need every piece of it.

Tonight is the Choosing, the night when wolves who have come of age stand before the pack, and the Moon Goddess reveals the mate bonds. Three hundred wolves are packed into the hall. Torches burn gold against the dark, and everyone is wearing their finest.

And this year, for the first time in Silverpine's history, the royal family sent word that the Alpha Prince himself would attend. Nobody knows why. Our pack is small and poor and far from the capital. But nobody questions a royal honor. You just polish the hall and hang the banners and feel lucky.

I'm standing next to my sister Isolde, which is always a mistake. Isolde is beautiful with a perfect face and body. Her cheekbones could cut bread, and standing next to her, I disappear. I'm just the round-faced girl with the plain brown braid. 

I'm not expecting anything tonight. Girls like me don't get fated mates. Girls like me get, at best, a polite arrangement with someone's third son.

Then the Alpha Prince walks past our row.

Cassian Aurelian, heir to the Alpha King. The most powerful young wolf in the world. Handsome in a way that almost makes you angry, like the Goddess was showing off when she made him.

He walks past us, and the bond hits like lightning. As if a rope of fire snapped tight between my chest and his. The whole room feels it, and three hundred heads turn at once. The Moon Goddess has spoken, and every wolf in this hall can see exactly who she picked.

She picked me, Lyra Thorne. The fat girl is now the fated mate to the Alpha Prince.

For one second, my heart lifts. Because that's the dream, isn't it? That's the story every unwanted girl tells herself at night. Someday the bond will come, and someone will have to see the real me.  

Cassian turns around slowly, and he looks at me. I watch his beautiful face take me in, my wide hips, my round face, my plain braid, all of it. I watch him do the math that everyone in this room is doing, and I already know the answer. I've spent eighteen years learning to see it coming.

"I reject you," the Alpha Prince says, "fatass."

The words drop into the silence, and then the pack laughs.

Not just a few of them, but all of them. The whole hall cracks open with laughter: my neighbors, the baker who sells me the burnt loaves at a low price, and the girls I grew up with. Three hundred wolves are laughing at the funniest joke in the world.

The joke is me. The joke was always me.

Then the bond snaps.

People say "the bond broke" like it's just words. But it's not just words. It's a rib cracking inside your chest. One second there was a rope of light connecting me to another soul, the first connection I have ever felt in my whole life, and the next second it's gone, torn out, and the pain nearly puts me on the floor.

Inside me, my wolf Caora throws back her head and screams. No one else can hear her. The scream just stays inside me, bouncing off my bones.

And here's the shameful part. The part I'll hate myself for later.

My first thought isn't how could he. My first thought is, of course, he would reject me. The Goddess gave the prince to the fat girl, as a joke. Even the Moon herself wanted a laugh tonight.

But I don't cry. Whatever else happens tonight, I want that written down somewhere. Three hundred wolves were watching, waiting for my tears. I didn't give them a single one.

Instead, I lift my chin. I look at Prince Cassian Aurelian dead in his gorgeous eyes, and loud enough for the whole hall to hear, I say:

"Thank the Goddess. You're not my type anyway. I like men with a spine."

The laughter chokes and dies.

For half a second, the Alpha Prince's perfect face does something it has clearly never done before. It flinches.

Then his eyes go ice cold, and I realize, too late, that I've just made a terrible mistake.

A prince can reject a fat girl, and nobody will ever punish him for cruelty, but I just made him look foolish in front of three hundred wolves.

And princes do not forgive.

*************

I don't wait to see what he does. I've learned this lesson too: never wait around for powerful people to decide what happens to you. Leave first, make the exit yours.

I turn and walk out of the hall with my spine straight and chin up. My braid is swinging behind me. The crowd parts to let me through, and I keep my head high through the doors, down the torch-lit steps, across the frozen yard.

I make it all the way to the tree line, then my legs give out.

I drop to my knees, and I finally let Caora scream out loud. A raw, broken howl ripped from the place where the bond used to be.

It hurts, she sobs inside me. Lyra, why does it hurt this much? It's not supposed to hurt this much.

And kneeling here, ruined, I realize she's right.

I know about rejections; everyone does. They happen. Not every fated pair wants each other. The rejected wolf aches for a few weeks, like a bruise, and then it fades. That's what everyone says. A rejection is a bruise.

This is not a bruise. This is a wound that goes all the way through me. This is pain so far beyond what a one-second bond should cause that even now, even wrecked, a small cold voice in my head sits up and says: something is wrong here.

It's the bond, Caora weeps. It was too big. Lyra, the bond was too big. There was too much of it, more than there should ever be.

A branch cracks behind me.

I spin around, still on my knees, soaking through my one good dress. A figure stands at the edge of the trees.

And my stupid, stupid heart leaps, because for one second I think it's him. I think Cassian followed me to say sorry.

That's how you know I'm an even bigger fool than three hundred wolves decided I was tonight.

It isn't Cassian, but a stranger. He is tall, travel-worn, and his dark cloak is wet with melted snow. His face is kind, and that makes me trust him less, not more. In my experience, kindness pointed at me is usually the setup for a punchline.

He crouches down slowly, the way you'd approach a wounded animal, and holds his empty hands where I can see them.

"Easy," he says. "I'm not with them." He nods back toward the hall. "I was passing through, and I heard what the prince called you." Something crosses his face, not pity, almost like he recognizes me. "And I heard what you said back to him. That took more courage than every wolf in that room has put together."

I stare at him. Snow melts down the back of my neck.

"Who are you?" My voice comes out flat. I have no politeness left tonight.

"My name is Dorian Kane," the stranger says. "I'm the Alpha of a pack three valleys east. A small and kind pack. " He smiles warmly, and every alarm bell I own starts ringing at once. "I'm traveling south to arrange a wedding betrothal terms, bloodline contracts, all the dull things that take months. But I think the Goddess put me on this road tonight for a different reason."

He holds out one hand to me, across the snow.

"You don't belong to a pack that laughs at you, Lyra Thorne. Come with me. Join a pack that will know what you're worth."

And that's when a voice cuts through the dark behind me, a voice I already hated. 

"Get your hand away from my mate."