The Luna He Rejected Is The Millennium Wolf

Sienna's POV

The marble felt like a sheet of ice. It bit through the damp silk of my gown, sinking into my knees until the bone ached. My legs simply quit. White static flickered across my vision as hot, fat tears carved tracks through the powder on my cheeks.

Was this the grand opening of my life?

My father’s promises were ash now. I knew the life he described was gone, but I refused to believe this was the final curtain.

I forced my head up. Every pair of eyes in the Silver Fang hall pinned me to the floor. The overhead chandeliers were aggressive, casting a clinical light that turned the wine stain on my bodice into a jagged, crimson wound. I smoothed my palms over the silk, but my hands were frantic, trembling things I couldn't control.

Remember, Sienna. Four hours remain.

The voice was a heavy resonance in my skull, deeper than my own. Juvien. My wolf stirred. A moon symbol flared against the back of my hand, branding my skin with a silver heat. I scrambled back, my breath hitching in a throat that felt lined with glass.

Flashes of memory strobed through my mind. The smell of pine needles. The blur of a forest floor. Lucas laughing as he chased me through the tall grass when we were kids. I squeezed my eyes shut and shook my head, desperate to dislodge the ghosts.

"What... what was that?" The words came out as a pathetic rasp.

Heavy, deliberate footsteps vibrated through the floorboards behind me. I didn't need to look. The scent reached me first—expensive red wine and the sharp, biting edge of black pepper.

Ivy.

She drifted into my periphery, a crystal glass dangling carelessly from her fingertips. The wine surged toward the rim with every swaying step she took. She took her time, letting her gaze crawl down my body with a slow, predatory satisfaction. I tucked my chin. I wouldn't give her the satisfaction of a reaction. Not tonight.

Cold, spindly fingers hooked under my jaw. She forced my face up to meet hers.

"Oops," she murmured. A tiny, cruel twitch pulled at the corner of her mouth. "My hand slipped."

The glass tilted. The wine hit my chest in a heavy, freezing splash. It soaked through the thin silk instantly, clinging to my skin like a second, colder layer of failure. I gasped, the liquid trailing a path down to my waist.

The laughter started with a single noble in the front row, then rolled through the hall in a suffocating wave of noise.

I stared at her. A metallic, thick taste of disgust filled my mouth. Behind it, a quiet, sharpened hatred began to settle.

"Do you honestly think," Ivy said, leaning in until I could smell the cloying sweetness of her perfume. "That Alpha Lucas would choose you? A fated mate?" She let out a soft, airy giggle. "You’re a puppet mate, Sienna. Actually, I take it back. Just a puppet."

The words felt like needles of ice sliding down my spine.

I held her stare for three long seconds, refusing to blink. Then, I looked past her. Lucas stood near the dais, his arms barred across his chest. He watched the spectacle with the detachment of a man observing a stray dog. He did nothing.

The rightful Luna? I thought. Look at the winner you chose.

"I’m not playing this game with you, Ivy," I whispered. I made sure every syllable was sharp and distinct. "Keep your mate. I hope the night ceremony is everything you deserve."

Her smile didn't just fade; it died. Her eyes thinned into slits and her nostrils flared—the exact expression she wore right before she destroyed something she couldn't control.

She moved with a blurred, unnatural speed.

Ivy hurled herself onto the marble. Her body collided with the floor with a dull, sickening thud that cut through the laughter like a blade.

The hall went vacuum-silent. Servants froze, their trays tilted at dangerous angles.

Ivy pushed herself up on one trembling elbow. She looked around the room, her eyes wide and brimming with staged moisture, her lip quivering. She waited for the perfect moment of silence before she screamed.

"She pushed me!" Her voice broke, loud and jagged. "She hates me! She can't stand that I'm the Luna of Silver Fang!"

For a fraction of a second, a sharp, triumphant smirk flickered across her face. Then she buried her head in her hands.

Lucas moved. His boots struck the marble with the heavy cadence of authority. He stopped directly in front of me, his presence a physical weight. The bond between us—the golden thread I had felt since childhood—stretched thin, vibrated, and then snapped like a frayed rope. I shivered as the emptiness hollowed out my chest.

"Why would you do this, Sienna?" His voice was a low growl that filled every corner of the hall. The lower-ranked wolves in the room bowed their heads on instinct. "Why are you so consistently cruel to your own sister?"

He reached down, his touch infinitely more tender as he helped Ivy to her feet.

I looked at him, the burn of betrayal hot in my throat. This was the boy who used to promise he would be my shield. Now he was the one holding the storm.

I didn't give him an answer. I didn't even look at her. I ground my teeth together until the pressure sent a copper tang of blood onto my tongue. My mind was a chaotic theater of dark thoughts.

"She’s nothing but a worthless omega," a voice hissed from the crowd.

"Always a thorn in the side of the future Luna," another added.

"Lucas," I said, my voice sounding like raw sandpaper. "I get it. You hate me. I’m accepting the rejection. I'm going. But—"

The sentence was cut short.

Morrigan stepped out from the line of elders, the rhythmic thump of her cane sounding like a gavel.

"But what?" Morrigan asked, her eyes as cold as river stones. "Were you planning to finish the job? To weaken our Alpha's wolf for your own petty gain?"

The urge to lunge at her, to feel my fingers close around that withered throat, was an almost physical pull. But I knew the cost. They would strip my wolf for that. They would leave me a shell.

A hand blurred in my vision.

The slap landed with a crack that echoed off the high ceiling. Heat exploded across my cheek, sending my head snapping to the side. I felt the warm splash of blood hit the floor. One drop. Two.

I didn't cry. I clamped my jaw shut until my muscles ached.

"Lucas," I whispered, my hands shaking so violently I had to ball them into fists. "You actually slapped me."

"Does she require another to find her manners?" Morrigan asked. Her tone was light, as if she were discussing the weather.

"Sienna is a servant of this pack now," Lucas announced. He didn't look at me. He spoke to the floor, to the gallery, to anyone but the girl he had once loved. "She will perform every duty assigned to her. Any insolence, any curse... you are to teach her the lesson she clearly lacks."

He turned his back on me, walking toward his father at the dais. Ivy clung to his arm, matching his stride.

"And you will not accept the rejection, Sienna," he called back over his shoulder. "I haven't dismissed you yet."

Ivy leaned into him, her whisper intentionally loud enough to carry.

"You shouldn't have been so harsh," she told him, her eyes fixed on me. "She’s my sister. I know she resents me, but I really wanted her to see us tonight."

She flashed one last, jagged smirk.

I tried to call out, to scream at his retreating back, but my throat felt like it had been sewn shut. The breaking bond flared inside my ribs—a paradox of fire and ice. Inside the cage of my mind, Juvien let out a long, mourning howl.

So this is the fate the Moon Goddess had in mind?

Two female servants stepped forward, their fingers digging into the meat of my arms like talons. I forced my legs to hold. I wouldn't be dragged.

Morrigan watched from the steps, her expression one of deep, smug satisfaction. I kept my head high until the heavy oak doors of the hall groaned shut behind me.

Silence held for three heartbeats. Then, Adrian’s voice shattered it.

"A toast! To the Alpha!"

The corridor was a narrow, suffocating throat of stone. The air was damp and smelled of stagnant water. The draft slipped under my wet gown, turning my skin to gooseflesh. I couldn't stop the image of Lucas’s hands from looping in my mind—how they used to hold me, and how they felt tonight. I let out a sharp, ugly laugh.

"This is your reality now, omega," the first servant said, her voice flat with boredom. "You’re down in the dirt with the rest of us."

"Our dear Luna," the second one mocked, giggling.

"She’s the Alpha’s pet servant," the first corrected, shoving me toward a door. The wood was dark, swollen with rot, and smelled of mildew.

My forehead nearly struck the frame. I caught myself at the last second and spun around. I laughed again, louder this time, the sound bouncing off the cold stone walls.

They blinked, looking at each other with a flash of genuine confusion that quickly soured into anger.

They turned and left, their footsteps echoing until they were swallowed by the shadows.

I stood alone in the dark. The betrayal sat in my chest, beating with the steady rhythm of a second heart. My eyes burned, but the tears stayed back.

I stepped inside. The room was less of a home and more of a cellar. Cobwebs brushed against my face like ghostly fingers. I wiped them away and slid the rusted bolt home. It screeched in protest.

A cracked, silvered mirror hung crookedly on the wall. I walked toward it, my reflection fractured.

The girl in the glass was a stranger. Her cheek was an angry, swelling red. Her gown was a ruined rag.

Then, her eyes shifted. The brown bled away, replaced by a pouring, molten silver. My hair lifted as if caught in an invisible updraft. The moon mark on my hand began to glow, filling the cramped room with a light so blinding I had to shield my eyes.

Your mate is coming, Sienna.

Juvien’s voice was a solid thing in my mind—warm and utterly certain.

I shook, but not from the cold. I shook from the terrifying hope of it. I looked at the mirror and laughed at the girl inside.

"It’s a fantasy, Juvien," I whispered to the empty room. "Rejection kills the soul. Who would ever want what’s left of me?"

No answer came.

The room tilted. The floor rose up to meet me. Blackness flooded in, and I fell, the thin, lumpy mattress the only thing there to catch me.