Chapter Two: Darkness

Serena’s POV

  Michael commands as he walks up to me and holds up my chin so I am looking directly at him.

  What I see in his eyes lets me know it is time to give up. I was holding up hope that maybe something, anything would make him change his mind but I was wrong. There’s nothing but rage and anger and disgust. It’s much more than my inability to shift. It’s something else and what hurts most is that I don’t know what it is.

  As I say the words, absolute glee appears on his face as he realizes that he has broken me just cements what I saw. I am nothing to him. It’s over, finished.

  “I, Serena Infirma,” I choke on my surname because even that portrays who I am. Weak, useless, pathetic. That’s the name they gave me when they found me abandoned as a baby at the pack border. I was so weak that they thought I wouldn’t survive my first year.

  Weakness is a taboo amongst wolves. You cannot show yourself as anything but strong, competent, useful. Anything other than that gives others the room to dominate you. That’s the reason I have always been treated like a joke all my life.

  Michael shifts his hand from my chin and goes to pull on my hair as I cry out in pain again.

  “Be quick about it. Don’t waste my time.”

  I, I Serena Infirma accept your rejection as your mate and r-renounce my position as the Luna of the Black Moon Pack. There, I said it, now please let me go.” I whimper out.

  He yanks on my head harder. “Hold on, I’m not finished with you yet.”

  “What more do you want?” I whisper brokenly as tears well up in my eyes from the pain.

  At that moment, he orders the pack seer to come forward and she performs the rites to unbind us as mates and she declares . “You are no longer mates in the eyes of the moon goddess. Nothing binds you. This shall be a sign that you are cast out, unwanted.”

  She takes out a blazing poker with the words ‘outcast’ inscribed on it and hands it over to Michael who instructs makes the wolves holding me hold out my wrist. He grins maniacally slow as realization dawns on me. No, he couldn’t, he wouldn’t.

  “W-what are you doing? Please don’t. You don’t have to do this.” I turn to Dom. “ You can’t let him do this. Please help me!”

  Dom goes to stand in front of me, shielding me from Michael’s view. “Alpha, is this really necessary? You already-“

  Michael growls low, his wolf taking over. “Shut up and get out of my way. Or are you questioning your Alpha? You will hold out her hand and that’s an order.” He commands with his Alpha tone.

  Dom tries to fight the command but can’t. He manages to grit out before going to take my hand from the wolves holding me down. “You’re making a mistake Alpha.”

  Michael just narrows his eyes and repeats the order. “Hold. Out. Her. Arm. Now.”

  As Michael comes closer with the blazing brand in his hands, I begin to struggle, trying to get away from the grip.

  “Shhhh! Don’t move. It’ll be over soon. I’m so sorry Siri.” He whispers my childhood nickname with regret in his eyes, breaking my heart in two.

  As Michael places the hot brand on my flesh, his eyes light up with delight as my howl of agony rings out in the dark, the sound causing birds around to take flight.

  After he is done he puts the brand away and his next words are the nail in the coffin that finally wreck me completely.

  “I, Alpha Michael reject you and banish you from the Black Moon Pack. Leave and never come back.”

  “Alpha, don’t.” Beta Dom tries to stop him but the words have already been said. It wasn’t enough that he rejected me as his mate, he had to banish me from the pack with no means of protection in this sorry state. What kind of sick bastard does this?

  Michael instructs the guards to drag me to the outskirts of the pack boundary and when I am tossed out, left to die, an injured, wounded Omega without the protection of a pack’s boundary and I lie on there on the forest floor beaten, broken and utterly destroyed until I finally surrender to the cold embrace of darkness.