CHAPTER 4

Elara's POV

I couldn’t hear the murmurs of the crowd or the rustle of wind through the trees. 

All I could hear was the frantic, joyous rhythm of my own heart.

For the first time in eighteen years, the cold that had settled into my bones was gone, replaced by a heat so fierce it felt like coming home.

I didn’t care that he was the High Alpha’s son. I didn’t care about politics or rank. 

All I felt were the tingles where his fingers rested and the soul-deep certainty that I was no longer alone.

I had been the discarded omega, the glitch, the stain on the marble, but the Moon Goddess had answered me. 

She hadn’t just given me a mate. She had given me a protector.

Someone to love me.

I looked up at Ryker, my lips parting into a small, radiant smile. I expected to see my own relief mirrored in his eyes. 

I expected him to pull me into his arms and tell me my life of servitude was over.

Instead, the golden glow in his gaze began to dim, swallowed by a swirling, storm-dark void.

My smile faltered.

I stayed perfectly still, searching his face, desperately trying to convince myself that the flicker of revulsion I saw was only a trick of the crimson moonlight.

‘He’s just shocked,’ I told myself as my heart began to stutter. ‘He’s overwhelmed by the bond.’

Then his expression hardened into something jagged and cold.

It wasn’t a shock.

It was the same look my father wore when I spilled water on the floor.

The look of someone staring at trash stuck to the bottom of their shoe.

Ryker jerked his hands away from my face as if my skin had burned him. 

He stepped back, wiping his palms on his trousers with deliberate slowness, an act that hurt more than any whip.

“Ryker?” I whispered, my voice trembling. I reached for him, my fingers aching for that electric warmth to return. “Ryker, what’s wrong?”

My heart didn’t ache; it froze, squeezed tight by an icy fist.

The clearing had gone deathly silent now, hundreds of eyes boring into us. 

Behind my father, I spotted Kaelith, a small, triumphant smirk playing at the corner of her lips.

Ryker didn’t answer me. 

He turned instead to his father, then to mine. 

Whatever flicker of hesitation had existed was gone, replaced by unmasked contempt.

“You have to be joking,” Ryker spat, his voice ringing across the clearing. “This? This broken thing is supposed to be my equal?”

“Ryker, please,” I breathed as tears finally burned my eyes.

He turned back to me, his handsome features twisting into something cruel. 

“Don’t say my name, Omega. I’ve spent my entire life preparing to lead the greatest pack in the North. I trained for a Luna who can fight, who can shift, who can lead.”

His gaze dragged over me like a blade.

“Not a servant who smells of dishwater and failure.”

The world blurred. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe.

Heavy boots approached from behind.

“Ryker, what is the meaning of this?” my father demanded as he stepped forward.

For one fragile heartbeat, hope flared.

Was he defending me?

Was he finally choosing me?

Then I saw it, the way his eyes flicked to the High Alpha, hungry and desperate. 

He wasn’t protecting his daughter. He was protecting his ambition.

“She is of my bloodline,” my father said tightly. “The bond has spoken.”

A cold, elegant woman emerged from the shadows, Ryker’s mother, the High Luna. 

She leaned in and whispered something into his ear, her gaze never leaving me, her expression clinical and detached, as if assessing a disease.

Ryker’s lip curled.

He turned back to me, his eyes raking over the green hand-me-down dress I’d been proud to wear only hours ago.

“Look at you,” he mocked. “Did you really think a discarded rag from your sister’s closet could hide what you are? You were practically glowing, Elara. Did you actually believe I’d accept a mate who spends her days scrubbing filth from the floors my warriors walk on?”

The pain tore through my chest, sharp and splitting, like my soul was being ripped in two.

“If I were to take a mate from the Vance line,” Ryker continued conversationally, “it would be your sister. Kaelith has fire. Rank. Strength. She is a wolf.”

His gaze cut into me.

“You are a glitch. A mistake.”

He stepped back, drawing himself to his full height. 

The air itself seemed to freeze as he inhaled, Alpha power rolling off him in suffocating waves.

“I, Ryker Voss, heir to the High Alpha,” he declared, his voice ringing with command, “reject you, Elara Vance, as my mate and future Luna. I sever the bond. I cast you out.”

The rejection struck like a physical blow.

A silent scream tore through my mind as the golden thread binding our souls snapped, withering into ash. 

Agony exploded in my chest, a cold blade twisting where warmth had lived only seconds before.

I staggered back, clutching my heart, gasping for air that wouldn’t come.

“Ryker! You cannot discard a fated match!” my father shouted, his face flushing purple as he surged forward.

Not toward me…toward the power slipping from his grasp. 

“The alliance—”

Ryker didn’t let him finish. He turned away as if the very idea of our bond insulted him.

I stood frozen, mouth open in a silent plea, my voice crushed beneath the weight of his rejection.

Then the silence was shattered.

It began with a snicker, then another, until the clearing erupted into cruel, jagged laughter.

“Did you see her face?” Sarah shrieked, pointing at me. “She really thought she’d be our High Luna!”

“An Omega and a High Alpha?” someone jeered. “What made her think she’d ever be wanted? Especially by Ryker? She’s lucky he didn’t kill her for touching him.”

The laughter turned into a chant.

“Useless.”

“Glitch.”

“Servant.”

At the edge of the clearing, Ryker paused. He didn’t look at me, only at my father, as if discussing a piece of defective livestock.

“She is the most useless thing I’ve ever seen,” he said coldly. “If you care about your pack and your reputation, Vance, you’ll get rid of her. Her existence is a stain on our kind.”

Then he turned away, his cape swirling through the crimson light as he disappeared into the crowd.

My knees gave out. 

I hit the dirt, the forest-green dress pooling around me like a cruel mockery of the life I had almost touched. 

My last hope wasn’t just gone; it had been ground into the mud and spat upon.

I looked up at my father, searching his face for even a flicker of pity.

There was nothing.

Alpha Vance stared down at me with a hatred so deep it made the Beta’s whip feel like a caress. 

He didn’t see a daughter whose soul had just been torn apart. He saw the source of his greatest public humiliation.

I was broken.

There was no door out.

No hero was coming.

I was alone in the dark, surrounded by the laughter of the very pack that was supposed to be mine.