Chapter Two

KIMBERLY

Time splintered into crystalline shards around me.

"She will be my future Luna."

Five words. Five simple words that had just taken a wrecking ball to my entire life.

Alpha Derrick’s hand — thick, callused, deadly — seized Mona by her delicate wrist, pulling her arm up over her head like a victory flag. The crowd erupted into cheers, their faces contorting into a grotesque carnival of excitement and relief. Relief that their daughter wasn’t the one being discarded. That Blood Alpha had found his match, was part of an attached body.

I couldn't breathe. My lungs wouldn’t expand, as if the air itself had become poisonous. This was beyond rejection — it was obliteration.

My father’s face suddenly caught my eye from across the room. For a brief moment, I glimpsed pure fear in his eyes before he shrouded it in Alpha ennui. He knew. He knew what this would mean.

Alpha rejections had more consequences than simply being humiliated by the own一 and in this case return to where they came from or to theirs or Moon Stone Pack, which we already knew since the Oracle had told us. A rejected she-wolf was an object—a slave compelled to serve her rejector for the rest of her life, cut off from her family, her history, her self.

A memory surfaced: Miss Laura, the pack’s former healer, being dragged screaming from a formal gathering a decade earlier. As was his right, the Alpha who rejected her had taken her as a slave. Within a year, they’d discovered her body in the river. She had chosen death over the life that had been thrust upon her.

That was now my future.

Catherine’s voice sliced through my daze. “So, are you picking Mona as your future Luna instead of Kimberly?” The victory in her voice was palpable.

“Indeed” came Alpha Derrick’s voice ringing through the hall. “And that is my last word on the matter.”

I forced myself to look at Mona, getting ready to offer comfort — my little sister, surely devastated by what had happened. But what I saw paralyzed me.

Mona was glowing. Her fingers laced with Derrick’s, her body tilted toward him in practiced intimacy. The smile on her face was not shocked or apologetic — it was triumphant. Radiant. As if it was all going just as it should.

"Is that really Mona?" I whispered, to no one who could hear.

My father’s voice pierced the festive chatter. “Alpha Derrick, I want to remind you that you chose Kimberly first?” It his tone was steel encased in silk — diplomatic, but with a razor edge.

"Yes, I did." Derrick didn’t so much as glance at me. "And now, I'm rejecting her."

The words landed like an executioner’s ax.

"That's unacceptable!" My father’s veneer broke, and something I rarely saw revealed itself—real anger. "We had an agreement! I expect you to honor it!"

Derrick dropped Mona’s hand and stalked, deadly elegant, toward my father. "Have I broken our contract?" His smile was teeth — a predator’s warning. “Aren’t you her father too?”

“She is, but she hasn’t had her first shift,” my father said, his voice trembling.

"So?" One syllable, dripping with contempt.

“She might be bonded to her true mate by then,” my father said, fishing. “It would cause complications —

“I won’t allow it,” Derrick cut in, his voice falling to a range that raised the hairs on my arms. “Besides, no matter what happens after her first shift. She is mine, now and always.”

It sent something cold and vicious twisting in my gut. Not the green-eyed monster—something more sinister. A premonition. My wolf, newly awakened after years of dormancy, paced inside me, agitated, sensing danger I could not yet name.

My father stood silent, the implications settling in. By Derrick declaring that as such, he was making it very clear — Mona was going to be his Luna if it was the last thing he did, no matter who else she belonged with. To have her, he would break nature itself.

“Now, now, settle down, you two,” Catherine said, interjecting herself between the two Alphas with skilled diplomacy. “Regardless of Mona or Kimberly, our packs will continue to be allies. We don't need to be in conflict.”

My father’s nostrils stretched wide, his control fading. With no further comment, he pivoted on his heel and strode out of the hall, creating a vacuum of dumbfounded quiet behind him.

I was frozen, a statue sculpted from shame and disbelief. I was a pack pariah, having been transformed from Alpha’s chosen in the span of minutes. From princess to slave.

“I suppose we can set up another engagement now that you’ve settled on Mona,” Derrick said to Catherine, her too-full smile almost splitting her face in two.

"Excellent. We will have the ceremony in three days,” Derrick said, as if my life hadn’t just been destroyed.

The crowd was standing and cheering; their approval was like daggers in my skull. Three days. In three days I would be Alpha Derrick's slave, and my sister his bride.

I felt like running away, flying out of the stifling corridor and away from all those laughable faces, but humiliation had turned my legs to stone. I put my face in my hands and wished for the ground to open up and swallow me whole.

The gathering settled around me, conversation restarting as though nothing out of the ordinary had occurred. I became invisible — the choice that was discarded, unworthy of recognition.

“Were you surprised at how it all ended?”

I raised my head to find Mona standing in front of me, nearly quivering with excitement. The sweet sister who’d helped me get ready, who’d promised to come visit me, who’d sworn eternal love just hours earlier — gone.

"How could... you?" The words forced their way past the lump in my throat.

She laughed, stepping closer. “Alpha Derrick would never pick you! He's always been mine."

"Yours?" The word was sand in my mouth.

“He’s of course mine,” she said, honeyed with satisfaction.

I scanned her face, searching for some trace of the sister I’d known my whole life — the girl who’d pulled the tail of my wolf, who’d crawled into my bed during storms, who’d tended to my scraped knees. She was no more, supplanted by a stranger with familiar features.

"How is that possible?" I demanded, letting anger finally cut through the shock. "Why didn't you tell me? Why are you saying this now?"

A cruel smile spread across her face, one I’d never seen on her face before. “Because I wanted to see Alpha Derrick turn you down.”

The words struck me like a physical blow. Even knowing what rejection would mean in our pack — servitude, exile from family, perpetual shame — she had wanted this for me?

"So... you want me to be his slave? I trembled as I spoke, tears at the brink. I held them back, not giving her the satisfaction.

"Exactly." She came closer, her breath warm against my ear. “And more than that, I don’t want you in our lives at all.”

She drew back slightly to look me in the eyes, her gaze cold and alien. “You honestly think you had a shot with Alpha Derrick? You with your snap, crackle, pop wolf and sad longing? I was going to get rid of you from the moment I came here.”

Something in me broke—the final shard of the life that had once been. Tears rolled down my cheeks as my mind fought to connect the dots between this Mona and the sister I loved.

She hugged herself, giggling lightly at my disintegration. "Oh my! Look at you! I’m already crying... Kim, save it for the tears. This is only the start of your agony.”

“You’re my sister,” I gasped. "How can you be so cruel?"

The woman’s face hardened, her green eyes flashing with malice. "Who's your sister? Did you Seem to have forgotten you were recently turned down? You’re not a member of this Family anymore.”