Chapter 1 : Rejected

Elara POV

I wake at five, like every morning, in the room behind the pack house kitchen. There is no window. The air smells like old grease and bleach.

I lie still and count to thirty. Nobody knocks. My phone has no messages. No card has been slid under the door.

I am eighteen today.

I get up anyway. In the mirror over the sink I see the same thin face. I hold my eyes open and look for gold. There isn't any. There never has been.

By six I'm on my knees in the dining hall with a brush and a bucket. Boots come down the hallway. Nobody walks around me. They step over my hands, and one pair steps on my fingers and stays there.

"Still no wolf, birthday girl?" a girl says above me. She knows what day it is. They all do. "Guess the Moon Goddess skipped the trash."

"Careful," a boy says. "She might contaminate the floor with her defect."

Laughter. I keep scrubbing. Someone kicks the bucket and gray water runs across the tiles and into my sleeve, my only clean shirt. It is cold against my ribs.

"Eighteen and still a blank slate," the boy says. "Pathetic."

They leave. I wring out my sleeve over the bucket. My hands shake. I tell myself it's the cold. I don't cry. I finish the floor.

"Elara."

Callum is standing in the kitchen doorway. The Alpha's son. His hair is still wet from the shower. He looks down the hall once, then crosses the floor and presses a coffee into my hands. It's still warm. A muffin is wrapped in a napkin under his thumb.

He leans down until only I can hear him. "Happy birthday."

Then he walks out, shoulders straight, like nothing happened.

I stay on my knees holding the cup with both hands. He remembered. Nobody else in this house did. I eat the muffin in the pantry in four bites so no one sees.

* * *

By nine that night the pack house doesn't look like itself. Crystal lights hang from the ceiling of the main hall. A DJ tests speakers by the staircase. Caterers carry silver trays I'm not allowed to touch. Girls come down the stairs in designer dresses with their hair done and their phones out. Every eighteen-year-old in this pack will find a mate tonight. At midnight the Moon Goddess chooses. That's how it works.

Marlene, the Beta's wife, drops a uniform on my bed. It's black and faded and two sizes too big. I roll the sleeves three times. The shoes are scuffed at the toes.

"Drinks," she says. "Stay invisible. Nobody wants to look at the wolfless server on mating night."

I carry a tray of champagne flutes into the hall. People take glasses without looking at me. Their eyes slide past my face.

Callum is near the stairs in a black suit. He's laughing. Vanessa stands beside him in a red dress, blonde hair down her back, her hand on his arm. She has the strongest wolf in our age group. Her father is the Beta. Everyone says she is perfect, and they say it often.

Every time I cross the room I look at him. Twice his eyes almost reach mine. Then Vanessa says something, and he turns.

"Imagine if she actually got a mate," a woman says as I pass. "The bond would reject her on principle."

"She's only here so the rest of us look better," says another.

Vanessa's friends are by the bar. They don't lower their voices. "Zero out of ten," one says, looking at me from my shoes to my hair. "I wouldn't claim her for charity."

I keep walking. My knuckles are white on the tray.

At midnight the DJ cuts the music. The Alpha stands on the staircase and raises a glass. "Tonight the Moon Goddess chooses."

The hall goes quiet. Couples form at the edges of the room. A girl screams and runs into a boy's arms. I stand against the wall with my tray, my heartbeat loud in my ears.

Someone reaches for a glass. Fingers brush the edge of the tray, over my hand.

Heat. It goes up my arm and across my chest, and my knees weaken. The tray tilts. I catch it. A single word is in my head before I can think. Mine.

I look up. Callum's hand is still on the tray. He has gone completely still.

He takes the glass. He backs away one step, two, until the crowd closes between us. Then it opens, and he's standing in the middle of the hall, looking at me.

He feels it too. I see the exact second he knows. His face goes soft.

For one second I believe my life is about to change. No more floors. No more bucket. No more being nothing. I am his. He is mine. I almost laugh. I almost cry. I stand there holding a tray of glasses and let myself believe it.

* * *

Callum starts walking toward me. The whole hall watches. People move out of his way. He stops three feet from me.

I open my mouth to say his name.

"I, Callum of the Blackthorn Pack, reject you, Elara, as my mate." His voice is flat and clear. He says it for every phone in the room. "I claim Vanessa instead."

Vanessa walks to his side, already glowing.

Then the bond breaks. The pain starts in my chest and spreads to my hands.

The hall erupts. Gasps. Laughter. Phone cameras click. Women hold their screens up to my face and film.

"Even her own mate doesn't want the defective one!" someone shouts.

"Told you the bond would spit her out," another says.

Callum doesn't look at me. His eyes stay on the floor beside my shoes. His shoulders drop. He breathes out. He looks relieved.

That is the part I can't stand.

I look for one face in that crowd that isn't laughing. I don't find one.

My hands shake so hard the glasses rattle on the tray. "Callum," I say. It comes out barely a sound. He doesn't look up.

My eyes burn. I won't let the tears fall. Not here. Not for them.

* * *

The tray slips. It hits the marble and shatters, and the laughter gets louder.

I turn and run. Through the kitchen, past the cooks who stare, out the back door, past the gates. Into the street. My shoes slap the pavement. The uniform sleeves slide down over my hands. A car honks. I don't stop.

The hotel next door has a service entrance propped open. I take the stairs, all eleven floors, until a door opens onto the roof terrace.

Wind. City lights. Empty tables. I walk to the railing and my knees give out. I slide down against it. The sob that comes out of me is ugly, and it doesn't stop. I bite my lip to hold it in and taste blood anyway.

The bond is still there. It pulls me back toward the pack house, hard, in my chest. Every pull is Callum saying it again. I press my palm flat against my chest as if I can hold it shut. It doesn't help.

"Take the crying somewhere else."

I freeze. A man stands at the far end of the terrace by the glass wall. He's tall. Black suit. A glass in his hand. He is watching the city, not me.

"Some of us are trying to drink in peace," he says.

I wipe my face with my sleeve and stand. "It's a public terrace."

"It's closed tonight." Now he turns. Dark eyes. Sharp jaw. He looks at the uniform, my face, the blood on my lip. Nothing in his expression moves. "Which means you shouldn't be here."

"I didn't know anyone was here."

"Now you do."

"Wow," I say. "You're cold."

"You're loud."

"And arrogant." My voice cracks. I push through it. "Just another man who thinks he can dismiss me in one sentence."

Something crosses his face and is gone before I can name it. "I told you to go somewhere else. I said nothing about you."

"You didn't have to."

"You walked onto my terrace crying like the world ended, and you're angry that I noticed."

"I'm not angry that you noticed. I'm tired of people looking at me and deciding what I'm worth."

"I haven't decided anything."

"Good. Keep it that way."

He steps toward me. I don't step back. We end up three feet apart, the same distance Callum stopped at.

Heat starts under my skin, low and strange. It isn't the bond. It isn't pain. His eyes hold mine. I try to look away and can't. His jaw tightens. The hand with the glass goes still.

His breathing has changed. So has mine. I smell rain on his jacket and something warmer under it, and I hate that I notice.

The wind moves between us. Neither of us speaks. Neither of us looks away.