The Rejected Luna’s Vengeance

The scullery stank of lye and roasted boar, and Clara Vance had been scrubbing the same silver platter for ten minutes without seeing it.

Through the archway, the Great Hall of Silvercrest blazed with a thousand candles. Banners of white and steel hung from the rafters. Three hundred wolves in their finest furs packed the stone floor, and their voices rolled together into one hungry roar. Tonight Ethan Vance would be named Alpha Heir in full and choose the woman who would rule beside him.

Everyone in Silvercrest knew who that woman should be. Almost no one knew who he had promised her would be.

You're the only one who sees me, Ethan had whispered eight months ago, in the hay loft above the stables, his mouth against her temple. When I take the dais, I'll find a way. Just wait for me, Clara.

She had waited. She had waited through every cold dawn, through every cruel word from the pack women, through the years since her parents' bodies were dragged home from a rogue attack and she was left an orphan with no wolf, no rank, and no name worth saying.

A scrub-girl, they called her. Wolfless. Sixteen years in this pack and her wolf had never once answered her call. She was a hollow vessel, they said, and a charity case, and she was lucky to have a floor to sleep on.

"Stop gawking and carry the wine," snapped Marta, the head cook, and shoved a heavy tray into her arms.

Clara carried it. Her hands shook so badly the goblets chimed.

She slipped through the servants' door and pressed herself against the pillar near the dais, where the shadows were thickest. From there she could see him.

Ethan stood at the center of the raised platform in black and silver, broad-shouldered, his dark hair swept back, his jaw set in the lines that had once made her heart stumble. Beside him stood his father, Alpha Gideon, whose gaze swept the hall like a blade.

And at Ethan's other side, draped in white fox fur and pale gold, stood Lady Seraphina of Ironpeak.

Clara's stomach turned over. Seraphina was beautiful in the way a sharpened sword is beautiful. Behind her waited an honor guard of forty Ironpeak warriors in iron-plated armor, and every pack in the northern territories knew what Ironpeak controlled: the only working iron mines for five hundred miles.

It's politics, Clara told herself. It's just a show. He promised.

"Wolves of Silvercrest!" Gideon's voice cracked across the hall like thunder. "Tonight my son claims his birthright. Tonight, the moon will bless the union that will make us unbreakable!"

The hall erupted. Ethan raised one hand, and silence fell like a dropped blade.

His eyes moved across the crowd. They slid past the nobles, past the warriors, and caught on the pillar in the shadows.

On her.

The world detonated.

A bolt of white-hot fire ripped through Clara's chest, centered beneath her sternum, as though someone had driven a burning spear straight through her. Her knees buckled. The tray slipped from her fingers and the goblets exploded across the stone in a spray of red wine. Heat flooded her veins, wild and electric, and every hair on her body lifted. Something deep inside her, a door she had never known existed, cracked open.

Mate.

The word wasn't hers. It rose from somewhere ancient and certain, shuddering through bone and blood.

On the dais, Ethan staggered. His hand clamped over his own heart. His golden eyes flared wide, and for one suspended second his face was stripped of every mask. She saw shock. She saw hunger. She saw love.

Then she saw him decide.

She watched it happen. His jaw hardened, his gaze slid sideways to Seraphina and the forty iron-armored warriors at her back, and the light in his eyes went out like a snuffed flame.

Clara's heart dropped into a pit. No. No, please.

She stepped out of the shadows. She did not decide to. Her feet simply moved, driven by the burning thread that stretched between them and pulled her forward. Gasps rippled across the hall. A woman hissed. Someone laughed.

"Ethan," she breathed, and her voice cracked on his name.

"Seraphina of Ironpeak," Ethan said, loud and steady, not looking at her. "Before the moon and this pack, I choose you as my Luna."

The hall roared its approval.

Clara kept walking. Blood was running hot behind her eyes and the bond was screaming, a scorching rope she could feel tightening around her ribs. Sixteen years of silence in her wolf, and now it howled for him.

"Ethan, please. You feel it. You know you do."

Finally, he looked at her. Every head in the hall turned.

The coldness in his face was worse than any slap. "Servant," he said, "you forget yourself."

Clara's breath stopped. "Eight months," she whispered, and her voice shook but carried. "You said you'd find a way. You said wait for me."

A murmur swept the crowd, hungry and delighted. Seraphina's red lips curled.

Ethan stepped to the edge of the dais. Candlelight carved shadows across his face.

"I, Ethan Vance, heir of Silvercrest," he said, each word chiseled and clear, "reject you, Clara Vance, as my mate."

The air itself tore.

Clara heard it, a sound like a rope snapping inside her skull. Pain exploded outward from her chest, an agony so complete that her vision turned white. It felt like being ripped open. It felt like a living part of her soul being sliced away with a rusted blade.

"I sever this bond," Ethan finished, his voice trembling only slightly, "before the Moon Goddess and all who bear witness."

She hit the stone floor. Her body convulsed. Blood surged up her throat, hot and metallic, and spilled over her lips in a crimson spray across the white marble. Someone screamed, though perhaps it was her. Her fingers clawed at the cold stone as the burning thread inside her frayed, snapped, and left behind a hollow so vast she thought she might fall into it forever.

Above her, through the ringing, she heard his voice again.

"Strip her of her status. She is no longer under Silvercrest protection." A pause. "Guards. Drag her out."

Rough hands seized her arms. Through the blur of tears and blood, Clara looked up and met his eyes one last time.

They were dry.