The Day He Rejected Me

The mate bond was supposed to feel like warmth. Like coming home.

Mine felt like a knife being dragged down my spine while the entire pack watched.

"Do you, Alpha Jaxon Blackthorne, accept Stella Ward as your fated mate and Luna?"

The Elder's voice echoed through the stone hall. A hundred wolves held their breath. Candles flickered against the high walls. My hands were shaking so hard the lace of my white dress trembled.

I looked up at Jaxon.

My Jaxon. The boy who had taught me how to track deer when I was twelve. The boy who had held my hair when I had my first shift fever. The boy who had kissed my forehead three nights ago and whispered, "Soon, Stella. Soon you'll be mine officially."

He was not looking at me.

He was looking past me, at the massive oak doors. His jaw was stone. His eyes, that beautiful amber I loved, were cold. Empty.

"Well?" The Elder pressed, frowning. "Alpha?"

Silence stretched. My wolf - or what I thought was my wolf, that small, quiet presence that had never spoken - whimpered inside me.

Then Jaxon spoke.

"I, Alpha Jaxon Blackthorne, reject Stella Ward."

For a second, my brain refused to translate the words. Rejection was a word for stories. For weak wolves from other packs. Not for us. Not for mates who had grown up together.

The gasp that tore through the hall was like a physical blow. My mother made a sound and collapsed into my father's arms. Someone screamed my name.

The bond - that golden thread I had felt since my eighteenth birthday two months ago - snapped.

It did not snap quietly.

It exploded.

Pain like white fire licked up my spine and burst behind my eyes. I fell to my knees on the cold stone, my white dress pooling around me like spilled milk. I couldn't breathe. My chest was caving in. Every nerve ending screamed that my other half was tearing himself out of me.

But then something strange happened.

The pain stopped.

Abruptly. As if a hand had reached inside my chest and turned off the fire.

A new voice spoke inside my head. Not the quiet whimper I was used to. This voice was ancient. Female. Furious. And it was not whimpering.

_ENOUGH._

The hall was still staring at me, waiting for me to crumble, to beg, to die as rejected mates sometimes did. Jaxon's Beta, Liam, rushed forward as if to catch me, but Jaxon lifted a hand and stopped him.

"She is not my mate," Jaxon said, his voice louder now, carrying the Alpha command that made every wolf lower their head. "A Luna must be strong. She must be able to protect the pack. For three years, Stella has failed to shift. She has no wolf. She has no scent of a wolf. The Moon Goddess made a mistake. I will not let a mistake lead this pack."

No wolf.

The words hit harder than the rejection. Because they were true. Every other girl my age had shifted on their sixteenth birthday in a burst of fur and howling. I had spent my sixteenth birthday vomiting and feverish, and when I woke up, nothing. No fur. No claws. No voice in my head except a faint, sleeping breath.

I was the Alpha's adopted daughter, wolfless.

Pathetic.

I pushed myself to my feet. My knees were bleeding through the dress. I looked straight at Jaxon. For the first time that night, he looked at me. And I saw it.

Fear.

His hands were fists. His wolf was howling inside him - I could see the gold flickering in his eyes, fighting his human control. His wolf did not want this rejection. His wolf was in agony.

So why was he doing it?

"Is that all?" My voice came out hoarse, but it did not shake. The new voice inside me was holding me up.

Jaxon flinched.

"If I have no wolf, then you have lost nothing," I said. "So why are you shaking, Alpha?"

A murmur ran through the crowd. No one spoke to an Alpha like that. Especially not a wolfless girl.

Jaxon's Beta whispered, "Jaxon, her eyes..."

Jaxon stared at my face and stepped back. One step. An Alpha stepping back from a wolfless female had never happened in our pack history.

Because my eyes were no longer brown.

I could see my reflection in the polished silver plate behind the Elder. My eyes were glowing. Silver. Like molten moonlight. And behind me, on the stone wall, my shadow was not the shadow of a girl.

It was the shadow of a wolf. A huge wolf, head thrown back, howling. And it was white.

The hall descended into chaos.

"White Wolf!"

"Impossible! They are extinct!"

"Goddess preserve us!"

The Elders fell to their knees. The white wolf was legend. The first wolf. The Queen's bloodline. A wolf that had not been seen for a hundred years because the last one had been hunted and killed for being too powerful.

I felt fur breaking over my skin. Not the painful tearing my friends had described. It felt like cold water, like freedom. My bones cracked and reshaped, but there was no pain, only power.

The white dress tore.

I did not fall. I rose.

On four paws, larger than any female wolf in the pack, larger than most males. My fur was pure snow, tipped with silver. When I opened my jaws, my voice was not a whimper. It was a roar that shook the candles out.

Jaxon shifted involuntarily. His black wolf, huge and scarred, burst forward, not to attack, but because his human side could no longer contain his wolf's grief. His black wolf whined, belly to the floor, crawling towards me, whimpering.

_Mate. Mate. What have you done?_

His voice was in my head, broken.

I looked down at him. My white wolf - my wolf, who finally told me her name was Lyra - spoke through me.

_You rejected a Queen to keep your throne, little Alpha. Now watch what you lost._

I turned and ran.

I burst through the oak doors, through the courtyard where the pack parted like water, into the Dark Forest that bordered our territory. I ran and ran, Lyra's paws barely touching the snow, until the howls of the pack were far behind me.

Only when I reached the frozen river at the edge of our lands did I stop. I shifted back, naked in the snow but not cold. My hair was longer now, down to my waist, and a single streak of pure white ran through the black.

Lyra's voice was soft now, but powerful.

_We are not wolfless, Stella. We were sleeping. He tried to kill us before we woke. If you had become his Luna last night, he would have made sure you never shifted. He knows what you are._

"What am I?" I whispered, my breath fogging in the night air.

Before Lyra could answer, a twig snapped behind me.

I was not alone.

A man stepped out from between the trees. Not Jaxon. Taller. His coat was black, his eyes were silver like mine, and when he smiled, I saw fangs.

He looked at my white hair, at my naked form, at the glowing paw prints I had left in the snow that were not melting.

"So," he said, his voice like winter. "The White Queen has finally woken. Jaxon Blackthorne just made the biggest mistake of his miserable life. And I... I have been waiting for you for ten years, Stella Ward."

He knew my name. He knew what I was. And behind him, deeper in the forest, a dozen more silver eyes opened in the dark.

They were not from my pack.

The rejection was not the end of my story.

It was the bait that lured me into a much darker one.