All Chapters of Rejected by the Alpha, Claimed by the Dark King: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

Aria Hale woke up to the sound of bells.They weren’t real bells—just the old wind chimes outside her bedroom window, clinking together in the morning breeze—but today they felt like a sign. Her eighteenth birthday. Mate day. The day the Moon Goddess would finally stop being a story and turn into a person with a heartbeat and a face.Her mate.She lay there for a moment, staring at the low wooden ceiling of the pack house, listening to the familiar sounds of the Thornridge Pack waking up. Footsteps in the hall. Voices drifting through thin walls. Someone laughing in the kitchen downstairs, the smell of coffee already thick in the air. Everything felt sharper, brighter, edged in a soft golden anticipation.Today, she thought, pressing her palm against her thundering chest. Today everything changes.“Aria! Get up already!” Her cousin Mia’s voice shot through the door, followed by a fist thumping twice on the wood. “If you’re late to your own ceremony, Aunt Lana is going to murder you an

For a moment, the world didn’t make sense.Aria lay on the ground, breath trapped in her lungs, vision flickering in and out like a broken lantern. Every heartbeat felt like a blade dragging across the inside of her chest. The mate bond—beautiful, hopeful, glittering only minutes before—was now a jagged, tearing pain she couldn’t escape.The rejection was still ripping through her.Her wolf’s scream echoed in her skull, raw and ragged. He rejected us. He rejected us. He rejected—“Aria!” Mia’s voice, panicked and distant, barely broke through the agony.Hands reached for her—too many, too close.And then the air itself split open.A pulse of cold shot through the clearing, whipping hair and clothes and leaves into the air. Wolves staggered backward, instinctively baring their throats as a shadow poured from the treeline like liquid night.The tear widened—dark swirling mist spilling across the ground—and the world fell completely silent.From inside the rift, a figure stepped out.T

Aria’s heart hammered so loudly she wondered if they could hear it echoing through the stone walls.The prophecy.The word sat between them like a lit match dropped into dry leaves—dangerous, bright, ready to set her entire life on fire.“I don’t understand,” Aria whispered, her voice thin. “What prophecy? Why—why are you looking at me like that?”The shadow-woman lowered her gaze, almost in awe. “Forgive me. I spoke out of turn.”“You did,” Erevan said evenly, though there was no true anger in his tone. Only warning. “Leave us.”“But the Council—”“I said leave.”The woman bowed her head and slipped out, the door closing softly behind her.Silence expanded in the chamber, thick and pulsing.Aria pulled the blanket higher around herself, suddenly aware of how small she felt in a room built for something ancient and powerful.“Erevan…” She swallowed. “What prophecy?”He didn’t answer immediately.He moved instead—slowly rising from the edge of the bed, clasping his hands behind his bac

Aria didn’t know how long she stayed frozen like that—breathing too fast, heart beating too loud, staring at the King like he’d spoken a language only her soul understood.Erevan didn’t break the moment.Didn’t soften it.Didn’t look away from her trembling gaze.He simply existed in front of her—quiet, steady, terrifyingly certain—while her entire world kept shifting under her feet.“You don’t even know me,” she whispered.“I know enough,” he said.“That isn’t possible.”“It is.”“Why?” Aria pushed, her voice thinner than she meant, but steadier than she felt. “Why do you keep saying things like that? Why pull me through a rift? Why risk the Council’s wrath? Why threaten an entire hall of shadow-wielders for me?”Erevan held her gaze for a long, breathless second.Then he answered quietly:“Because when I found you, you were breaking… and I couldn’t bear it.”Her stomach flipped.He said it like a fact.Not a confession.Not a flirtation.Just truth.And somehow that made it worse—mo

Aria shot to her feet before she even realized she’d moved.“The rift?” she whispered, breath catching in her throat. “Again?”The guard nodded, chest heaving. “Yes, my King. It’s unstable. It opened on its own—twice. The shadows in the lower valley are reacting. We think something is coming through.”Erevan’s expression hardened into something sharp and lethal.“Where?” he asked.“The eastern cliffs,” the guard replied. “The Watchers are already there, but—” His eyes darted briefly toward Aria. “They say the energy feels… wrong.”Erevan didn’t waste another second.“Stay here,” he told Aria. “Do not leave this chamber.”“No.” Her voice cracked, surprising even her. “I’m not staying in a room while something tied to me is ripping open your realm. I don’t want to hide.”“You are still wounded.”“I’m not helpless.”His jaw tightened. “You’re not ready.”“And you can’t fight the entire world alone.”That made him pause.Just for a heartbeat.Her chest still ached—but not enough to keep h