Lahat ng Kabanata ng Rejected By My Alpha, Claimed By The Ruthless Billionaire: Kabanata 1 - Kabanata 10

The first sentence hit her in the chest like a bullet.Lila Winstone knelt in the mud with her hands on her thighs, palms up in the traditional posture of submission, her wolf a caged animal behind her ribs. The rain had soaked through her thin dress, plastered her black hair to her scalp, and she couldn't feel any of it because the cold inside her was so much worse. Two hundred pack members ringed the clearing, umbrellas up, faces blurred by rain and distance. She stared at the mud between her fingers and waited.Lucian stood five feet away. She could smell him even through the wet—cedar and pine and the warm musk she'd buried her face in for three years, the scent that meant home, meant safe, meant I am yours and you are mine and nothing in this world can touch us. He wasn't wearing his ceremonial jacket. Black sweater, collar soaked, no pack markings. Like he wanted to be anyone else in this moment."Lila Winstone," he said, and his voice cracked on the first syllable—a fracture so

The chandeliers are melting.That's the first thought that goes through Aurelia's head as she steps through the service entrance, heels clicking against marble polished to a mirror shine. They're not actually melting, obviously — the light just catches them wrong from this angle, sends prisms skittering across the vaulted ceiling like shattered glass. Twelve crystal chandeliers, each one the size of a compact car, suspended over five hundred of the wealthiest people in the northeastern corridor.She's been in this ballroom exactly once before. Three years ago. Cleaning crew.The smell hits her first — white florals and expensive champagne, the particular cloying sweetness of donation-money perfume layered over tired skin. Underneath it: the ozone tang of the HVAC system, overcooked filet mignon from the kitchen, the faint metallic ghost of the ice sculptures melting on their pedestals. Aurelia lets the sensory flood wash over her and files it away. Cataloged. Controlled.She checks he

The room smelled like a hundred different perfumes layered over champagne and the faint chemical tang of the ballroom's industrial carpet cleaner. Aurelia's speech had ended seven minutes ago. Her hands were still shaking under the table.She pressed her palms flat against her thighs—black silk, the dress she'd bought specifically because Lucian would hate it. Backless. Red. The color of a warning. The color of *look at me now, you coward.*She'd felt his eyes on her the entire time she spoke. Front row. His glass had shattered in his hand when she mentioned living through the worst year of her life and building something from the wreckage. The sound had carried. A server had rushed to clean it up. Aurelia hadn't looked at him once.She was looking at him now.Not on purpose. Her gaze had drifted across the ballroom while she pretended to read the auction catalogue—the glossy pages blurring as she tracked movement in her peripheral vision. Lucian stood near the bar, his jacket off, hi

The morning light cut through the floor-to-ceiling windows in hard white rectangles, laying geometric patterns across the concrete floor. The air smelled like coffee grounds and ozone — the particular scent of soldering stations recently powered down, of capacitors breathing after a long night. A floor fan in the corner cycled slowly, stirring papers pinned to a corkboard: schematics, delivery receipts, a sticky note with *HARUKO — ORDER MORE 22AWG WIRE* in Aurelia's handwriting.She was at her workstation, halfway through testing a prototype PCB, when Haruko's voice cut through the hum of oscillators."Um. Boss."Aurelia didn't look up. Her tweezers hovered over a resistor array, steady as surgery. "What.""There's a man in the lobby. Expensive suit. He asked for you by name."She set the tweezers down. Closed her eyes. Took a breath that didn't quite settle.*Of course he did.*"I'll handle it." She stripped her ESD gloves and hung them on the hook beside her station. Her reflection

The building smelled like money and bleach — that specific clean that comes from surfaces wiped down every hour, from air filtration systems that cost more than most people's cars. Aurelia had been in a hundred corporate lobbies. This one was different. Not because it was bigger or glossier, but because of the *quiet*. No frantic typing. No phone chatter. Just the soft hum of elevators and the footfalls of people who knew exactly where they were going.She'd worn her armor today. A charcoal pantsuit, tailored sharp enough to cut, with a silk shell underneath the color of dried blood. Hair in a low twist. Heels that added three inches and made her calves ache. She'd spent an hour on her face that morning — not to look pretty, but to look *impossible to read*. Her reflection in the elevator doors stared back, blank and polished as a mannequin.The forty-seventh floor opened into a reception area that was aggressively minimalist. White walls. A single dark wood desk. A woman behind it wi