All Chapters of Rejected: The Alpha's Fatal Mistake: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

WrenThe first joint patrol with Ironfang happened two weeks after Rurik's visit, and it went about as well as anyone could have hoped for two packs that had exactly one prior conversation's worth of trust between them."You take east, we'll take west, and we meet back at the ridge before dark," Wren said, laying it out for the combined group — six Nightshade wolves, if you counted generously, against eight of Rurik's, all of them eyeing each other with the specific wariness of animals deciding whether the new pack smell in the air meant ally or competition."Or," Rurik said, falling into step beside her instead of peeling off toward his assigned half, "we could mix the groups. Two Nightshade, two Ironfang, spread across both routes. Faster trust-building, and if either half runs into trouble, they're not facing it with strangers at their back.""That's not the plan I gave.""It's a better plan than the one you gave, and I think you know it, or you wouldn't still be standing here inst

KadeThe solstice arrived the way inevitable things always seemed to arrive lately — too fast and also, somehow, not fast enough, as though time itself couldn't decide how it felt about what was about to happen.The shrine had been dressed for the occasion in white and Ashborne blue, garlands woven through the old stone archway that had stood on Blackthorn land longer than either pack's current bloodline, and Kade stood beneath it in ceremonial dress that felt, absurdly, like a costume for a role he'd been cast in against his will.Seraphine came down the aisle in Ashborne colors, composed and lovely and entirely unreadable, the crowd's attention fixed on her the way it was supposed to be, and Kade held his position at the altar and did the only thing he had left to offer the moment: he stood still, and he did not run.The officiant's words washed past him in fragments — bound before the Goddess, before both packs, before all who bear witness — familiar phrases from a hundred weddings

WrenIt was Petra who brought it up first, which surprised Wren more than anything else about the conversation that followed — Petra, who'd spoken maybe six words directly to her in four months, choosing this particular evening to break her long silence with something that mattered."You should be Alpha." She said it plainly, from her spot by the fire, not looking up from the mending in her lap. "Ezra's been holding this pack together on borrowed time for six years. Everyone knows it. He knows it best of anybody."Ezra, across the room, didn't look surprised by the ambush, which told Wren this conversation had probably been planned before she'd even walked in that evening."She's not wrong," he said. "I've been thinking it since the rogue fight, if I'm honest. Been putting off saying it because I wasn't sure how you'd take it, and because naming a new Alpha isn't a small thing to ask of anybody, let alone somebody who's had exactly one pack already decide what she was worth without as

KadeThe rumors kept coming, more specific each time, the way rumors did once a thing became interesting enough for people to bother getting the details right.Nightshade had a name now, or near enough — an Alpha, young, who'd apparently come from nowhere five months back and rebuilt a dying pack from six starving survivors into something northern traders had started routing around out of simple caution. Female, according to two separate sources, which Kade noted and then spent an uncomfortable amount of time trying not to think about."They're calling her something now," Torren said, dropping into the chair across from Kade's desk with the particular energy of a man who'd been sitting on information he found more interesting than he was letting on. "Not a real name — nobody's gotten that far, she keeps it close — but a nickname. The Nightshade Ghost, on account of some trick she does in a fight. Rogues who go up against her patrol report losing track of her mid-attack. Just — gone, a

WrenEzra finally told her about Ashenmoor on a night when the rest of the pack had gone to sleep and it was just the two of them by the dying fire, the question she'd been quietly circling for six months finally getting asked directly enough that he couldn't deflect it again."You knew that brand," she said. "The night Rurik found it. You said you'd seen it before, and then you wouldn't say anything else, and it's been six months, Ezra."He was quiet long enough that she thought he might deflect again. Then he sighed, the particular sound of a man setting down something heavy he'd been carrying a long time. "Ashenmoor was Nightshade's sister pack, once. Same bloodline, split off three generations back over some dispute nobody living remembers the details of anymore. They kept more of the old blood than we did — more of the power you're carrying now. Forty years ago, something wiped them out. Wiped them out thoroughly, in a way that doesn't happen to packs by accident, and left this t