All Chapters of Beneath the cursed moon:The Alpha Rejected Mate : Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

I never thought I would be chosen.Not me.Not Lyra Ashveil, the girl nobody wanted, the daughter of a woman the pack never forgave, the omega who ate alone and walked alone and had learned, very early in life, that hoping for things only made the hurt worse when they didn't come.But tonight was the Blood Moon Ceremony.And even though I was broken, invisible, unwanted, I still allowed myself to hope.The moon had turned red.Not orange, not pink, not the soft blush colour of a normal autumn sky, angry red, like a wound split open across the night. It hung above the Ironveil Pack's ceremonial clearing like a warning nobody was reading.I should have read it.I was standing in a line with sixteen other unmated wolves, all of us dressed in white, all of us shivering, some from the cold, some from excitement, some from fear. The elders stood at the head of the circle with their torches and their chants, their voices rising and falling in an ancient rhythm that vibrated in your chest eve

At some point the sobs just ran out. Like a storm that burns through everything it has and then goes quiet. I was still on the ground, still in my white ceremony dress, still in the middle of the Ashwood forest with dirt on my knees and bark scraping my back where I had slumped against a tree.The blood moon was still up there.Still red. Still watching.I hated it.I had prayed to that moon. I had stood in that circle with my whole heart open and I had prayed, and it had answered me, and the answer had been Damien Voss looking me in the eye and deciding I was not enough.I closed my eyes.My scar was still burning. Low now, like an ember instead of a flame, but steady ,Pulsing ,Reminding me it was there.*Not one,* that strange voice had whispered. *Two.*I didn't know what that meant. I was too tired to think about it. I was too tired to think about anything except the fact that somewhere behind me, back in the warmth and the firelight, Damien was probably already celebrating. Proba

I don't know how long we sat there.Long enough for the red moon to shift further across the sky. Kael hadn't moved from his log.He hadn't spoken either. Hadn't pushed. Hadn't filled the silence with uncomfortable sympathy or clumsy questions or that particular brand of pity that felt worse than being ignored. He just sat there calm and solid and present like he had nowhere else to be and no opinion about how long this was going to take.I pressed the cloth to my knuckles one more time and looked at him sideways.He was looking up at the moon.And I don't know why but that was when it really hit me what he looked like. Properly. Because the first time I had seen him step out of the dark I had been too frightened and too raw to take him in properly. Now, in the deep red moonlight, with the forest quiet around us and his face tilted up and his expression open in the way people's faces only get when they think nobody is watchingI felt my breath do something strange.He was beautiful.

The courtyard was already full by the time Sera and I got there.Every wolf in the Ironveil Pack, warriors, omegas, elders, mothers with babies balanced on their hips, all of them packed into the main courtyard with their breath coming out in small white clouds. The great pack hall at one end, the elder lodge at the other, and in the middle, the raised stone platform where the Alpha addressed his people.I had stood in this crowd a hundred times.Always at the back. Always invisible.Today felt different.People moved when they saw me coming Not out of respect More like they didn't want to be too close, like whatever had happened to me last night was something they could catch if they stood near enough. I watched the small shifts, the shuffled feet, the turned shoulders, eyes that found somewhere else to be the moment they almost met mine, and I felt Selene stir low in my chest.Let them move. Her voice was quieter than usual. We never needed their closeness anyway.I kept walking.Se

The walk back from Mira's lodge felt longer than it should have.Like the ground itself had shifted while I was inside and I was now walking across a different world than the one I had left. The same trees. The same stone paths. The same pack grounds I had lived on my entire life.But I was different.I knew that now.I had always been different. I just hadn't known what it meant.The moon above me was silver and full and so bright it cast shadows even through the trees. I kept looking up at her. Kept catching myself staring like she was going to say something. Like after everything Mira had just told me the moon owed me at least a few words of explanation.She stayed silent.She always did.She speaks through actions, Selene said inside me. Not words. She always has.I pulled my shawl tighter and kept walking.I was almost at my mother's cottage when I stopped dead.The light was on inside.It was past midnight. My mother went to bed at nine without fail every single night of her lif