REJECTED ONCE, CLAIMED TWICE のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 1 - チャプター 7

The Mark That Never CameThe morning of the Choosing Ceremony, Ivy woke before the sun. She told herself it didn't matter who Damian picked tonight. She knew that was a lie the moment she thought it.She got out of bed before the thought could settle and went straight to work. Work always helped.By midmorning she was in the training yard, fixing a torn strap on old Bertram's gear while two younger wolves sparred nearby, throwing punches that never quite landed. Ivy wasn't a fighter. She was steady. The kind of wolf people forgot to thank because she never gave them a reason to worry."You're doing that thing again," Bertram said, not looking up from his whetstone."What thing.""Hands busy, head somewhere else." He tested the edge of his blade against his thumb. "Ceremony's got everyone twisted up. No shame in it.""I'm not twisted up. I'm working."Bertram made a sound that wasn't quite a laugh and didn't ask her anything else. She finished the strap and told herself the ceremony wa

Unclaimed GroundIvy didn't stop walking. Stopping would tell whatever was out there that she'd noticed.She kept her pace even, her breathing steady, and let her eyes do the work instead of her feet, scanning the tree line without turning her head, the way Bertram had drilled into every young wolf who'd ever picked up a blade under him. Panic tells a predator everything it needs to know. Calm tells it nothing.The scent came again on the next gust of wind. Sharper this time. Closer.Not pack. She would have known pack, known it the way you know a voice you grew up hearing. This was something else musky and wild, undisciplined, the scent of a wolf that answered to no one and hadn't in a long time. A rogue.She had heard about rogues her whole life the way children hear about storms, something dangerous that happened to other people, in other places, far from anywhere safe. She understood now, with her heart hammering and her bag suddenly heavy across her shoulders, that she had walked

The Silver City PackIvy woke to unfamiliar ceiling beams and the smell of burning cedar.For a long moment she didn't move, didn't trust her own body enough to try. Everything ached in the deep, bone-level way that came after real exhaustion, and her throat was so dry it took two attempts before she managed a sound at all."Easy." A voice, female, brisk without being unkind, somewhere to her left. "You're not dying. You just tried to walk three days on no food and half a fight with a rogue. Your body's still deciding how it feels about that."Ivy turned her head. A woman stood beside the bed, arms crossed, watching her with the flat, assessing look of someone who'd seen a great many collapsed strangers carried through a gate and had opinions about most of them. She was older than Ivy, though not by much hard-eyed, scarred along one forearm in a way that suggested the scar had a story nobody had asked to hear yet."Where a

First MeetingFarron found her the next morning before she'd even finished her first task of the day."You're wanted," he said, appearing at the edge of the laundry yard with the kind of unhurried authority that made it clear refusal wasn't really an option. "Now, if it's convenient. Now regardless, if it isn't.""Wanted by who?""You'll see."He led her through the pack compound without much conversation, past the training grounds and the council hall, toward a smaller building set apart from the rest, built of the same dark timber as everything else in Silver City but somehow quieter, as if the whole structure had learned to hold its breath. Farron stopped at the door and gestured her through without following.Ivy hesitated. "You're not coming in?""Not invited," Farron said, with the faint, dry humor of a man who'd made peace with that fact a long time ago. "Go on. He doesn't bite. Usually."The door led to a study lined with maps and ledgers, sparse in a way that suggested the ma