The Reject

Alina

“Just breathe, Alina. Ten seconds.”

Mason’s voice is a warm murmur against my ear, his breath smelling faintly of the spiced cider everyone is drinking. His hand rests on the small of my back, a familiar, comforting weight IA’ve known my entire life. He thinks I’m nervous about finding my mate. He isn’t entirely wrong, but the real fear is a cold, hard knot in my stomach he knows nothing about.

What if I don’t have one? What if the Moon Goddess looks at the wolf-less girl and simply passes her by?

The Great Hall of the Silver Moon pack is suffocatingly warm, packed with bodies and smelling of pine logs and roasting meat. Banners depicting our sigil, a howling wolf before a silver crescent, hang from the high-beamed ceiling. Everyone is here. It feels like the entire world is holding its breath for me.

My older brother, Liam, catches my eye from across the circle we’re standing in. He gives me a reassuring nod, his expression tight. He knows. Of my family, he’s the only one who truly understands the depth of my shame, the hollow space inside me where a wolf’s spirit should be.

“Five!” Alpha Valerius, Mason’s father, booms, his voice echoing through the sudden silence. His smile is wide, proud. He looks from his son to me, and the hope in his eyes is a physical weight.

Everyone expects it to be Mason. The Beta’s daughter and the Alpha’s son. It’s the storybook ending our pack has been whispering about since we were children, building mud castles by the river.

My heart hammers against my ribs. I want it to be him. More than anything.

“Four!”

Mason’s thumb brushes over my spine. “It’s going to be okay,” he whispers, his blue eyes finding mine. They’re the color of a winter sky, and right now, they’re filled with a sincerity that makes my throat ache. “No matter what happens.”

“Three!”

A lie. It won’t be okay if I’m left standing here alone when the clock strikes twelve. I’ll be a pariah. The broken daughter of the Beta, an object of pity and a bad omen.

“Two!”

I grip the fabric of my silver dress, my knuckles white. This is it. Eighteen years of waiting. Eighteen years of pretending I can feel the stirrings of a beast that isn’t there.

“One!”

The great grandfather clock in the corner of the hall chimes, a deep, resonant bell that vibrates through the floorboards.

For a terrifying second, nothing happens.

The cold knot in my stomach tightens into a fist of ice. It’s true. I am empty. I am nothing.

Then, a bolt of lightning rips through me. It’s not a sound or a sight but a feeling, a brilliant, golden cord of pure energy snapping into place inside my soul. It shoots from my heart, across the few inches of space separating us, and slams directly into Mason.

His eyes widen in shock, his body jerking as if he’s been struck. I gasp, a breath I didn’t realize I was holding. I feel him. I feel the steady beat of his heart, the fierce, powerful presence of his wolf, the echo of his soul as it recognizes mine. It’s a feeling of coming home, of a lock finding its key, of being seen and known completely for the first time.

He is mine. I am his.

The relief is so absolute, so overwhelming, that tears spring to my eyes. A joyous laugh bubbles up from my chest. I take a step toward him, my hand lifting to touch his face.

But I freeze.

The look on his face isn’t joy. It isn’t relief. The initial shock gives way to confusion, and then to something else. Something that makes the golden bond in my chest feel like a chain of ice.

Horror.

“No,” he whispers, the word barely audible. He takes a step back, pulling his hand away from my back as if my touch burns him. “It can’t be.”

The murmuring in the crowd swells. Alpha Valerius steps forward, his chest puffed with pride. “It is the Goddess’s will! My son and our Beta’s daughter!”

A ragged cheer starts to build, but it dies in the air as Mason raises a hand, his eyes never leaving mine. The winter blue is now cold, sharp, and full of a terrible clarity.

“Mason?” My voice is a fragile thread. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“You,” he says, and the single word slices me open. “It’s you. But you don’t have… you can’t…” He shakes his head, a muscle twitching in his jaw. He isn’t speaking to me anymore. He’s looking past me, his gaze sweeping over the silent, watching faces of our pack.

Liam starts to move toward me, his face a mask of rage. “Mason, don’t you dare.”

“Stay out of this, Liam,” Mason snaps, his voice gaining a hard, authoritative edge I’ve never heard before. The voice of a future Alpha.

He takes a deep breath and his shoulders square. The boy I grew up with vanishes, replaced by a cold, pragmatic leader. “I, Mason, son of Alpha Valerius of the Silver Moon pack…” he begins, his voice ringing with formal power.

My blood runs cold. I know these words. Every wolf knows them. They are the beginning of the most sacred vow, or the most brutal curse.

“...cannot accept this bond.”

The silence in the hall becomes absolute. It’s so profound I can hear the frantic, panicked drumming of my own heart. A hundred pairs of eyes are on me, their pity a thousand tiny needles against my skin.

“Mason, what are you doing?” Alpha Valerius hisses, his joyous expression collapsing into disbelief.

Mason ignores him, his gaze fixed on some point in the distance, as if he can’t bear to look at me. “An Alpha’s strength is the pack’s strength. His Luna must be his equal, a warrior to stand beside him, to lead the pack when he cannot. Our future, our survival, depends on our power.”

He finally turns his eyes back to me, and there is no warmth left in them. Only judgment.

“The Werewolf Games are less than four years away. Our entire generation will be judged by our performance. Our territory, our status, our honor, it’s all on the line. How can I lead our warriors into competition with a mate who cannot even shift? A mate who has no wolf?”

His words are not a plea for understanding. They are an indictment. He is putting me on trial in front of everyone I have ever known.

“She would be a weakness,” he declares, his voice ringing with finality. “A liability our pack cannot afford. A vulnerability our enemies would exploit without hesitation.”

My own father, Beta Alaric, steps forward, his face pale with fury. “She is your mate, Mason. And she is my daughter. You will show her respect.”

“Respect?” Mason lets out a short, bitter laugh. “Respect is earned. Power is earned. What has she done but be born into your family? She is a kind heart, yes. A good friend. But a Luna? A Luna must be a wolf.”

Every word is a deliberate, calculated blow. He is dismantling our entire life together, everything we have ever been, and recasting it as a childish fantasy that must now be put aside for the good of the pack. He makes his cruelty sound like a noble sacrifice.

“So, in front of the Goddess who chose this path, and the pack I am sworn to lead,” he says, his voice dropping but losing none of its chilling force. He looks directly at me, and for the first time, I see the friend I loved replaced by a complete stranger.

“I, Mason, future Alpha of the Silver Moon pack, reject you, Alina, daughter of Beta Alaric, as my mate.”

The golden bond inside my chest doesn’t just break. It shatters. The pain is physical, an explosion of glass and fire in my soul that rips a silent scream from my lungs. I stumble back, my hand flying to my chest as if I can hold myself together.

The world narrows to a pinpoint. The shocked faces of the pack, the fury on my brother’s face, the horror on my parents’, it all fades into a dull, roaring background noise.

All I can see is him. Mason. My best friend. My fated mate.

The stranger who just sacrificed my heart on the altar of his ambition. He stands tall, his expression unyielding, as if he has just passed a sentence of death and feels nothing but the cold satisfaction of justice served.