Lost in her own world, kaida made her way to the clearing where all the worriers where due to meet for training. Kaida had spent her night tossing and turning, unsure why her wolf was more agitated than usual. It paced around her mind leaving small accents on anxiety at every corner it turned.
The forest had gone unnaturally quiet, kaida's foot stopping before hitting the ground.
She noticed it first—the way insects stilled, the way the wind seemed to hold its breath. Her wolf stirred uneasily, pacing faster beneath her skin, hackles raised. She opened her eye wider, her senses focusing.
Then the pain detonated in her chest.
It was blinding.
She dropped to one knee, fingers clawing into the dirt as fire spread through her veins. Her heartbeat thundered so loudly she thought the trees themselves might hear it. For a split second, panic surged—until her wolf roared forward with sudden, terrifying clarity.
Mate.
The word wasn't spoken.
It was known.
The bond snapped into place like a hook buried deep in her soul, yanking her toward the clearing with a force that made her vision swim. Her wolf surged with frantic joy, relief, and aching hunger, recognizing what it had been waiting for all along.
Rowan turned slowly.
The moment his eyes met hers, his wolf surfaced violently. Power rippled outward, Alpha dominance crashing through the clearing. Kaida gasped as the pressure slammed into her, her wolf instinctively lowering even as it screamed in defiance.
"No," Rowan whispered, horror etched into every line of his face.
His rejection wasn't verbal yet—but it was already happening. Kaida felt it in the way his body pulled away, the way his wolf snarled at the bond instead of embracing it.
Female beta.
Wrong choice.
Impossible.
His Alpha aura spiked, uncontrolled, and Kaida was thrown backward as if struck. She hit the ground hard, breath knocked from her lungs, tears stinging her eyes as the bond stretched painfully between them.
It didn't break. It stayed firm, a strong reminder that everything she had dreamed of, everything she had forced herself to push back was right at her finger tips.
It burned.
And as Rowan turned his back on her, fists clenched, Kaida understood with devastating clarity that fate had made a mistake—and she would be the one to pay for it.