The silver light of the Blue Moon Ceremony should have been the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. Instead, it felt like a spotlight on my execution.
I stood at the edge of the sacred stone circle, my fingers trembling as I smoothed the cheap, frayed fabric of my white dress. Around me, the Silver Moon Pack was a sea of expectant faces. This was the night of the Great Awakening the night when the Moon Goddess revealed fated mates to those of age.
For twenty-one years, I had been Elara Vance, the pack's "useless Omega." I'd been the girl who cleaned the warrior's boots and ate the leftovers from my sister's plate. But tonight, everything was supposed to change.
I looked toward the center of the circle, where Silas, the future Alpha, stood. He was breathtaking strong, golden, and radiating a power that made my wolf, dormant as she was, hum with a strange, desperate recognition. We had grown up together. He had promised me, under the willow trees when we were children, that he would protect me.
As the High Priestess raised her staff, the air thickened with the scent of pine and electricity. The bond snapped.
It wasn't a spark; it was an explosion. A golden thread of light seemed to bridge the gap between my heart and Silas's. The crowd gasped. A low murmur rippled through the pack. An Omega? The future Alpha is mated to an Omega?
I took a step forward, my eyes stinging with tears of joy. "Silas," I whispered, the word a prayer.
But Silas didn't move toward me. His face, usually so warm, was a mask of cold, hard stone. He didn't look like a man who had found his soulmate. He looked like a man who had discovered a cockroach in his glass of expensive wine.
Beside him, my sister Tanya smirked. She looked radiant in a silk gown that cost more than my life was worth. She leaned in, whispering something into Silas's ear, her hand resting possessively on his bicep.
Silas cleared his throat, his Alpha aura flaring so brightly it forced those in the front row to bow their heads. He finally looked at me, but there was no love in his eyes. Only disgust.
"Members of the Silver Moon Pack," Silas's voice boomed, echoing off the ancient trees. "The Moon Goddess has seen fit to play a cruel joke tonight. She has attempted to tether the future of this great pack to a weak, wolf-less Omega who can barely shift."
The silence that followed was deafening. My heart felt like it was being squeezed by a giant's hand.
"Silas, what are you doing?" I cried out, my voice cracking.
"I am doing what is necessary for our survival," he snapped. He turned his back on me and reached for Tanya's hand. "The Silver Moon Pack needs a Luna with strength. A Luna with status. Not a servant girl who carries the blood of a disgraced line."
He looked back at me one last time, his gaze chillingly indifferent. "I, Silas Thorne, future Alpha of the Silver Moon Pack, reject you, Elara Vance, as my fated mate and future Luna. I choose Tanya Vance to stand by my side."
The world tilted. The golden thread between us turned black, then shattered like glass. The pain was physical a searing, white-hot agony that ripped through my chest, making me fall to my knees on the cold stone.
Laughter broke out. It started with Tanya, a high, tinkling sound, and spread through the pack like a virus. My own father, standing with the elders, didn't move to help me. He just looked away, ashamed that his "failure" of a daughter had embarrassed him one last time.
"Get up, Elara," Tanya sneered, stepping closer so only I could hear her. "Did you really think a King-in-waiting would ever want a peasant like you? You're lucky he's letting you stay in the pack as a maid."
I looked up at Silas, searching for a glimmer of the boy I used to love. "You promised," I choked out.
"Promises are for children," Silas said, his voice devoid of emotion. "Get her out of my sight. She's polluting the ceremony."
Two warriors grabbed my arms, dragging me roughly away from the light of the moon and toward the shadows of the forest. I didn't fight them. I couldn't. The rejection had left me hollow, a shell of a person.
They threw me into the dirt at the edge of the Forbidden Forest the boundary no wolf dared to cross. "Stay here and rot, Omega," one of them spat before they turned and headed back to the celebration.
I lay there for a long time, the sounds of the pack's party the music, the cheering for Silas and Tanya drifting on the wind. Every laugh was a needle in my skin.
I looked at the dark, twisted trees of the Forbidden Forest. They said a monster lived in there. A creature of shadow and teeth that had slaughtered every warrior Silas's father had ever sent to claim the land.
Let the monster have me, I thought, a dark resolve hardening in my chest. At least the monster won't pretend to love me before he kills me.
I stood up, my white dress stained with mud and blood, and took my first step into the darkness. I didn't look back. I didn't have a pack anymore. I didn't have a mate.
But as I stepped deeper into the shadows, the air suddenly went freezing. The crickets stopped chirping. The wind died down.
A pair of glowing, violet eyes opened in the darkness ahead of me. They weren't the eyes of a wolf. They were larger, older, and filled with a terrifying, ancient hunger.
A voice, deep as a subterranean earthquake, vibrated through the very ground beneath my feet.
"You smell of rejection," the voice rumbled. "And the scent of a King's destiny."
A massive figure stepped into the sliver of moonlight filtering through the canopy. He wasn't a monster. He was a man tall, clad in black leather and silver armor, with hair as dark as a raven's wing. But the power rolling off him made Silas's Alpha aura feel like a flickering candle next to a sun.
He moved toward me with a grace that was predatory and beautiful. Before I could scream, he was in front of me, his hand reaching out to tilt my chin up. His touch didn't burn; it sparked a fire in my blood that I hadn't felt even with Silas.
"Who are you?" I whispered, trembling.
He leaned down, his lips brushing against my ear, sending a shiver of pure electricity down my spine.
"I am the one your Alpha is afraid of," he murmured. "And you, Elara Vance... you are the reason
I have waited two hundred years."