The cold bit into my bones, but I barely felt it. Not with a thousand eyes on me. Not with his golden gaze pinned to my trembling form like a death sentence. My hands clutched the hem of my ceremonial dress, now damp with snow and stained with shame. The mating ceremony was meant to be a sacred moment, a celebration of two souls bound by the Moon Goddess. Instead, it had become a funeral for my hope.
"I, Alpha Kade Varyn of the Blackblood Pack," his voice rang out, smooth and venom-laced, "reject you, Aria Vale, as my mate and future Luna."
Each word cut deeper than claws ever could. I didn't flinch on the outside. But inside, I shattered. A single breath escaped my lips jagged, broken, barely alive. I wasn't surprised. Not really.
From the moment his eyes first locked with mine in the center of the gathering, I felt it, the electric pull, the unmistakable snap of the bond igniting between fated mates. But I also saw the fury behind his gaze. The disgust. The way his lips curled like he'd just tasted something rotten. That something was me. A worthless omega. The daughter of a disgraced Beta. Barely tolerated in my pack, orphaned, and overlooked by everyone except the Moon Goddess, who for reasons beyond my comprehension decided to bind my soul to a man who didn't see me as human. He saw me as filth.
I stood there, frozen, while silence fell like a suffocating fog. No one moved. Not even the elders. Not even the Alpha of my own pack who was probably thanking the stars that the embarrassing little stray had finally been publicly humiliated.
Kade turned away from me, his broad back framed by the scarlet and black armor of his rank. "Let this serve as a lesson to the Goddess herself," he sneered. "Even fate can make mistakes." Laughter echoed from his warriors. Cruel. Mocking. Some of them clapped him on the shoulder, as if rejecting a mate was a badge of honor.
I still didn't move. I couldn't.
My body felt like it belonged to someone else someone weaker, someone who hadn't spent years clawing her way through every insult, every beating, every whispered comment that she wasn't enough. Not pretty enough. Not strong enough. Not good enough. Certainly not mate-worthy. My wolf whimpered inside me, clawing at the walls of my soul, begging me to run, to fight, to do something. But she was fading. Dying, even. The rejection severed the thread between us and Kade, and that thread was everything to her. Fated mates were sacred. That bond was life.
"Aria?" a soft voice whispered behind me.
I turned, barely able to recognize the speaker. Mila, one of the healer's daughters, someone who never spoke to me unless no one else was watching. Her eyes were wide, sympathetic but cautious. She didn't want to be seen comforting me. That could put her in danger too.
I nodded mutely and turned away, the snow crunching under my bare feet as I walked off the ceremonial platform. Each step hurt.
Each breath tasted like betrayal. I could feel their eyes following me, burning into my back like arrows. But no one stopped me. No one offered comfort. No one dared to defy the Alpha of the Blackblood Pack. Not even for a girl who had just been destroyed. Bu I ran with all my strength. I didn't know how far I ran. I didn't know where I was going. My feet bled, and my wolf cried inside me. I should have shifted, let the pain fall away, but I couldn't. My wolf was too weak and too broken. I collapsed by the edge of a frozen stream, the moon high above me. It glowed like a silver eye, watching my pain in silence.
"Why?" I whispered to the night. "Why me?"
My voice echoed through the trees, unheard. The only answer I received was the howling wind and the distant cry of a raven. I pressed my hands to my chest where the bond had once pulsed, where the invisible thread between Kade and me had lived for less than a minute before he'd ripped it apart. It left a void that screamed.
And yet… I didn't cry. I refused to give him that. Even in ruin, I had some pride. But then the tremors began. Not from cold. Not from pain. From fury. A fire lit inside me small, flickering, desperate. He didn't just reject me. He mocked me. In front of everyone. As if I were nothing. Less than nothing. My fists clenched. He was wrong.
I didn't know how. I didn't know when. But one day, he'd pay for what he did to me.
The forest around me stirred.
Then everything went silent.
The wind stopped. The night animals stilled. Even the river seemed to freeze mid-ripple.
A presence filled the clearing. Ancient. Cold. Divine. I lifted my head slowly. A shimmer of light appeared before me, and from it stepped a woman cloaked in moonlight. Her silver hair drifted like smoke, her eyes glowing with ageless sorrow.
"Child," she spoke, voice echoing both inside and outside my head. "You were never meant to be discarded."
"M-Moon Goddess?" My lips trembled. Was I hallucinating? Was I dying?
"You were chosen for a path much greater than what he offered you. But the boy is broken. As are you."
I looked away, shame burning through me. "Then why make he my mate?"
"Because only through the breaking can one rebuild. And only through pain can you become what you must."
I stared at her, not understanding. She knelt before me, her hands brushing my cheek. "You are not weak, Aria Vale. You are the key to balance, to blood, to war. And to love."
I shook my head, tears finally falling. "I'm nothing."
"You are mine," she said, her eyes fierce. "And no one who is mine is ever nothing."
Then she touched my chest and the world exploded into light. I screamed as power surged through me. My veins burned. My heart stopped, then restarted. My wolf howled as if reborn, no longer a flicker but a wildfire. The void Kade left behind didn't just fill it transformed. I collapsed into darkness. But I didn't fall broken. I fell changed.
When I awoke, the sky was gray with morning. My dress was gone, replaced with a silver robe threaded with moonlight. My cuts had healed. My feet no longer bled. I felt... different. Stronger. Sharper. A part of me I didn't recognize stirred inside me—something ancient, something wild. I looked at my reflection in the ice. Same face. Same haunted eyes. But my aura pulsed with something dark and divine. I didn't know what the Goddess had done to me. but it wasn't normal. And deep inside, I felt it. The bond to Kade? It wasn't gone. It was dormant. Like an ember waiting to be ignited again by rage, by love, by vengeance.
He thought he could reject me and walk away. But he will pay dearly for it