The silk of my dress felt like a shroud.
I stood in the corner of the Silver Moon ballroom, the air tasting of expensive cologne and the suffocating scent of my own fear. Thump-thump. Thump-thump. My heart was a frantic bird batting against the cage of my ribs. Today was my eighteenth birthday. The day I was supposed to finally hear the howl of my wolf and the click of the mate bond.
I looked across the sea of polished faces toward Logan. My Logan. He stood on the dais, the light catching the gold in his hair, his Alpha presence radiating a heat I had craved since I was a child. He was everything my anchor, my future, my fated half.
The clock began its slow, rhythmic toll.
One.
The room went silent. I held my breath, waiting for the spark.
Five.
My skin tingled, but it wasn't the heat of a transformation. It was the icy realization that the air was getting colder.
Twelve.
The final chime died. Silence. No roar in my soul. No fur tearing through skin. Just the hollow, echoing emptiness of a human girl standing in a room full of monsters.
"Look at her," a whisper cut through the quiet like a serrated blade. "The Alpha's daughter is a dud."
I looked up, eyes stinging, searching for my father. Alpha Silas sat on his throne, his face a mask of stone. He didn't look at me. He looked through me, as if I were a stain on the marble floor he was waiting for the servants to scrub away.
Then Logan stepped forward.
My heart leaped a pathetic, dying hope. He would defend me. He would tell them it didn't matter. But as he reached the edge of the dais, his amber eyes weren't filled with the warmth I knew. They were cold. Predatory.
"Pack members," Logan's voice boomed, his Alpha command slamming into my chest like a physical weight. "The Moon Goddess has shown us her will. She has gifted me a mate with no wolf. A Luna with no strength."
I took a trembling step forward. "Logan... please."
He didn't even flinch. "I, Logan Blackwood, Alpha-heir of the Silver Moon, hereby reject you, Aria. I sever the bond. I cast you out from my heart and my future."
CRACK.
It wasn't a sound, but a sensation. Inside my chest, the golden thread of the fated bond the thing that held my soul together snapped.
The agony was blinding. It felt like someone had poured molten lead into my veins. I collapsed, my knees hitting the floor with a sickening thud, but I couldn't even scream. The air had been stolen from my lungs. Every memory of us the first time he held my hand, the promises whispered under the willow tree burned into ash.
"And," Logan's voice was a whip, "I claim a partner who can actually lead. Sienna, come forth."
My cousin. She glided past me, the scent of her perfume a sickeningly sweet rot. She took his hand, and I watched through blurred vision as he pulled her close the space that was supposed to be mine.
"Sign it," my father's voice rang out, devoid of any fatherly love.
A scroll hit the floor in front of my face. The Exile Contract.
I stared at the ink. If I signed, I was a Rogue. A ghost. If I didn't, I was a prisoner. I grabbed the pen, my fingers shaking so hard I could barely form the letters. Aria. With that last stroke, I died. The girl who loved Logan Blackwood was gone.
I didn't wait for them to kick me out. I forced myself up, ignoring the blood trickling from my nose the physical price of the rejection and walked out. I didn't look back at the sneers or the laughter. I didn't look at Logan.
I ran until the manor was a shadow. I ran until the storm broke, the rain lashing my skin like a thousand tiny whips. I reached the Forbidden Crags, the cliff's edge where the world simply ended.
"Is this it?" I screamed into the thunder, my voice cracking. "Is this all I am? A mistake?"
I fell into the mud, my forehead pressed against the cold earth. I was ready for the end. I wanted the darkness to take me.
But then, the darkness spoke.
« LITTLE BIRD. »
The voice didn't come from the wind. It came from the center of my bones. It was a roar that tasted like silver and ancient starlight.
« THEY TRIED TO FEED A GALAXY TO A WORM. THEY TRIED TO BIND A QUEEN WITH A COLLAR MADE FOR A DOG. »
My blood began to boil not with the pain of rejection, but with a terrifying, holy heat. My vision exploded into white light.
Get up, the voice commanded.
I stood, but I wasn't me anymore. My spine lengthened. My muscles surged with a power so absolute it made Logan's Alpha aura feel like a summer breeze. I felt my skin split, not to reveal a common wolf, but to release a god.
I grew until the trees looked like shrubs. My fur was a blinding, iridescent white. My eyes... I could see the flow of the wind, the heartbeat of every creature in the valley, the very rotation of the moon.
I was a Primal. The First Blood.
Five miles away, the celebration was still happening. I could smell the champagne. I could hear Logan's laughter as he toasted to his new "real" mate.
I tilted my massive head back and let out a howl.
The sound tore through the sky, shattering the clouds. Back at the manor, the windows didn't just break they pulverized into dust.
Inside the ballroom, the music died. Logan dropped his glass, his face turning the color of ash. He fell to his knees, his forehead hitting the floor as his wolf cowered in the darkest corner of his mind. Every single person who had spat on me, every elder who had turned their back, was now pinned to the ground by the sheer weight of my existence.
« LOOK AT ME, LOGAN, » I sent the thought directly into his skull, cold and sharp as a diamond.
He gasped, his eyes rolling back as the image of my silver-eyed form burned into his consciousness.
« YOU WANTED A LUNA OF POWER. YOU FOUND A GODDESS OF RUIN. »
I turned away from the manor. I didn't need their throne. I didn't need their name. I was Aria, the White Eclipse, and I was going to burn their world down to build my own.