He Stood Before the Whole Pack and Rejected Me, His Fated Mate, for a Richer Bride — He Never Imagined the Feared Alpha King Would Cross a Kingdom to Kneel at My Feet

Part 1

The night the goddess was meant to reveal my fated mate, I wore my only good dress, a faded green wool that smelled of the lavender I dried for the sick.

Everyone else in the great hall of Greywood Keep wore silk.

I stood by the hearth where the heat could not reach the cold that had lived in my bones since I was orphaned, and I let myself hope, just once, the way I had not allowed myself to hope in years.

I had grown up beside Cedric Holt.

Before the weight of the alpha title hardened him, we chased each other through the snow-dusted pines and shared stolen sweets from the kitchens and whispered our dreams under the sacred trees.

Then he became alpha, and he began to look at me the way a ruler looks at a problem he has not yet solved.

When he descended the great staircase that night, the whole room hushed.

He was broad and tall in midnight blue edged with silver fur, his amber eyes sweeping the hall.

And then a scent crashed into me, rain-soaked earth and cedarwood, and stole the air from my lungs.

My wolf clawed up my chest and howled one word.

Mate.

I looked up, and Cedric had stopped halfway down the stairs, frozen, his eyes locked on mine, wide with recognition and something that looked horribly like panic.

The ancient thread pulled tight between us, humming, lifting the hair on my arms.

He knew.

I saw it in the parting of his lips, the flare of his nostrils.

I took one small step forward, and I let myself smile, because for one beautiful heartbeat I believed the goddess had finally rewarded all my quiet years of waiting.

Then the warmth drained out of his face and left only revulsion.

His gaze moved over my worn dress and my unbound hair, and then slid toward the high table, where the wealthy Lord Bramwell sat beside his beautiful, cold daughter, Lady Cordelia.

I watched him make the choice in the space of a single breath.

“Wren Caldwell,” he said, and his alpha voice boomed off the high ceilings, and the music died.

Hundreds of faces turned to stare at the herbalist by the fire.

“Cedric,” I whispered.

“Step forward,” he commanded, and there was nothing of my friend left in it.

I crossed to him on shaking legs, close enough to drown in the scent of him, and his whole body was a wall of ice.

I heard the murmurs.

Why is the alpha speaking to the orphan, look at her boots, they are falling apart.

He squared his shoulders and would not meet my eyes.

“I, Cedric Holt, Alpha of the Greywood Pack, reject you, Wren Caldwell, as my fated mate.”

The hall gasped as one.

“You are a commoner.

A healer.

You have neither the bloodline nor the strength to stand beside me as Luna.

My pack requires alliance and power.

I will not be bound by a twist of fate to weakness.”

The pain hit me like a battering ram, a true physical agony, as if my chest had been torn open and my heart pulled out with bare hands.

I dropped to my knees, choking, and deep in my mind my wolf curled into a small dying ball.

The rejection sickness, the one that kills unbonded wolves, was already moving through me like poison.

Through my blurred eyes I watched him turn away and lift his hand toward the high table.

Lady Cordelia glided forward in crimson silk with a slow, triumphant smile and placed her hand in his.

“I present my chosen Luna,” he announced, “Lady Cordelia of the Ashford Pack.”

His nobles roared their approval while I knelt suffocating on the cold stone.

To sever the bond and keep the madness from taking us both, I had to accept it aloud.

I tasted blood where I had bitten my lip, and I gathered every shred of dignity I had left, and I forced myself to stand.

“I, Wren Caldwell,” I gasped, and to my own surprise my voice carried iron I did not know I owned.

“I accept your rejection, Cedric Holt.

May the goddess judge the wisdom of your ambition.”

The cord snapped, and the backlash threw me off my feet, and the world went dark before I struck the ground.

The last thing I heard, as the darkness swallowed me whole, was the bright, delighted laughter of the woman who had just taken my place.