My heart pounded in my chest, a wild drumbeat that echoed the silent prayer I had spoken to the Moon Goddess. Tonight, Kael would select his Luna. Tonight, our destiny would be sealed.
I stood among the expectant she-wolves, my plain white dress standing in stark contrast to their ornate silks. My silver eyes, which normally were cast down, were trained upon him. Alpha Kael. A man hewn from myth, his molten gold eyes powerful enough to conquer an army.
His aroma, ozone and ancient pine, provoked my wolf to restless life. A primal, intense need thrummed through me. He was speaking, his deep, rumbling voice, but I listened to none of it. Everything had contracted to him.
Then the Elder lifted a twisted hand. "Unmated, come forward."
It was my turn. I glided across the floor with a poise I didn't know I had, my eyes fixed on Kael's. A shiver shot through me as our eyes connected at last. For an instant, I saw it – a spark of recognition, a tug. My breath caught.
But then it was erased. Replaced with a cold, calculating evaluation. A furrow deepened his brow, and his lips compressed. The expectant hum in the hall subsided to an uncomfortable quiet. My heart sank.
Kael's voice, smooth and rich, pierced the silence like a honed knife. Every word a studied, torturous strike. "I, Alpha Kael of the Crescent Moon Pack, reject you, Elara, as my destined mate."
The words struck me like a blow, robbing me of breath. The hall exploded in gasps and stunned whispers. Rejection. Humiliating public rejection. The holy tie, severed with one, savage pronouncement, resounded in the shocked hush.
My eyes blurred, not with weeping, but with the stunned, mind-numbing shock. The pack members' faces, once tense with eagerness, now contorted in pity and thinly disguised contempt. I was no longer Elara, but 'the rejected one,' a pariah in my own pack.
"No," I breathed, the sound barely audible, even to me. My voice was rough, a strangled cry. "You can't. We're meant. The Goddess—"
Kael's golden eyes, which had once been so entrancing, went cold. "The will of the Goddess is sometimes misunderstood, Elara. My decision is made." His eyes passed over the other she-wolves, then settled on a tall, stunning woman with bright red hair and green eyes. Lyra, of the Bloodfang Pack that bordered theirs.
My gut twisted. This was not my friend, faithful Lyra. This was a stranger, a sly, hungry spy. The irony was a bitter taste of betrayal. It combined with the embers of my broken dreams.
"I choose you, Lyra of the Bloodfang Pack, to be my Luna."
The second strike hit, harder than the first. A crushing weight took my air away. Not only was I rejected, but he had selected a rival, a suspected infiltrator. The betrayal was total, a burning brand on my soul.
"You. you can't be serious," I managed to get out, my voice shaking. "She's not. she's not one of us. She's from the Bloodfang!"
Kael simply arched an eyebrow, a derisive movement that cut more deeply than any insult. "My judgment stands, Elara. Your input is no longer necessary." His voice was icy, absent of warmth and remorse. He turned his back on me, already focusing his interest on Lyra, who gave him a victorious, sugary smile.
Tears welled in my eyes, burning and stinging. But I would not let them fall. Not here. Not now. I would not offer it to them. I would not break down beneath their condescending stares. A raw burst of defiance, fueled by the depths of my shame, flamed inside of me.
With strength I did not know I had, I turned. My back rod-straight, head high, I left the Grand Hall. Every step an affirmation of my broken pride, a defiant stride from the wreckage of my existence. The stares and whispers of my pack seared their way down my back, a tangible burden that pushed me on.
I left behind the broken pieces of my dreams, the crushing burden of public shame. The painful awareness that the man I had thought was my destiny had become my tormenter. My path, I knew, had only just started, but it was not one I had ever imagined.
It was a quest into the unknown, a trail blazed in the flames of rejection. It was a path that would take me to a future I did not then understand, but one I would endure by myself. The smell of pine and ozone, Kael's mark, now hung heavy around me like a suffocating shroud. The Grand Hall, where once hope had filled my heart, now rang with the ghostly screams of my broken heart.
I walked, every step a conscious act of rebellion, away from the life I knew. To an uncertain future, yes, but also maybe, in a burgeoning, frightening freedom.
The moon, normally a reassuring light, glared at me with an indifferent sheen, an unspoken observer to my public humiliation.
But even amidst my devastation, a small spark, a glimmer of something wild, started to awaken in me. A promise of another sort of strength, one bred not from the mate bond, but from my own broken will.
And as I emerged into the chill of the night, the whispers and the pity left behind me, I knew, with a shiver of certainty, that my tale was in no way finished. It was only just beginning. The forest, gloomy and silent, devoured me whole, wrapping me in a chill that was, in its own way, somehow more comforting than the spurious heat of the pack I had just abandoned.