CHAPTER ONE- REJECTION.

“Strike, Ava to the left!”

The blade met flesh with a crack that split the air, and then everything turned on me.

Power ricocheted through my arms like a whip. My grip faltered. The sword clattered to the ground, but I didn’t feel it leave my hand. I was already falling.

My knees gave way as if the earth itself had bucked me off. Not fear, no, this was something far darker. Hot. Violent. Alive.

A scream tore through my throat, half-human, half-something else, something older. My fingers dug into the dirt, the earth cold and slick beneath me, grounding nothing.

Then it hit.

The backlash.

It coiled around my spine like barbed wire. My muscles seized, breath catching, heart slamming so hard it drowned out thought. My skin felt too tight, like it could split open and let her out.

My wolf.

She roared behind my ribcage, a living inferno clawing for release. There was no asking. No gentleness. Only rage.

My jaw clenched so tight I tasted blood. My eyes burned, vision blurring, not from tears but from the surge, raw and blinding.

This wasn’t controlled.

This was survival.

“Ava, are you Alright?"

"Ava..." The name barely left my lips, more like a breath than a word. It should have meant freedom, wings spread beneath an open sky, chasing the wind. But all I felt was the weight.

My chest ached. Not from breathing, but from remembering. The remembering that claws its way out when you close your eyes.

And I did.

I let them come, those memories.

One by one, they crashed behind my eyelids like storm waves, uninvited and merciless.

Laughter twisted into screams.

Warmth became absence.

The kind of pain that doesn’t scream, but settles deep, like a chain around your spirit.

“I, Alpha Kieran Blackthorne…” his voice loud, for all to hear, “...reject Ava Hart as my fated mate.”

My throat tightened, thick with something I couldn’t name. I tried to swallow, but it caught halfway, like a glass lodged in my chest. My hands, useless, shaking things clung to each other as if that would stop the trembling. Fingernails dug into skin. Still, I show, not too cold… but from everything, I couldn’t say.

Earlier that day I overheard the conversation between them as

I swept slowly, bristles dragging across the floor outside the council chamber. My cloak loosely hung over my frame, the hood shadowing my face, just the way they liked me. Just the way I’d learned to exist.

“She’s a danger,” came Aldric’s voice, rough and unyielding. “She should’ve been cast out years ago.”

Holding the broom in my hand firmly, I froze. My heart thudded like it wanted to run without me.

“And yet,” Kieran’s voice replied, edged but calm “the Moon, it chose her.”

There was a pause. A thick one. The kind that hangs between men who fear the truth more than lies.

“You think that makes it right?” Aldric snapped. “If the ceremony confirms it, you’ll have no choice but to claim her. Mate her.”

The broom handle slipped out of my grip. I caught it before it clattered.

“And if you do,” Aldric added, his voice dipping low, “you may lose the pack.”

Another silence. Longer this time. Holding my breath, every muscle contracting like a wound trying not to bleed.

Then Kieran said the words. “Then I won’t take her.”

I didn’t move. I couldn’t. My hands moved into the wood of the broomstick, so tight I thought it might scatter.

Behind me, the wavering torchlight dragged my shadow across the cold stone wall, long, thin, almost transparent. Like I wasn’t here. Like I didn’t matter.

A boot scraped the floor. Then another.

I jerked away from the door, heart hammering, and dropped into a crouch, dragging broom rag in shaky circles as if I’d been working the whole time. As if I hadn’t just been paralyzed by fear.

“Girl.”

The voice struck like a whip, sharp, gravel-thick.

I stiffened. One of the guards.

“You missed a spot.”

My fingers clenched around the soaked rag. I didn’t look up. Didn’t breathe.

“I…yes, sir.”

The words came out raw, choked, as I bent lower, sweeping at a patch already made clean.

He paused. I could feel his stare boring into the back of my skull.

A grunt. The heavy echo of retreating boots.

Still, I didn’t move. Not until his shadow vanished down the corridor.

Then I exhaled, barely. My jaw ached from sweeping. My knees burned.

But I kept sweeping. Because I didn’t know what else to do. Because if I stopped, I’d shatter.

My hands trembled. I tried to will them still, but the words repeated in my head like a cruel chant.

Then I won’t take her.

My head leaning against the stone wall, cold yet its coolness soothed my burning cheeks still couldn’t reach the fire burning in my chest.

Honestly, I never thought I was that. Not a mate. Not a warrior. Not even a girl.

Just a risk.

And worst of all?

Even to him.

Especially to him.

Kieran Blackthorne.

They said his name like a warning, like frostbite whispered through clenched teeth.

Alpha of Silver Fang. Heir to the northern bloodline that bathed their history in conquest and claw.

But I’d once known him as more than a title. We were once best of friends since childhood. We once chased fireflies by the riverbank, laughing until the moon dipped beneath the trees. I remembered vividly the warmth of his hand tugging mine, the thrill of our first shift, trembling, and his steadiness. He stood between me and a pack of snarling pups, his voice like thunder, “She’s one of us.”

But that was before.

Now?

He looked through me like I was a ghost that never belonged.

His silence was colder than any claw.

His back turned, deliberate, final.

He had chosen.

And it wasn’t me.

“I reject this bond!" He thundered.

" Throw her in the dungeon!”