Reject Me Again

Valerie's POV

The frost was biting into my knees, but that was nothing next to the silver-laced sting of the whip tearing across my back.

Another lash landed, and I swallowed the scream before it could leave my throat.

I was here because another slave had run off during the night. I didn't know who. I hadn't helped them, hadn't even known anything happened until guards dragged me out of the stables and chained me to the post before the sun was up. But in the Northern Pack, justice was never about finding whoever actually did it. It was about reminding the rest of us where we stood. Omega slaves get punished. That's just how it worked here.

Hundreds of wolves stood around the courtyard watching — the elite, the warriors, the nobles. None of them were monsters, not really. They just weren't going to be the one who spoke up for a slave on the morning of the Choosing. Bad luck, apparently, to interfere before the Goddess handed out her blessings. Ridiculous, if you ask me, but nobody was asking me.

The whip cracked one more time and the world tipped sideways. I let go and let the dark take me.

It didn't keep me long.

Ice water hit me full in the face and dragged me back. I coughed up water and blood while someone yanked the chain on my collar hard enough to lift me off the ground.

"Get up," the guard said, not even bothering to sound angry about it. "Even trash has to attend the Choosing."

My legs were shaking so badly I almost went back down, but I forced them straight. Every part of me hurt. Didn't matter. It never mattered. I only had one job, and it was the same job I'd had for eighteen years: live until tomorrow.

I was born into the Ashfang Pack, a rebel bloodline that lost its war before I was even old enough to walk. The grown-ups were killed. The kids who survived got sold as slaves. I don't know what happened to my parents. As far as I can remember, I've never not been someone's property.

I'd turned eighteen five days earlier — the age your wolf is supposed to wake up and start talking in your head. Mine never did. Just quiet in there. I stopped waiting for it a long time ago and decided I was just broken that way.

The keep doors groaned open, and the whole courtyard filled with that heavy, suffocating scent that meant power was walking in.

The Alphas.

Everyone dropped, heads down, and the guards holding my chains went down with the rest of them, taking me down too.

I could tell it was Alpha Caspian first by the red cloak. He was the strategist, the reason the Northern Pack's defenses hadn't been broken in generations, dressed in a sharp black suit under that cloak, eyes already moving across the crowd like he was cataloging threats.

Cassian came next in black. If Caspian was cold calculation, Cassian was closer to a storm — the strongest fighter on the whole continent, the kind of presence that made the air feel thinner just from him being near. He walked straight past me, boots inches from my hands, and didn't so much as glance down.

Then Ronan, in white, golden hair, amber eyes — the one people called kind, the one who talked the other two out of war more times than anyone could count. As he passed, his eyes dropped to me and stuck there.

He stopped walking.

His gaze moved over me — the blood, the state I was in — and something in his face went soft. He shifted like he was about to close the distance between us.

A gloved hand landed on his shoulder before he could.

"Not today," Caspian said, flat and final.

Ronan's jaw tightened. He looked at me one more second, then turned and followed his brothers up to the dais.

I shut my eyes and swallowed it down. What did I think was going to happen? Nothing. That's what.

Up front, the High Priest climbed the stone altar and raised his arms, and a wall of silver flame shot into the dark morning sky. Unmated wolves stepped forward one at a time, and every so often the moonfire would flare and throw a bridge of light between two people standing in the crowd. Cheers, crying, people running to grab each other — mates finding each other right there in front of everyone.

I stayed back in the shadows with my back throbbing, just waiting for it to be over so I could crawl to my corner of the stables and pass out.

Then it stopped. All of it.

Something exploded inside my chest — not pain from the whip, something older, deeper, something that felt like it had been sitting there for years waiting to go off.

I grabbed at my chest and a beam of silver light tore out of me, lighting up every dark corner of that courtyard, turning every terrified face bright white.

The light shot forward.

Not toward a guard. Not toward a servant.

It split into three.

And it hit the dais.

Three matching beams burst from the chests of the three Alpha Kings. Caspian. Cassian. Ronan.

The light locked us together — a slave and the three most powerful men on the continent.

Nobody made a sound. The cheering just died. Even the wind seemed to hold still. All I could hear was moonfire crackling and my own ragged breathing.

The High Priest stared at the light like he'd never seen anything like it, and honestly, he probably hadn't. He looked at me — bleeding, shaking, a slave — then up at the three frozen Alphas.

"By decree of the Moon Goddess," he said, and his voice was shaking too, "Valerie Ashbourne—"

He knew my name. I don't know why that's the part that hit me hardest.

"—is the destined mate of all three Alpha Kings."

Chaos.

Someone screamed. A few wolves near the back started laughing, that panicked kind of laugh people do when they've decided this has to be a trick because the alternative doesn't make sense. The guards next to me stepped back like my blood might be contagious now.

I looked up at the dais, heart slamming so hard it hurt. The bond hit me like warmth flooding through every vein at once — I'd never felt anything like it. For the first time in my whole miserable life, something in me said I belong here. I belong to them.

Before I could even sit with that, Caspian moved.

His eyes had gone hard, cold, done. He looked down at the thread of light connecting his chest to mine like it was an insult.

"I, Alpha Caspian," he said, no feeling in it at all, "reject you, Valerie Ashbourne, as my mate."

Snap.

Not a sound. Something being torn out of me. I dropped to my knees screaming as the first thread turned to ash.

Cassian stepped up next to him before I could even catch my breath, his face twisted in disgust.

"I, Alpha Cassian," he snarled, loud enough to rattle the stone, "reject you, Valerie Ashbourne, as my mate!"

Snap.

Blood ran from my nose. Everything went white. I clawed at the dirt trying to breathe and couldn't — two-thirds of my soul had just been ripped out with nothing to replace it.

I looked up through the blur and found Ronan.

He had both hands white-knuckled on the railing, sweating, amber eyes wide with something close to panic. He looked at the thread. Looked at me. I could see gold flashing behind his eyes — his wolf fighting him, refusing to let those words out.

Caspian turned his head toward him. Didn't say anything. Didn't have to.

Ronan squeezed his eyes shut. A tear slipped down his face.

"I... I, Alpha Ronan," he whispered, voice cracking apart, "reject you, Valerie Ashbourne, as my mate."

Snap.

Something in me finally gave out.

Not my body. Something further down than that.

Deep inside, somewhere I'd never once felt anything, a presence flared awake — beautiful, terrifying, mine. My wolf. She woke up fully formed, fully aware, just in time to feel three bonds die at once.

She howled once, and it was the worst sound I've ever heard, and it was happening inside my own head.

Then she went quiet.

The warmth was gone. The light was gone. I hit the dirt, hollowed out, nothing left inside me.

Footsteps came fast and heavy. A hand closed around the chain on my collar and hauled me off the ground. Cassian didn't say a single word as he dragged me through the dirt like I was already dead weight. The crowd stepped back to let him through, silent, watching.

At the gates, he threw me.

I hit frozen ground outside the pack borders, rolling over roots and rock in the black forest. Broken. Empty.

Cassian stood in the gateway, eyes cold enough to match the ground I was lying on.

"Return, and we will kill you."

The gates slammed shut behind him, and that was it.

I was alone. The forest was dark and freezing and I couldn't feel my legs anymore. I lay there in the snow and waited for the cold to finish what the whip started.

Then the shadows between the trees moved.

The wind died. A silver mist rolled low over the ground and curled around my fingers, and somewhere in the stillness a voice — soft, ancient, not quite human — moved through my mind.

"Come to me… Child".