Chapter 3

Seraphina POV:

The rain started to fall, smearing the city lights into long, weeping streaks across the windshield. I drove, my hands gripping the wheel, my knuckles white. The quiet hum of the engine was the only sound, a stark contrast to the storm of memories raging in my mind.

It had started long before the rejection. As a child, small and skinny, I was always on the fringe of the pack, an easy target for Livia and her circle. They mocked my mother's deafness, a wound from a rogue attack that had also left her wolf spirit shattered-a tragedy that, in their cruel minds, was a source of amusement.

I wasn't always passive. I remember one time, when I was twelve, I snuck into Livia's opulent nest and hid sprigs of wolfsbane-a plant werewolves despise-under her silken pillows. Her shrieks of disgust had been a small, satisfying victory.

But my defiance only made her cruelty worse.

The most vivid memory burned behind my eyes: I was sixteen. Livia and her friends held me down in the training grounds. While the others laughed, she took a pair of silver-plated shears-meant for pruning-and hacked off my long black hair, leaving it in jagged, humiliating clumps.

"Filthy Omega," she'd spat, throwing the hair at my feet. "You don't deserve to be beautiful."

I had just lain there, shaking, tears of helpless rage streaming down my face.

And then, he appeared. Kaelan. He was eighteen then, newly shifted into his powerful Alpha form.

"ENOUGH!" His Alpha's Command had slammed into them, forcing Livia and her cronies to their knees, whimpering.

He didn't look at me. He just glared at them. "Get out of my sight."

They scrambled away like frightened squirrels. He then turned, his stormy eyes finally settling on me. He took in my ruined hair and the tears on my face. Without a word, he helped me up and walked me to the pack healers.

That back, broad and protective as he walked ahead of me, was the first time I felt it. The pull. The faint, humming recognition in my soul that the Moon Goddess had woven our fates together. My inner wolf, for the first time, stirred and whispered a single, possessive word: "Mine."

I knew he was betrothed to Livia. It was a political arrangement between two powerful families. But I couldn't help the hope that bloomed in my chest. I started watching him from afar, my heart aching with a love I could never speak.

Then came the night of my eighteenth birthday, the night of my Awakening Ceremony. It was also the night Livia was supposed to officially accept her betrothal to Kaelan.

But Livia didn't show up. She had run away, leaving only a note. She was bored, she wrote. She was going off to experience life with some "wild Rogue" she'd met.

Kaelan was devastated. His pride was shattered, his future Luna had abandoned him in front of the entire pack. It was in that moment of raw fury and humiliation that my own wolf fully awakened. The bond between us, dormant for so long, flared to life, an undeniable, incandescent connection. He turned, and his eyes met mine. I saw the shock of recognition, the dawning horror on his face. The Moon Goddess had chosen me. A lowly, forgotten Omega. His true Mate.

He stalked towards me, his face a mask of cold fury. In front of the entire pack, he stopped before me and uttered the words that became my life sentence.

"I, Kaelan Blackwood, reject you, Seraphina Vale, as my mate."

The world fractured. The bond between us, so new and bright, felt like it was being ripped from my chest with jagged claws. I could barely breathe through the agony, but I knew the ritual. I had to respond.

"I, Seraphina Vale, accept your rejection," I choked out.

But he wasn't done. To save his own pride, to show the pack that he was in control, he added, "But you will remain with the pack. You will not leave my territory."

One of the Elders, his face pale, stepped forward. "Alpha, her bloodline... to reject it so completely could invite the displeasure of the Goddess. There could be... consequences."

Kaelan shot him a look of pure ice. "Are you questioning my command?"

The Elder bowed his head, silenced. And so began my seven-year imprisonment.

The rain beat harder against the glass. My memory jumped forward to last month. I had been cleaning the hallway outside his study when I heard him talking to his Beta.

"Livia is coming back," the Beta had said. "What will you do about Seraphina?"

Kaelan's voice was cold, dismissive. "She's just a lowly Omega. A placeholder. Livia is the Luna this pack needs. If Seraphina becomes a problem, I'll have her cast out without a second thought."

The words echoed in my head, finally extinguishing the last ember of hope. Lowly Omega. Placeholder. Cast out.

He had never loved me. He had never even respected me. It was all a lie.