Unwanted By The Alpha, Chosen By Fate

I was a lowly Omega mated to Caleb, the Alpha of the Silver Moon Pack. I thought I had finally found my harbor.

But when our five-year-old daughter, Aria, plunged into a frozen lake and nearly drowned, he was nowhere to be found.

He had blocked our mental link to play house with my sister's daughters at the Gamma estate.

For three days, Aria lay dying in a coma.

The trauma forced her inner wolf into hibernation. To protect her mind, it erased every conscious memory of her father-but her wolf remembered the wound. His scent was not a memory anymore. It was a scar.

When she finally woke up, she shrank away from the heavy velvet curtains.

"Mama, it smells like cold ashes in a wet hearth. Make it go away."

She was screaming in terror just smelling his lingering scent. Her mind could not name him, but her body still remembered what it felt like to be abandoned in the snow.

He had given the healing moonstones and the winter pelt he promised our daughter to my sister's twins instead.

My sister even sneered at my desperate pleas, telling everyone I was just faking the accident to get his attention.

I had spent my entire life bending my neck to the Pack hierarchy, enduring my family's disdain and my mate's cruel neglect.

But looking at my fractured child, the heavy chain around my heart simply vanished, replaced by cold iron.

I didn't cry, and I didn't beg for his love anymore.

Instead, I packed my meager dowry, went straight to the Luna Queen for a Royal Decree of Rejection, and took my daughter away to build an empire of our own.

Chapter 1

Elara POV:

The winter wind, sharp as a shard of glass, found its way through every fissure in the stonework of the Silver Moon castle.

It was the harshest winter our dominion had weathered in a century, burying the pack lands under a merciless depth of snow.

I kept vigil beside the massive oak bed, my gaze fixed upon my five-year-old daughter, Aria.

Her small face held the same chalky pallor as the snow drifting past the Gothic windows.

For three days, she had been lost in a sleep from which none could rouse her, ever since the courtyard's frozen lake had claimed her.

My hands trembled as I wiped a cold sweat from her forehead.

She was dying, and her father, Alpha Caleb, was nowhere to be found.

A mere week ago, Caleb had come into possession of two rare Moonstones, artifacts said to hold the power to calm a young wolf's restless spirit. I had allowed myself a flicker of hope that one might be for Aria. Instead, he had gifted both to the twin daughters of my older sister, Serena, a high-ranking Beta to my lowly Omega.

Then came the winter hunt, and with it, a magnificent, single snow fox pelt brought back by Caleb. Aria had waited up half the night, her eyes shining with a desperate hope that her father had finally remembered her. The next morning, we saw Serena's twins parading in matching cloaks fashioned from that very fur.

The light in my daughter's eyes extinguished so suddenly it felt as if a nerve had been severed deep within my own chest.

She ran out into the blizzard, lost her footing, and plunged into the icy water.

Now, Aria's fingers twitched against the thick blankets.

"Aria?" I whispered, leaning closer.

Her heavy eyelids fluttered open, revealing her pale blue eyes.

"Mama," she croaked, her voice dry and weak.

"I am here, my sweet girl," I sobbed, kissing her cold hands.

Aria blinked, looking around the grand, dark room.

"Mama, it smells awful in here," she whimpered, wrinkling her nose and pulling the blankets up to her chin.

I froze.

The room smelled of Caleb.

His scent, usually a comforting mix of rain and pine, lingered on the heavy velvet curtains.

"It smells like... damp soil and something burnt," Aria rasped, a cough rattling in her small chest. "Like cold ashes in a wet hearth. Make it go away."

My heart pounded against my ribs.

For a young wolf to reject her own father's scent was an unheard-of rebellion of the blood. Her mind could not name him-but her wolf remembered the wound. The scent was not a memory. It was a scar.

Our old Omega wet nurse, Martha, gasped from the doorway.

"Child, hush!" Martha scolded gently, rushing over. "You must not speak of the Alpha that way. The Pack law demands unwavering respect."

"He's not my Alpha!" she cried out, pushing herself up with a burst of angry energy.

Martha turned pale, her hands shaking.

"I almost died in the cold water," Aria shouted, tears spilling down her cheeks. "I slept for three days, and he never came to see me!"

My breath hitched as a memory from the day of the accident flashed in my mind.

Caleb had promised to take Aria into the forest for her first hunting lesson.

She had waited by the carriage in the snow for two hours.

Then, Caleb marched out of the castle, ordering the driver to take him to the Gamma's estate.

Serena lived there, and her youngest twin had a slight fever.

"Papa, you promised!" Aria had begged, grabbing his coat.

Caleb had turned around, his eyes flashing with the golden light of his wolf.

He had used the Alpha's Command on her, a power so profound it could freeze the very marrow in a subordinate's bones.

"Cease this selfishness, Aria!" Caleb's voice had thundered, and the sheer weight of the command had locked her tiny feet to the snowy ground.

He left her standing there, shivering and crying, while his carriage rolled away.

I had run out to hold her, but she slipped away to the lake to be alone.

When she fell in, I had reached out to Caleb through the Mind-Link.

The Mind-Link was a mental channel that connected the minds of our Pack.

Caleb, Aria is in the water! She is drowning! Return to us! I had shrieked into the mental channel that bound our Pack.

But the only answer I got was from Serena's maid, who had access to the estate's link.

Stop playing tricks to get his attention, Omega, the maid had sneered in my head. The Alpha is busy.

Now, looking at my daughter's tear-stained face, a stillness settled in my veins, cold and sharp as frozen iron.

"Mama, please," Aria begged, clinging to my dress. "Take me away from here. Take me away from him."

I stroked her hair, feeling the fragile beat of her pulse.

I had spent a lifetime bending my neck to the hierarchies of the Pack. But gazing now upon my fractured child, I knew I would see this castle reduced to ash and embers before I allowed him to harm her again.

"We are leaving, Aria," I promised, my voice steady.

Martha dropped her water basin, the metal clattering loudly against the stone floor.

"Luna have mercy," Martha whispered, her eyes wide with terror. "Where will you go? He will hunt you down."

I rose to my feet. In the wardrobe, I bypassed his rows of expensive coats to retrieve the worn leather dowry box that held my entire past. I was not merely packing my meager belongings; I was preparing to excise this place, and its master, from my very being.

Deep within the castle, a draft snuffed out the hearth's last ember, plunging the stone walls into a darkness as absolute as my resolve. The Alpha would return to an empty house.

Elara POV:

My fingers traced the scratches in the dark wood of my dowry box, each groove a testament to a past that now felt like a lead weight in my lap. I had been born an Omega, the lowest station in the rigid hierarchy of our kind.

My parents, both proud Beta warriors, had looked upon my birth as a stain upon their lineage.

They poured all their affection, their resources, their hopes for the future into my older twin sister, Serena.

She was strong, a high-ranking Beta from birth; I was but the shadow that trailed in her wake.

My childhood was a litany of lonely nights spent beneath a sliver of moon, my tears watering the roots of the castle's ancient rose bushes.

Until the night I met Caleb.

He was the young heir to the Silver Moon Pack, and our collision near the gardens was not one of chance, but of celestial design.

The Recognition, the moment the Moon Goddess reveals a Fated Mate, was not a gentle dawning but a violent claiming of the senses.

First, the scent of him-an impossible mingling of fresh-fallen rain and the deep, sharp tang of pine-filled my lungs and made the world tilt on its axis.

Then came a surge of heat that set my very blood to boiling, my heart hammering a frantic, wild rhythm against my ribs.

A profound stillness settled in the core of my being, the quiet assurance of a ship finding its harbor after a lifetime at sea.

And deep within me, the wolf I kept caged let out a possessive roar that was not a thought but an instinct.

Mine! she howled.

When his fingers brushed my arm, a current, sharp and electric, shot from the point of contact down the length of my spine.

He was not a boy, but my salvation.

When we came of age, Serena was married to General Arthur, a formidable Gamma who commanded the Alpha's armies.

Caleb and I then completed the Marking ceremony.

He sank his teeth into the delicate flesh at the crook of my neck, leaving a permanent, silvered scar that bound our very lifeblood together.

I allowed myself to believe that happiness was, at last, a thing I might possess.

But then Arthur was dispatched to the northern borders to quell an uprising of Rogues-the dangerous, exiled wolves who roamed without a Pack.

Serena, pregnant and alone at the Gamma estate, became the center of our family's anxieties.

My parents demanded I go and serve her.

I, too, was with child, and the pregnancy had left my health precarious.

Caleb, in a gesture I mistook for protection, offered to go in my stead.

"I will see to Serena's needs for Arthur," he had promised, his lips a warm press against my forehead.

But the line between duty and devotion blurred into nonexistence.

On the night Serena went into labor, Caleb kept a frantic vigil outside her chamber door, his eyes glowing with a feverish red light as he paced the stone floors like a caged beast.

When Serena's twin girls were born, something in Caleb's heart irrevocably shifted.

He showered those children with a father's adoration.

The Pack's finest cuts of meat, the most brilliant jewels from the treasury, all found their way to the Gamma estate.

Aria received the leftovers.

Last year, the Queen of our dominion had gifted a protective silver amulet to my daughter.

While common silver is a poison that burns our skin, this was royal silver, blessed by the Moon Goddess to heal and shield the wearer.

Caleb intercepted the royal messenger.

He took the amulet and placed it around the neck of Serena's sickly twin.

When Aria wept, Caleb had merely patted her head.

"The next time a rare treasure comes into my hands, it will be yours, Aria. I give you my word as an Alpha," he had said.

Then came the snow fox pelt.

Aria had stayed awake until the castle bells tolled midnight, her gaze fixed upon the door.

She fell asleep in my arms, whispering his name into the folds of my dress.

The following morning, as I passed Caleb's study, I overheard his orders to a guard.

"Take this pelt to the tailor," Caleb commanded. "Have it fashioned into two cloaks for the Gamma's daughters. The winter proves too harsh for them."

I had pushed the heavy door open, my protest a choked whisper.

"You promised it to Aria."

Caleb did not deign to look at me.

"Aria has her own fur when she shifts. Serena's girls are delicate," he had replied, his voice a wall of ice.

The bitter memory dissolved as Aria's small fingers tugged at my sleeve, pulling me from the past and back into the cold reality of the bedchamber.

Her pale blue eyes, wide with a faint confusion, searched my face.

"Mama, why are your cheeks wet?" she asked softly.

I hastily wiped my face, forcing a smile that felt brittle.

"They are not, my love," I lied. "I am only glad you are awake."

But as I looked into her eyes, a new and terrible stillness took hold of me.

The golden spark that always danced in their depths-the living presence of her inner wolf-was gone.

A low, keening whine rose from my own wolf's throat as I searched that empty gaze. Our daughter's spirit had survived the ice, but the cost was a piece of her very soul.

Elara POV:

The Pack Healer, an old Beta whose hair was the color of winter frost, finished packing his wooden medicine box.

He regarded me with an expression of profound gravity.

"The shock of the freezing water, combined with the emotional trauma, has caused a severe fracture," the Healer said, his voice low.

He glanced at Aria, who was quietly sipping warm broth from a wooden bowl.

"Her inner wolf has retreated to shield her mind," he explained. "It has entered a state of deep hibernation."

A cold stone seemed to form in the pit of my stomach.

A wolf-kind without their inner wolf was a creature utterly defenseless.

"Will it wake?" I asked, my voice a thready whisper.

"Only time can answer that," the Healer sighed. "But there is another matter. It appears a portion of her memory has been lost."

I looked at Aria.

She remembered me. She remembered Martha.

"Aria," I called out gently. "Do you remember the castle gardens?"

She nodded, a small smile touching her lips. "Yes, Mama. The red roses."

I took a deep breath. "Do you remember... Caleb?"

The moment the name left my lips, Aria let out a piercing scream.

She dropped the bowl, its contents splashing across the blankets, and clutched her head with both hands.

"No! Make the sound stop!" she cried, her small body seized by a violent tremor.

The Healer rushed forward, pressing a cloth steeped in calming herbs to her nose.

"You must not speak that name!" the Healer warned, his eyes wide with alarm. "She has no conscious recollection of her father. But her wolf remembers the pain. The scent triggers what her mind cannot name. That is why she recoils. That is why she cannot bear it."

I stood frozen, the blood turning to ice in my veins.

"Her mind now links him to an unbearable pain," the Healer continued. "To force the memory upon her would risk a schism of the spirit. It could extinguish her life."

The Healer bowed his head and departed, leaving a profound silence in his wake.

I stood listening to the ragged sound of Aria's breathing.

Caleb was still at the Gamma estate.

He had been gone for fifteen days.

He had walled off our Mind-Link, leaving only a cold void where his thoughts should have been.

He did not even know his daughter had nearly perished.

"Martha," I said, my voice hardening to a new temper. "Gather everything in this room that belongs to the Alpha."

Martha hurried to obey.

She pulled a wooden chest from beneath Aria's bed.

Inside were the few, pathetic trinkets Caleb had bestowed upon her over the years.

Aria sat up, her gaze falling upon the contents.

Her eyes locked onto a crude wolf carving, whittled from a piece of bone.

Caleb had made it years ago, botched the legs, and, deeming it unfit for display, had tossed it to Aria as an afterthought.

She used to clutch it in her sleep every night.

Now, Aria stared at it with an expression of pure revulsion.

"It smells of rot and damp earth," Aria said, covering her nose.

She pointed a small, determined finger at the hearth.

"Burn it, Martha," Aria commanded, her tone an uncanny echo of my own.

Martha hesitated, her gaze flickering to me for permission.

"You heard her," I said, my voice like flint.

Martha tossed the bone wolf into the roaring flames.

Aria did not stop there.

"That kite," she pointed. "And the blunted dagger. Throw them all into the fire."

We watched as the flames consumed every last vestige of Caleb in her life.

Martha wrung her hands, her face a mask of terror.

"Luna save us," she whispered. "To destroy an Alpha's gifts... it is an act of treason. The punishment will be severe."

I turned to Martha, my spine straight as a spear.

"He is no father," I said, my voice ringing with a terrible finality. "This is not punishment. It is consequence."

I walked over to the bed and sat beside my daughter.

"We're leaving, Aria," I said gravely. "Are you ready to leave the Silver Moon Pack behind?"

Aria's eyes, which had been so dull, suddenly blazed with light.

She threw her arms around my neck, her small body clinging to mine.

"Yes, Mama! Let us go far away. Just you and me!" she cheered.

Her joy was the final catalyst I required.

I looked at Martha.

"Pack the remainder of my dowry," I commanded. "We depart at dawn tomorrow."

Martha gasped. "But you are Mated to him! Your bond is a sacred vow to the Moon Goddess!"

I reached up and touched the smooth, unblemished skin on my neck where the scar had once been.

"Not for long," I whispered.

I was going to initiate the Rejection.

I was going to break the bond, even if it meant being unmade in the process.

But to do so, I required the sanction of the highest power in our dominion.

Outside the frosted window, a lone wolf howled-a raw, jagged sound that echoed through the dead of night. By this time tomorrow, that call would no longer be mine to answer.