The Rejection I Stole

June's POV

"Tonight, at moonrise, I'm going to reject you in front of the whole pack."

Rhett Calloway said it the way other men said good morning. He leaned in the doorway of his grandmother's sickroom, arms crossed, while I sat beside her bed with a cup of willow tea.

"Wear something clean," he added. "Odette doesn't want you dripping on her big night."

I didn't look up. I slid my arm under Luna Marguerite's shoulders and held the cup to her lips. She was too weak to lift her own head anymore.

"Did you hear me, omega?"

"I heard you." My voice came out steady. I was proud of that. "You want the whole pack to watch."

"I want the whole pack to remember what you are." He smiled, slow and pleased. "And after, my father's calling a Hunt. Some of the boys are bored."

A Hunt.

The bond between us pulled tight under my ribs, like a hook. For three months, since the night his scent hit me in the feast hall and I'd felt the word mate bloom in my chest, I'd lived on that pull. I'd told myself it meant something. That the boy who once shared his apples with me behind the training yard was still there.

He wasn't.

He didn't even look at his grandmother. Not once. He pushed off the doorframe and left.

"He used to be sweet," Marguerite whispered. Her voice was paper. "I don't know where that boy went."

"Neither do I."

Her hand moved on the blanket. It found mine and pressed something into my palm. Paper, folded small, warm from her fist.

"Read it alone," she breathed. "I should have given it to you years ago. I was afraid." Her fingers tightened with the last of her strength. "Don't be afraid like me, child."

She slept after that. A little before sunset, she stopped breathing. Quietly, like a candle that has simply finished.

I closed her eyes. I folded her hands. Then I unfolded the note.

Your father's killers had no scent. Wolves always have a scent. Ask Bram where he was that night.

Don't kneel for them.

* * *

Everyone in Ashgrove knows the story. Bram tells it every year, on the night my parents died, standing on the flat stone above the Halden River while I kneel in the mud below him.

Eleven years ago, Alpha Cormac and Luna Lenore went down to the river at dusk and never came back. The trackers found their daughter on the bank. Ten years old. Covered in their blood. No other scent. No other tracks.

Only me.

Some of the pack say I ran off in the dark and they died coming after me. Some say worse. That something was wrong with me from birth. That a girl with no scent and no wolf isn't a girl at all.

Bram never says which version he believes. He doesn't have to. He just took my father's seat, and my father's house, and my name. He made me the pack's Keeper: the one who sits with the sick and the dying and lays out the dead for the pyre. The work nobody else wants.

Ever since, every wolf in Ashgrove has looked at me and seen the night their Alpha died.

I folded Marguerite's note into my sleeve, against my skin. I took the small bone-handled knife I used to cut the pyre cords and put it in my apron pocket.

I only knew I wasn't going to kneel.

* * *

The whole pack stood in the stone circle by the time the moon cleared the trees.

Torches hissed. Here and there, a phone was already held up, screen glowing, ready to film.

Odette Marsh stood beside Rhett in a silver dress. The Beta's daughter. Perfect hair. Perfect teeth. She waved at me with her fingertips.

"You came," she called. "And you washed. How sweet."

Laughter rippled around the circle.

Alpha Bram stood on the speaking stone, big and gray-bearded, his hands folded over his belt. He didn't laugh. He watched me with flat, patient eyes, the way he always watched me.

Ask Bram where he was that night.

Rhett stepped into the center. "June Rowe. Come here."

I walked into the circle. The bond tugged me toward him with every step.

"Kneel," Rhett said.

The circle went quiet.

Omegas kneel. Every day of my life, I'd knelt. To scrub floors. To serve plates. In the mud below Bram's stone, once a year, while the pack spat.

I didn't kneel.

Rhett's smile cracked. "I said kneel."

"I heard you."

His eyes flashed dark gold. He lifted his chin and started, loud and clear:

"I, Rhett Calloway, heir of Ashgrove, reject—"

"I, June Rowe," I said over him, "daughter of Alpha Cormac and Luna Lenore of Ashgrove, reject you, Rhett Calloway, as my mate."

The bond snapped.

It felt like something tore loose inside my chest. I gasped and stumbled, but I stayed on my feet.

Rhett didn't.

He dropped to one knee in the dirt, clutching his chest. In front of his father. In front of Odette. In front of every phone in the circle.

Then the shouting started. She can't. An omega can't reject an heir. She used her father's title.

"Enough." Bram's voice cut through the noise.

He looked down at me from the stone. Something moved behind his eyes. Not anger. Something colder. Something that looked almost like fear.

"The omega has defied her Alpha's house in front of the Moon," he said. "She belongs to the Hunt. Until the moon touches the far ridge, she runs. After that, any wolf who brings her back may keep what he catches."

Rhett grabbed my arm. His fingers dug into the bone.

"I'll catch you first," he breathed against my ear. "And then I'll make you beg."

My hand found the knife.

I didn't think. I slashed.

The blade opened a thin line across his palm. He hissed and let go, more surprised than hurt. Werewolves heal in seconds. Everyone knows that.

I ran.

* * *

I ran through the pines with branches tearing at my face. Behind me, the howls started, one after another, until the whole forest was screaming.

At the top of the ridge, I looked back once.

Down in the circle, Rhett stood with his hand held up in the firelight. His palm was still bleeding.

It hadn't closed.

I turned and ran for the only way out of Ashgrove. The Halden River. Across it lay rogue land, and no Ashgrove wolf would follow me there.

I came down through the alders to the ford, gasping, my bare feet torn.

And stopped.

There was a man standing on the flat stone above the water. Big. Gray-bearded. Hands folded over his belt, as calm as if he'd been waiting all night.

Bram.

He hadn't chased me. He'd simply walked to the one place he knew I'd run.

"Hello, June," he said. "You always come back to the river."