"I thought rejection would sever the bond. But now it lives inside me like a ghost — and he's the one being haunted."
⸻
The eastern wing was nothing like the healer's quarters I was used to.
This place spoke of history and reverence. The walls here weren't the simple stone of the main pack house but something older, etched with patterns that seemed to shift when viewed from different angles. There was a weight to the air, a sense of time suspended, as if these rooms had witnessed centuries pass while remaining unchanged.
The ceilings were vaulted, carved with silver filigree. Intricate patterns of moons and stars and wolves in various phases of transformation spread across the arched surface, catching what little light filtered through the tall windows and reflecting it back in mesmerizing patterns. I found myself staring up at them, tracing the constellations with my eyes, wondering how many others had lain awake doing the same throughout the centuries.
The floors were polished stone, patterned with old runes I couldn't read. Each step I took across them felt significant somehow, as if I were walking across pages of a forgotten text. Some symbols pulsed faintly when my bare feet touched them, responding to whatever awakened power now flowed through my veins. The sensation was unsettling—like being recognized by something ancient that had been waiting for my arrival.
Everything smelled faintly of herbs and incense—sage, lavender, moonflower, and something deeper and more primal that I couldn't name. Not the sharp, clinical scents of the healing quarters with their tinctures and poultices, but something more ceremonial. Sacred.
My room was twice the size of my old one—with clean linens, soft pillows, a writing desk, and even a window that looked out over the misty forest beyond the walls. A bookshelf stood against one wall, filled with leather-bound volumes whose titles made little sense to me—The Lunar Pathways, Blood Heritage of the Five Great Packs, Healing Beyond the Physical Form. Texts I had never been allowed to access as a simple pack healer.
In one corner stood a small table with various items arranged precisely—crystals, herbs, small vials of liquids that caught the light strangely. Tools for whatever training they expected me to undertake, I assumed. A wardrobe against the far wall contained clothes in soft fabrics I had never been permitted to wear—the clothing of someone with status, not an omega who was expected to blend into the background.
It was beautiful.
But I didn't feel safe.
The luxury felt like a gilded cage, the comfort a thin veneer over the truth of my situation. I wasn't here as an honored guest but as something to be studied, contained, controlled. The reverence in Keeper Alira's eyes hadn't been for me as a person but for what I represented—a power thought lost, suddenly resurfaced.
The moment Keeper Alira left me alone, I sat on the edge of the bed, shoulders stiff, mind racing.
The mattress was soft beneath me, yielding in a way my old thin pallet never had, but I couldn't relax into it. Every muscle in my body remained tense, coiled, ready for... what? I wasn't sure. Escape? Confrontation? The unknown?
Why me?
The question throbbed in time with my pulse. Of all the wolves in the pack, why had the Moon Goddess chosen someone like me—someone deemed unworthy, someone everyone had always overlooked? Was it some cosmic joke? A test? A punishment?
Why now?
After eighteen years of being nothing special, why had this power awakened precisely when I was at my lowest point? If I had been born with this blood, this heritage, why had it remained dormant until now?
What was the Moon Goddess thinking, giving me to him—a cruel, cold Alpha who'd rejected me the moment he laid eyes on me? And why did it still hurt?
I pressed my hand to my chest, feeling the hollow ache where something should have connected but instead had been torn apart. The memory of Kael's face—perfect, beautiful, utterly devoid of warmth—as he looked at me across the ceremonial circle flashed through my mind. The dismissal in his eyes. The curl of distaste at the corner of his mouth. The absolute certainty with which he had rejected what the Goddess herself had chosen.
Few words that had shattered my world, spoken with such casual cruelty it was as if he were declining a meal that didn't appeal to him rather than severing a sacred bond.
The rejection should've broken the bond.
That's what we were taught. That's what everyone believed. A mate bond rejected before consummation would dissolve, painful but clean. Both wolves would eventually heal, move on, perhaps find someone else, even if never a true mate.
But it hadn't.
It had twisted it.
I could feel it now—faint, but constant. A thread pulsing behind my ribs. It didn't carry warmth. It didn't carry love.
It carried chaos.
The sensation was alien—like a splinter lodged beneath my skin that I couldn't extract. Not quite pain, but a persistent wrongness. A connection that should have been severed but instead had been corrupted, warped into something neither of us had bargained for.
His emotions weren't like they were at the ceremony. They weren't distant. They weren't arrogant.
Now... they were unsteady.
It started as a tremor, like the first warning of an earthquake. Faint vibrations along the frayed bond, emotions leaking through that weren't mine. Flashes of a mental state I had never felt from the always-controlled Alpha.
Rage. Frustration. Pain. Dread.
The emotions crashed against my consciousness like waves against a shore, not constant but rhythmic, building in intensity with each pulse. One moment, I would feel a flash of his fury—hot, explosive, directionless. The next, a gnawing anxiety that tasted like metal in my mouth. Then a physical pain so sharp it made me gasp, centered somewhere in his chest—or was it mine?
He was unraveling.
The perfect, untouchable Alpha of Crescent Fang was coming apart at the seams. The wolf who had never shown weakness, never revealed a crack in his composure, was losing his legendary control. And somehow, through this twisted remnant of our bond, I was witnessing it.
And I was starting to feel every frayed edge of it.
The realization was both terrifying and strangely satisfying. This connection wasn't one-way. Whatever was happening to him was bleeding into me, affecting me. But it also meant I wasn't simply a passive recipient of his suffering. I was somehow its cause.
I stood abruptly and crossed to the window. My palms pressed against the cold glass. The woods stretched for miles, endless and dark, the trees silvered under the moonlight.
The vast territory of Crescent Fang Pack spread before me, wild and beautiful. Somewhere out there, beyond the mist-shrouded trees, was the main pack house where Kael would be. Was he in his private chambers? The training grounds? The Alpha's office where he managed pack affairs? Wherever he was, he wasn't at peace.
The glass fogged beneath my breath as I leaned closer, trying to see farther into the darkness. My fingertips tingled against the cool surface, the now-familiar warmth threatening to manifest as silver light. I pulled my hands away quickly, not wanting to leave glowing fingerprints on the window.
Out there... he was losing control.
Kael Blackthorn—the feared Alpha of Crescent Fang—was falling apart.
And it was because of me.
The thought should have terrified me. Should have made me cower, should have sent me running to the Elders begging them to fix whatever was happening. Angering the Alpha—even unintentionally—was a death sentence for most wolves, especially an omega like me.
But instead, I felt something else stirring beneath my fear. Something that felt dangerously like power.
You rejected your mate, Kael.
Now you get to live with the consequences.
My inner voice was harder than I'd ever heard it, edged with a bitterness I hadn't known I was capable of. This was justice, wasn't it? He had humiliated me, dismissed me as worthless. Now the tables had turned. Now he was the one suffering, the one losing control, the one whose weakness was exposed.
The thought should've pleased me.
But it didn't.
Because part of me—the part still tangled up in what could've been—hated feeling his pain. Hated feeling anything from him at all.
It was like having a wound that wouldn't close, continuously reopened by each emotion that bled through the bond. Every flash of his rage, every surge of his desperation, every throb of his confusion—it all reminded me of what I'd lost. What I'd never really had to begin with.
A tear slid down my cheek, surprising me. I hadn't realized I was crying. I wiped it away angrily, hating my weakness, hating that even now, after everything, some part of me still mourned for the mate who had never wanted me.
I slammed the window shut and pulled the curtains closed.
The room plunged into semi-darkness, lit only by the small bedside lamp. I wrapped my arms around myself, suddenly cold despite the comfortable temperature of the room. The silver carvings on the ceiling glinted in the dim light, the ancient runes on the floor pulsed with faint energy, and I had never felt more alone.