After My Alpha Rejected Me, The Lycan Prince Claimed Me

I smelled him before I saw him.

Three years. Three years of waiting, of letters he stopped answering by month six, of my wolf, Wren, pacing inside me every full moon like a caged thing. And then, just like that, cedar and cold wind rolled through the ballroom doors of the Silverfang estate, and my knees almost betrayed me.

Cody was home.

I stood near the marble column where my mother, Diane, had told me to wait. My dress was the color of storm clouds. I had picked it because I wanted him to look at me and understand that I was not a girl anymore. That I had built something out of the silence he left me in.

The doors opened wider. And I saw her.

She was on his arm.

A she-wolf I did not know, small and doll-pretty, in white silk that was too bridal for a banquet. Her fingers were curled around his bicep like she had rehearsed the grip. She smiled at the room as if the room already belonged to her.

"Stella." My mother's voice, low at my shoulder. "Breathe."

I was breathing. That was the problem.

Cody did not look at me. Not once. He walked past the long tables of ranked wolves and stepped onto the ceremony floor as if he had come home to perform, not to reunite. My father rose halfway from his chair, confused. The Beta of Silverfang, Cody's own second, half-turned toward him with a warning in his eyes that Cody did not see or did not care to.

He stopped at the center of the floor. His voice—when it came—was steady in the way you only get from practicing something in a mirror.

"I, Cody Ward, Alpha of the Silverfang Pack…"

My stomach dropped through the floor.

"…reject you, Stella Ross, daughter of the Ross Bloodline, as my mate."

Silence. The kind that has weight. Somewhere near the back, a glass tipped and shattered and no one moved.

The pain came a heartbeat later. It was not clean. It was a claw, dragging through the space behind my sternum, and Wren screamed inside me—a sound only I could hear. I felt the bond twist, then snap, and my vision went white at the edges.

I pressed my fingers together at my side. Thumb to forefinger. Hard. It was an old trick and a small one. It kept my face where I needed it to be.

Everyone was staring at me.

Cody finally, finally looked at me. There was something in his face I did not have time to name—was it triumph? guilt? the boy I had once defended peeking through the Alpha he had built? I did not care. My mouth was moving before my mind caught up.

"I, Stella Ross," I said, and my voice did not shake, which felt like a miracle and a knife at once, "of the Ross Bloodline, accept your rejection, Alpha Cody Ward of the Silverfang Pack."

His jaw tightened. Good.

"Consider yourself severed," I added, quietly, "from your end and mine."

The girl on his arm—Priscilla, someone was whispering her name behind me, Priscilla Garza—let out a small, disappointed sound, like she had wanted me to cry. I did not.

And then the room changed.

It was a pressure first. A weight in the air that made the chandelier crystals hum. Every wolf below Alpha rank in the room dropped their gaze at the same moment, throats bared without being told. My mother inhaled sharply. My father sat back down.

A figure detached itself from the shadows near the far pillar.

He walked slowly. He did not need to hurry. Black suit, black tie, a face I had known from a distance for a decade and never once been able to read. Judah Hunt. Lycan Prince of the Blackmoor Bloodline. He was supposed to be somewhere else tonight. He was supposed to be anywhere but here.

He stopped beside me.

He did not touch me. He did not look at me. He looked at Cody, and when he spoke his voice was so low I felt it in the base of my spine.

"I, Judah Hunt of the Blackmoor Bloodline," he said, "claim Stella Ross as my chosen mate. Under witness of every pack in this hall."

The room did not erupt. The room detonated.

Cody's face went the color of old paper. Priscilla's nails dug so hard into his sleeve I saw the fabric pucker. My father was on his feet again, my mother's hand pressed over her mouth. And I stood there, in a dress the color of storm clouds, with a Lycan Prince at my shoulder and the bond in my chest still raw and smoking, and I did not know if I wanted to laugh or run or drop to my knees.

Judah turned his head, finally, just enough to look at me.

"Walk with me," he said. Soft. Like it was only for me.

I walked.

---

Later—much later, in the guest wing of my parents' house, when I was alone in front of the mirror and my hands were shaking so hard I could not undo the clasp of my necklace—a knock came at the door.

It was not Judah.

It was one of Cody's runners. He held out a small sealed envelope. Cream paper. Cody's own crest pressed into the wax.

"Alpha Ward requests a rational discussion," the boy recited, eyes on the floor.

I did not open it. I did not even take it into my hand.

"Return it," I said.

"Miss—"

"Sealed." I lifted my chin. "With the Blackmoor crest on top of his."

The runner swallowed and fled.

Somewhere across the estate grounds, in the dark, I heard a wolf howl. Long, and low, and full of something that was not quite grief yet but would be. I turned off the light and did not let myself listen to it.