After My Mate Humiliated Me, the Lycan King Claimed Me

I didn't remember leaving the great hall. One moment I was standing at the back, watching Bellamy's arm around Blakely's waist, and the next I was in the corridor with tears streaming down my face and my chest splitting open.

The bond.

Oh god, the bond.

It felt like something inside me was tearing apart—not my body, but something deeper. My wolf whimpered, a sound so broken it made my knees buckle. I pressed my back against the cold stone wall and tried to breathe, but every inhale was jagged glass.

Mate, my wolf whispered. Mate rejected us.

Footsteps echoed down the corridor. Heavy. Purposeful.

I looked up through blurred vision and saw two of Eleanor's personal guards approaching. Their faces were blank, professional. They weren't here to comfort me.

"Kenna," one of them said. His name was Derek. I'd scrubbed his quarters a hundred times. "You need to come with us."

I wiped my face with shaking hands. "I—I need to see Bellamy. There's been a mistake. He didn't mean—"

"Now," Derek said. His hand closed around my upper arm. Hard.

The other guard—Marcus, the Beta's younger brother—took my other arm. They hauled me upright. My legs barely worked. The bond-pain was getting worse, spreading through my chest like poison.

They dragged me through the corridors. Not toward Bellamy's office. Not toward the private rooms where we used to meet in secret.

Toward the east exit. Toward the border.

Panic flared through the agony. "Wait. Wait, where are you taking me?"

No answer.

We passed other pack members in the hallways. They turned away. Pretended not to see. A few whispered to each other, their eyes sliding over me like I was already gone.

The east doors opened into the November night. Cold air hit my face, sharp and bitter. I wasn't wearing a coat. Just the thin gray dress.

"Please," I said. My voice cracked. "I didn't do anything wrong. I just—I need to talk to him. Please."

Eleanor Griffin stood waiting at the boundary stones.

She wore the same midnight blue gown from the ceremony, diamonds still glittering at her throat. Her silver hair was pulled back so tight it looked painful. Her expression was carved from ice—no anger, no satisfaction, nothing.

Just cold.

"Ten years," Eleanor said quietly, her voice carrying in the still night air. "Ten years you've been a stain on this pack. A distraction. A weakness my son should have outgrown the moment his wolf matured."

The guards forced me forward. My feet stumbled over roots and stones. The boundary line was just ahead—a row of ancient marker stones that glowed faintly with pack magic.

"Please," I whispered. The bond-pain was so bad now I could barely stand. "Luna Eleanor, I—"

"You are no longer a member of Shadowcrest Pack," Eleanor said. Her eyes were flat. Empty. "You are rogue. And if you set foot on our territory again, you will be killed on sight."

The guards dragged me past the boundary stones.

The pack bond snapped.

I screamed.

It wasn't like the mate bond breaking—that had been a tearing, a wound that bled. This was amputation. Every connection I'd had to Shadowcrest, every thread that tied me to the place I'd called home for ten years, severed in an instant.

I hit the ground hard. Mud soaked through my dress, freezing and thick. My hands sank into it as I tried to push myself up, but my arms wouldn't hold me.

The guards turned and walked back across the boundary without a word.

Eleanor stood on the other side of the stones, watching me. For a moment, I thought I saw something flicker in her expression—not regret, but maybe acknowledgment. That she'd just thrown away a living person like trash.

Then she turned and disappeared into the darkness.

I don't know how long I lay there in the mud. Long enough for the cold to seep into my bones. Long enough for my tears to stop because there was nothing left inside me to cry.

My hand brushed against something soft.

The plush wolf.

It must have fallen from my pocket when they threw me down. It lay in the mud beside me, its worn fabric already soaked and filthy.

I stared at it.

Bellamy had given it to me during my first winter at Shadowcrest, when I was thirteen and shivering in the unheated Omega quarters. He'd slipped it into my hands during a moment when no one was watching and whispered, "So you won't be alone."

I'd carried it everywhere. Slept with it every night. Held it during every beating, every humiliation, every moment I wanted to give up.

It was the only thing I had that said someone cared.

I looked at it now—filthy, ruined, pathetic.

Just like me.

I pushed myself to my knees. My whole body shook. The bond-pain was still there, a constant scream in my chest, but underneath it was something else.

Something cold.

Something that felt like the last piece of me that could break finally shattering into nothing.

I stood up. Mud dripped from my dress. My hair hung in wet tangles. I looked back at the boundary stones one last time.

Then I turned and walked away.

I left the plush wolf in the mud.

I didn't look back.

---

Briarwood was a two-hour walk. I made it in three because I had to stop twice to vomit from the bond-sickness.

The neutral town sat on the edge of pack territories—not claimed by anyone, a place where rogues and wanderers could pass through without being killed on sight. The streets were quiet this late. A few bars still had lights on. A gas station glowed harsh and fluorescent on the corner.

I had seventeen dollars in my pocket. Omega wages I'd saved from the few times Eleanor had thrown coins at me for extra work.

I found a motel above a laundromat. The sign said ROOMS BY THE WEEK. The man at the desk didn't ask questions. He took my money and handed me a key to a room on the second floor.

The room was small. A bed with a thin blanket. A bathroom with a cracked mirror. A window that looked out at the dark street below.

I locked the door. Stripped off the muddy dress. Stood under the shower until the hot water ran out and my skin turned red.

When I finally crawled into bed, I was shaking so hard the mattress creaked.

I closed my eyes.

And for the first time in ten years, I was completely, utterly alone.

---

The county clerk's office opened at eight.

I was there at seven-fifty, standing outside in yesterday's dress—still damp, still filthy, but it was all I had.

The clerk was a middle-aged human woman who barely looked up when I walked in. "Help you?"

"I need to file for a legal name change," I said. My voice sounded hollow. Distant.

She slid a form across the counter. "Fill this out. There's a fee."

I took the pen. My hand shook as I wrote.

Current legal name: Kenna Griffin.

No. Not Griffin. I'd never been a Griffin. That was Bellamy's name. Eleanor's name. The name of a pack that threw me away.

I crossed it out.

Current legal name: Kenna.

Requested legal name: Kenna Warren.

Warren. My mother's maiden name. The name she'd carried before she died and left me alone in a pack that hated me.

I signed the form. Paid the fee with the last of my money.

The clerk stamped it. "You'll receive confirmation in two weeks."

"Thank you," I whispered.

I walked out into the morning sun.

Kenna Warren.

Not an Omega. Not a rejected mate. Not a stain on Shadowcrest Pack.

Just Kenna Warren.

I didn't know who that was yet.

But I was going to find out.

---

That night, I lay in the narrow bed and stared at the ceiling.

The bond-pain was still there. Constant. Exhausting. My wolf was silent—she'd retreated somewhere deep inside after the rejection, and I couldn't feel her anymore.

I was so tired.

I closed my eyes.

And then—

Warmth.

It started in my chest, spreading outward like sunlight breaking through clouds. Not the burning agony of a severed bond. Something else. Something gentle.

A voice stirred in my mind.

Feminine. Strong. Familiar, even though I'd never heard it before.

*Hello, Kenna.*

I froze.

*I am your wolf,* the voice said softly. *I have been waiting a very long time.*

Tears spilled down my temples into my hair.

"You're here," I whispered into the dark. "You're really here."

*I have always been here,* she said. *But you could not hear me. Not in that place. Not under their chains.*

I pressed my hand to my chest. The warmth was growing, pushing back the bond-pain, filling the hollow spaces.

"What's your name?" I asked.

*Silver,* she said. *And we are going to be magnificent.*