AfterMyRejectionIMarriedHisUncle

AXIRA

My head snapped up so fast my neck ached.

What? 

The Alpha of Vargulf Valley was standing in front of me. Malakar Drenthe. I'd heard the name my whole life the way you hear a story meant to keep children in line — behave, or the Vargulf Alpha will hear about it — except he wasn't a story. He was real, very tall when next to me, and close enough that I had to tip my head back to hold his gaze, and every part of me wanted to look away and couldn't.

They said he'd killed a rogue Alpha with his bare hands before he turned twenty. They said his own wolf had started slipping the leash years ago, that something in him was cracking slowly and permanently, that the reason he ruled alone in that valley of his was because nobody sane wanted to be close when it finally broke. 

Mothers used him to frighten their children into obedience. I'd used him that way myself, once, half-jokingly, telling Veyla I'd feed her to the Vargulf Alpha if she didn't stop stealing my hair pins.

Now he was standing over me with my mother's handprint still burning on my cheek, and I couldn't remember how to breathe right.

"She's rejected," he said, to the whole courtyard, not to me. "Which means she's unclaimed."

My stomach dropped somewhere past the floor.

"I'll take her."

The courtyard made a sound like it had been struck. I wasn't listening anymore. My legs were numb and my ears were ringing.

Oh fuck. 

I was screwed. 

"Alpha Drenthe." My father, pushing forward, and even through my fog I registered how careful his voice was, how his voice shook with fear. Fear that he would offend the Alpha. "This is — forgive me, but this isn't necessary. A rejection is a family matter. We'll handle it within the Serath—"

"You handled it fine so far." Malakar didn't even look at him. "Slapping her in front of three hundred witnesses. Very handled."

My father's mouth snapped shut and I shuddered at how easy it was to put him in his place. 

"Alpha, please." Elder Sen came over this time, stepping in with his hands raised like he was approaching something dangerous, which— I supposed, looking at Malakar's face— he was. "There's no need to concern yourself with this. The girl comes from an unremarkable line. Surely there are more suitable—"

"I didn't ask for a character reference."

"With respect—"

"You have none to spare, so save it."

A ripple went through the crowd, the kind of nervous laughter that comes out sideways when nobody's brave enough to actually laugh. Elder Sen's face went the color of old parchment paper and he stepped back into the crowd like it might swallow him whole and spare him further embarrassment.

My mother tried next, and her voice had none of my father's careful fear in it — just pure, indignant fury, like the audacity belonged to Malakar and not to her, moments ago, when her palm had connected with my face.

"You cannot simply claim someone else's daughter in the middle of a ceremony—"

"I can, actually." He finally turned, and I watched my mother's fury falter under the weight of his stare. "Ask your elders. Or don't, since apparently their advice isn't worth much to you tonight either."

Nobody spoke.

I realized, distantly, that I hadn't spoken either. That I was still sitting there on the ground where I'd fallen— when had I fallen? — with my face throbbing and my mind three steps behind everything happening around me. That the man everyone in three territories feared had just decided my entire future in the space of ten sentences, and nobody had once asked me what I wanted.

He looked down at me again. Up close, his eyes weren't what I expected. I'd expected something colder. What I found instead was something unreadable and assessing. It was sharp and searching, burning through me. 

"Can you stand?" he asked.

It was the first thing anyone had said to me since the rejection that wasn't cruel or performative. I found that, somehow, more disorienting than everything else.

"I— yes." I didn't move.

"Then stand."

I stood. My legs shook doing it, and I hated that they shook, hated that he could probably see it, hated that everyone watching could see it too.

Kael — I'd learn his name later, the beta who kept close to Malakar's shoulder with a face that showed obvious discomfort about the whole situation — leaned in and murmured something too low for me to catch. Whatever it was, Malakar didn't answer him. He just turned and started walking, and after a beat, when I hadn't moved, he glanced back.

"Well?"

I looked at my mother. Her jaw was tight, her eyes furious, but underneath the fury was something else, something that looked almost like fear. I didn't understand it and didn't have time to try. I looked at my father, who wouldn't meet my eyes at all. I looked at Veyla, near the back of the crowd, her face pale and unreadable in a way I'd never seen on her before.

Nobody said don't go. Nobody said stay.

So I walked. Because saying no to the man felt like I signed a death sentence. 

The crowd parted for us in a manner it hadn't parted for me an hour ago when I'd tried to leave on my own — No words were needed just wolves stepping back like proximity to the Vargulf Alpha might be contagious. I kept my eyes forward and my chin up because if I looked at any of their faces right now I thought I might finally break, and I'd promised myself, standing at that altar right after Ravion rejected me, that I wouldn't do that in front of them.

At the edge of the courtyard, just before the end of the center, I let myself look back. 

Everything I knew was standing in that courtyard, and none of it was coming with me.

Oh fuck, what was I doing?