My Alpha Rejected Me and Gave Me to Rogues

They put me in Omega grey.

The fabric was thin and stiff, scratching against the bandages that swallowed my hands. Two guards walked me through the service corridor of the Shadowcrest estate, one on each side, their grip careful around my elbows. Not careful for me. Careful for the wraps. Ariella had given specific instructions. The bandages had to stay clean. The pack had to see them.

The banquet hall glowed at the end of the corridor — gold light, music, the low murmur of two hundred ranked wolves in their finest. I could smell roasted meat and warm wine. I could smell Hayes' dark cedar, somewhere deep in the room.

My wolf didn't even stir.

They positioned me near the service entrance, in plain sight of the head table. A trophy. A warning. Look what happens to a healer who forgets her place.

Ariella floated through the room in ceremonial white. She moved like she had already been crowned. When her eyes found me, she smiled — small, private, almost tender — and lifted her glass in a toast no one else saw.

I looked down at my hands and waited for it to be over.

---

I didn't see the rogue until he was already on me.

A hand on my arm, a sharp jerk sideways, and I was through a side door before I could draw breath. The lock clicked behind us. The preparation room was small, lined with shelves of folded linens, a single window high on the wall.

He was big. Pale eyes. Stubble. The faint, sour smell of a wolf who hadn't belonged to a pack in a long time.

"Sit still," he said. "Won't take long."

I didn't sit still.

I couldn't fight with my hands, so I used my shoulder, my hip, the weight of my body. I drove him into a shelf. Linens collapsed around us. He cursed and grabbed me by the throat, slammed me against the wall hard enough that my vision went white at the edges.

And then I saw it.

On the small table beside the window — the carved wooden vessel. My father's ashes. I had refused to leave it in the compound. I had carried it with me everywhere, because no one else would carry him. Someone had moved it here. Placed it carefully. Waiting.

The rogue followed my eyes. He smiled.

"Oh," he said. "That. She mentioned that."

He walked over and picked it up. I tried to lunge for him. He shoved me back with one hand, easy as brushing off a child.

Then he opened his fingers.

The vessel struck the stone floor and shattered.

The sound was not loud. It was small, almost delicate. A soft crack, a scatter, and then the slow grey drift of ash spreading across the floor.

I dropped to my knees.

I hadn't cried when my father died. I hadn't cried when they crushed my hands. I hadn't cried in the compound, not once, through all the dark weeks.

I cried now.

I tried to gather him. With my bandaged hands. The wraps soaked grey, the ash smearing into the cloth, into my skin, and I couldn't pick any of it up, I couldn't hold any of him, my fingers wouldn't close, they wouldn't close, they would never close again —

The rogue laughed once, quietly, and walked out. The lock clicked behind him.

I stayed on my knees in the ashes.

---

I smelled the smoke before I heard the screaming.

It came under the door first — thin, sharp, wrong. Then the alarms started. Distant shouting. The thunder of feet in the corridor outside.

I lifted my head.

The room was filling fast. Smoke crawled along the ceiling, thick and yellow. My eyes burned. My throat closed.

I staggered to the door and threw my body against it. The wood didn't move. I clawed at the handle with hands that couldn't grip. Pain shot up my arms. I tried again. Again.

The lock held.

I sank against the door, coughing, my lungs scraped raw. Somewhere out in the corridor, I heard Hayes' voice — close, close enough that the bond should have flared, close enough that he should have felt me — calling Ariella's name.

Not mine.

Hers.

And then his footsteps moved away.

I pressed my forehead against the door and let myself understand.

That was when it came.

A fragment. Not my memory. His.

A cold room I had never been in. Hayes alone, standing very straight, a folded paper in his hand. His voice, low and clipped, reading from it.

*I, Hayes Wallace, Alpha of the Shadowcrest Pack, reject you, Eva Turner, as my mate, my Luna, and my chosen...*

The words moved through me like ice water.

Months ago. Long before the ritual. Long before my father. Long before the glass.

He had already let me go.

Everything I had endured — every blackmail, every degradation, every silver burn — I had endured tethered to a bond that, on his side, had not existed for a very long time.

I waited for the grief.

It didn't come.

What came instead was something quieter. Cleaner. A strange, terrible lightness, as if a chain I hadn't known I was wearing had simply fallen off my neck.

I was free.

I looked up.

The window. High on the wall. Already cracked from the heat.

I dragged a stool over with my elbow and my shoulder. Climbed up. Drove my forearm through the weakened glass — felt it bite, felt it cut, didn't care.

I pulled myself through.

I dropped into the dark grass behind the estate. Smoke poured from the windows above me. Somewhere far away, someone was screaming my name as a question, then as a confirmation, then not at all.

I didn't look back.

I ran east, into the trees, and let Eva Turner burn behind me.