Rejected by My Alpha, Claimed by the Lycan King

Mochi grew braver every week, which was the problem.

He'd trot into the common room on his stubby legs, tail wagging, and nose at whoever's boots looked interesting. Most of the pack ignored him. Celeste did not.

"He growled at me," she told Christopher one evening, her voice pitched soft and wounded, just loud enough for me to hear from the hallway. "I know he's just a pup, but I flinched. I couldn't help it."

"He's never growled at anyone," I said, stepping into the room before I could stop myself.

Celeste's eyes went wide and glassy. "I'm not lying, Rosalia."

Christopher didn't look at me. "He shouldn't be in the communal areas. It's unhygienic."

"He's clean. I bathe him myself."

"A Luna who spends more time on a stray than pack discipline sends the wrong message." He said it flatly, like a policy, not a cruelty. "Keep him in your room."

So I did. I kept Mochi in my room, and at night he curled against my chest, a small warm weight that still trusted me completely. He didn't know what I'd become in this house — invisible, accused, hollowed out. To him I was just the hand that fed him, the heartbeat he fell asleep against.

He was the only thing in Ironveil that still looked at me like I mattered.

The blizzard came on a Tuesday. I remember because I'd been counting days since the stairs, since Christopher's Alpha tone had forced an apology out of my own throat. The wind screamed against the windows that night, snow slamming sideways in sheets so thick you couldn't see the tree line.

I was asleep with Mochi tucked under my chin when the door slammed open.

Christopher filled the doorway, his face carved from something I didn't recognize. "Get up."

"What—"

He crossed the room before I finished the word. His hand closed around Mochi's scruff and lifted him straight out of the blankets.

Mochi yelped, thin and startled, and something in me detonated.

"No!" I lunged, clawing at Christopher's forearm, my nails dragging red lines into his skin. "Give him back — Christopher, give him back to me—"

"A Luna who cannot obey doesn't deserve pets." His voice was terrible in its calm. He held Mochi against his chest like a bundle of laundry, ignoring the pup's frantic wriggling, ignoring my hands tearing at his sleeve.

"Where are you taking him?" I screamed it. "Christopher, please—"

He didn't answer. He carried Mochi out into the hallway, and I ran after him barefoot, the stone floor like ice under my feet, screaming his name, screaming Mochi's name, until we reached the front doors and the storm ripped them open before he'd even touched the handle.

He walked out into the white.

I followed as far as the border markers before my legs gave out in the snow. I watched him carry my pup past the pack line, into the dark trees where rogues were known to run, and set him down in a drift with the wind howling around them both.

"Mochi!" My voice broke apart in the storm. "Mochi, come back — please, please come back to me—"

Christopher turned and walked back toward me without a backward glance at the small shape struggling in the snow behind him.

I don't remember him dragging me inside. I remember the door locking. I remember my throat raw and empty, no voice left in it, my hands so cold I couldn't feel them curl into fists against the wood.

Mochi was never found.

Something in me didn't shatter that night. It just — stopped. Quietly. The way bone gives out under enough pressure, without even the mercy of a loud sound.

The next evening, they summoned me to dinner anyway. A bowl of stew sat steaming in front of my chair. I smelled it before I sat down — that bitter green sharpness underneath the broth — and pushed it away.

"I can't eat this," I said. "Wolfsbane. It's in the healer's records. I'm severely allergic."

Christopher's jaw tightened. Celeste, beside him, said nothing, but I saw the small tilt of her head, the whisper she'd clearly already planted.

"You fabricate ailments when it's convenient," Christopher said. "Eat."

"Christopher, please, I'm not lying—"

"Eat the stew, Rosalia." The Alpha tone rolled over the table, pressing down on my chest, my throat, my hands. My body wasn't mine anymore. My arm lifted the spoon against my own screaming will.

The first swallow burned going down. The second one I don't remember at all.

The convulsions hit before I finished the bowl — my back arching, my vision splitting into white lines, my wolf shrieking somewhere far away and getting farther. Foam at my lips. The table shaking under my hands. Somewhere above me Christopher's face flickered — just for a second — into something that looked almost like fear.

Then Celeste's hand was on his arm, her voice low at his ear. "I've seen this kind of performance before, Christopher."

And the fear on his face went out like a snuffed candle.