The night my life blew apart, the moon was so full it felt staged.
There was something weirdly poetic about it—or at least, almost funny.
Eighteen years of training to stand beside Ronan Blackwood, and the universe had to pick the brightest night to watch me fall.
The Mating Grounds were crowded and tense.
The Redthorn Pack formed a tight circle around the stone altar.
Some looked human, some already half-shifted, all of them restless under the full moon.
I stood dead center in my mother’s white ceremonial dress—hers, if she’d lived to see this.
My hands knotted together, my spine locked straight, and my heart pounded so hard I was sure everyone in the clearing could hear it.
Tonight was supposed to be everything I wanted.
Ronan waited across from me, tall and rigid in his Alpha blacks, his jaw clenched like always.
I’d loved him since I was twelve, when he fished me out of the river before my wolf had even woken.
I’d spent six long years preparing for this.
Training, trying to prove myself, being told patience was a Luna’s greatest trait.
The Elder lifted the ceremonial blade.
“Ronan Blackwood, do you accept Wren Calloway as your mate and Luna of the Redthorn Pack?” I saw his throat bob.
I watched his eyes—only they weren’t on me.
He looked right past my shoulder.
Off to the edge of the crowd.
Briar.
My stomach dropped, hard, before he even spoke.
“I—” His voice caught and I wanted to believe he was just scared.
That maybe he felt it too—all the nerves, all the good terror, everything a mate’s supposed to feel on a night like this.
God, I was so wrong.
“I, Alpha Ronan Blackwood,” he said, steady now like he’d practiced, “reject you, Wren Calloway, as my mate and future Luna of this pack.” The words slammed into me.
I literally staggered, hand flying to my chest where the bond lived since I turned eighteen.
For two years, I’d felt it every single day, humming like a second heartbeat.
It didn’t fade.
It didn’t fray.
It snapped—clean, vicious, like a bone breaking.
I crashed to my knees on the cold stone before I even knew what was happening.
Nobody gasped—not one voice.
That stung worse than the breaking bond.
They didn’t react because most of them already knew.
I could see it—pity, discomfort, the way hardly anyone met my eyes.
Everybody knew but me.
“Ronan.” My voice was too soft, too small.
I promised myself I’d never sound weak in front of them.
“What are you—” “You know why.” He wouldn’t look at me.
“The pack needs a Luna who can strengthen our alliances.
Not—” He stopped, but I heard what he didn’t say.
Not you.
Not the weak one.
Not the girl with the dead wolfless mother and the father who took off before she was born.
Behind him, Briar Ashford stood by her father, her lips twisting into something almost like a smile.
She didn’t even bother to fake surprise.
Why would she?
She’d probably known for months, while I ran myself ragged training for a wedding that was really a funeral.
“Get her out of the circle,” Elias Ashford said, like I was just old furniture someone forgot to throw out.
Like I hadn’t given everything to this pack since I was twelve and all alone.
Rough hands grabbed my arms.
I twisted around, desperate, searching the faces for just one person who’d step forward.
Someone who’d say something, do anything.
All I found was Nova—my little sister, sixteen years old and frozen at the edge of the circle, tears running down her cheeks.
Two enforcers kept her back.
She couldn’t move.
I mouthed, I’m sorry.
For what?
None of this was on me, but I still felt like all I could give her was an apology.
They yanked me out of the Mating Grounds while the ceremony kept rolling behind me—because that’s what happens.
The world doesn’t stop when you’re rejected.
I was pretty sure, even as I stumbled through the trees, that Ronan had already turned to Briar.
Getting thrown out would’ve been easy.
Elias Ashford had something else in mind.
“She still knows pack secrets,” I heard him say to Magnus, low and cold, like I wasn’t even there—wrists bound in silver-lined rope that burned every time I tried to shift.
“Border territory.
Let the Ferro pack deal with the loose end.” Loose end.
After eighteen years, that’s all I’d become.
Something to discard.
They marched me past all the familiar markers I’d patrolled a hundred times, out where the trees looked strange and nothing felt like home.
Ferro territory—enemy ground.
My wolf pressed against my skin, frantic and weak, helpless against the silver ropes searing straight through me.
“This isn’t pack law,” I said, my voice barely more than a scrape.
“You can’t just hand me over—” Magnus wouldn’t meet my eyes.
Nobody would, anymore.
“Orders are orders, Wren.” They shoved me to the dirt, right on the border line, hands and wrists cut raw from the rope.
And then they just turned around and walked back into Redthorn like I never even existed.
I don’t know how long I knelt there, half-sunk in the dirt, before the growling started.
Not the warning rumble of a pack sensing a stranger.
Something worse—hungry.
Predatory.
The kind of growl that hits every nerve and makes your body scream run, only I couldn’t—my hands were tied and the silver was killing me slow.
Three figures slipped out of the trees.
Not Ferro wolves—not human either.
These things were too big, wrong in all the angles, and their eyes caught moonlight sharp and wild.
Rogues.
Everybody had stories about the creatures outside the borders—wolves gone mad without their pack, feral, half-starved, drawn to anything weak like sharks to blood.
I always thought those stories were exaggerated.
I believed them in that moment, watching three sets of fangs flash as they closed in.
I tried to scream.
One of them lunged.
Pain split through my shoulder, teeth sinking in, dragging me over the roots and into the dirt.
I heard myself howling—raw, ripped straight from my throat—barely louder than my own heartbeat pounding in my ears.
And then—headlights, blazing white through the trees.
A car door slammed.
A man shouted something sharp in a language I didn’t know, then gunshots—three, quick and steady—and the weight on my shoulder slid off, limp.
Right before I blacked out, I saw a stranger’s face—dark eyes, studying me with a look that said he hadn’t decided yet if he wanted to help or not.
“Well,” he muttered, almost as if to himself.
“This is new.” Then there was only darkness.