Chapter 4 I Accept Your Rejection

The ballroom erupted.

Cheers and joyful howls bounced off the high ceiling. Nobles clapped each other on the back. The kingdom had an heir. The Royal Council members in the front row beamed with pride.

I stood completely alone in the center of the aisle, an unwanted ghost crashing a celebration.

The brief, beautiful dream was dead. My mate, the other half of my soul, had created a child with another woman.

Wex walked up the steps of the dais. He reached down and gently took Karol’s hands, pulling her to her feet. She leaned into his chest, burying her face against his neck. Wex wrapped one large arm around her shoulders, holding her securely.

Then, he looked down at me.

Whatever curse held his mind in its grip was working perfectly. I could see his nostrils flare. His upper lip curled, exposing a flash of his sharp canines. He looked at me the way one might look at a venomous snake that had slithered into their home. The disgust rolling off him in waves hit me like a physical force, knocking the breath from my lungs.

"A wolfless omega," Wex said. His voice was cold, flat, and devoid of the man who had caught me in his arms just minutes ago. "I do not know what trick of the moon caused a spark between us, but it is an error I will correct immediately."

The cheers in the room died down. Everyone watched with bated breath. The King was about to do something rarely seen in our world.

He was going to sever a fated bond.

"My King, please," I whispered. My voice was broken, barely audible, but I knew his Alpha hearing picked it up. "The bond..."

"The bond is a mistake," he cut me off, his tone dripping with ice. "I have a Luna. I have an heir. I will not tether my soul or my kingdom to a weak, fragile girl who brings nothing but pity."

His words sliced through my chest, sharper than any blade. I felt the invisible, glowing thread that had connected my heart to his begin to pull taut. It was resisting. The mate bond wanted to survive, but his sheer, forceful will was tearing it apart.

Wex stood tall, his shoulders squared, his cloudy eyes glaring down at me with unquestionable finality.

"I, Wex Laith," his booming voice commanded the room, "reject Eddena Halia Harris as my mate."

SNAP.

The sound wasn't in the room; it was inside my head. The invisible tether broke. A blistering, searing pain ripped through my chest, so intense my knees buckled. I stumbled, catching myself on the cold stone floor with both hands. It felt as though someone had reached directly into my ribcage and crushed my heart in their fist. I gasped for air, but my lungs refused to expand.

The pain of a rejected bond was meant to kill omegas. We were too weak to survive the severing of our souls.

But as I knelt there on the floor, staring at the polished stone, something strange happened. The pain didn't consume me. A deep, quiet resilience flared in my blood. I didn't know where it came from, but it wrapped around my shattered heart and held the pieces together.

I heard a few cruel laughs from the crowd. They were waiting for me to break down. They wanted the wolfless girl to scream, to cry, to beg the King for mercy.

I took a slow, trembling breath.

I refused to give them the satisfaction.

I pushed myself up off the floor, smoothing down the front of Given's old blue dress. My chest throbbed with a dull, hollow ache, but my eyes were completely dry. I looked up at the dais. Karol was watching me with a satisfied smirk hidden behind Wex’s shoulder. Wex was staring at me, his jaw clenched, waiting for my response.

I squared my shoulders. I didn't bow. I looked the Alpha King directly in his murky, disgusted eyes.

"I, Eddena Halia Harris," I said, my voice steady and surprisingly clear in the quiet room, "accept your rejection."

The finality of the words settled over us. The last lingering spark of the bond died, leaving behind total, freezing emptiness.

I didn't wait for his permission to leave. I turned my back on the Alpha King, on the smirking Luna, and on the hundreds of judgmental eyes.

The crowd parted for me this time, stepping back quickly as if my misfortune was a disease they could catch. I kept my chin high, my steps measured and even, refusing to run. I listened to the soft scuff of my cheap shoes against the marble, focusing entirely on placing one foot in front of the other.

I reached the tall wooden doors at the end of the ballroom. The royal guards standing on either side stared straight ahead, not offering to open them. I pushed the heavy doors open myself, stepping out of the stifling heat of the celebration and into the cool, dark hallway of the palace.

The moment the doors clicked shut behind me, the noise of the ballroom vanished. I was alone in the quiet corridor.

I took a deep breath of the crisp night air leaking in from the cracked courtyard windows. I needed to pack my meager belongings. I needed to get away from this palace, away from the pity, away from the man who had shattered my world in less than an hour.

I took two steps toward the eastern exit.

Before I could take a third, a large, rough hand clamped down hard on my shoulder, its grip biting painfully into my skin.

"Where do you think you're going?" my father hissed from the shadows.