Chapter 1 The Quiet One

“I, Raulf. Alpha of Duskveil. Reject you, Selena, as my mate.”

Those words struck my whole being like thunder. Hearing my Alpha, whom I never once looked eye to eye, I felt like a lost dog. He spat the words like as if he’s disgusted that I was chosen to be his mate. A low kind of wolf. A person of the bottom of the pack. I knew, that’s how everyone thought of me.

And they’re right.

Every wolf around me laughed. Two-hundred wolves across the clearing made me feel smaller that I was before stepping into the center of the ring.

“Say it back,” Alpha Raulf growled. “Say it! So I can be done with this shit!”

Startled, I suddenly crouched down the ground, covering my ears and head, bracing for a hit. I did that because screaming always meant me getting hit.

I heard Alpha laughed. “Ha! Prepare for that later!” I never understood what I did so wrong that everyone hates me. I tried to fight back when I was younger, but I got used to it growing up and to this day, I accepted that fact.

“Say it, damn it!”

I flinched so hard my teeth clicked.

Ten minutes ago I was standing at the back of the ceremony grounds. That’s always been my spot. A spot close enough to be counted but far enough to be forgotten. Tonight is the rite of our Alpha. This is the most important day he’s been waiting. It’s when the Moon chooses his mate.

I felt that thug when the it started. He felt it too. I met his eyes for the first time and I only saw his disgust. As much as I don’t want to, my feet moved to the center. The crowd opened, murmuring things I’d rather not hear. Even our elders could not believe I was moving. Some thought I was messing with the rite, trying to force me to stop, but I didn’t. I couldn’t.

The Moon is calling me for the first time.

“Listen!” Alpha Raulf silenced the crowd. “Out of every wolf alive. The strong ones, fast ones, wolves who could fill this ring with strong pups, the Moon chooses this for me.” He spits and it landed in front of me. “She must be kidding!”

His fist slams to the nearest stone. It cracked into pieces. I held my breath.

“For fuck sake, she can’t even shift! And now the Goddess expects me to tie my future with her?” I heard his footsteps walking towards me. I didn’t dare to look up, but he grabbed my hair forcing me to.

“I’d rather take a corpse for a mate.”

I tried my best not to cry. Crying takes space and I know better. I’ve been taught by the only person who cared for me not to take space, that staying small is better, safer. She’s dead now and I’m glad she isn’t here to watch this.

“I-I’m s-sorry,” I whisper, forcing the words out.

“Sorry?” he laughed. “You’ve been sorry since the day you were dumped on this pack. It never once made you worth a damn.” He pushed my head back as he remove his grip on my hair.

I could feel his anger coming off him. His voice went low and that’s how I know the next thing he says is meant to kill.

“Do you know why nobody every claimed you? Not a single wolf came back for you, because they see you and knew you weren’t worth the trouble keeping. Like a trash.”  His lips curled. “You’re nobody’s, Selena. You were born, lived, and will die nobody’s.”

My ear started ringing. I could barely hear the laughs surrounding me. This has to be the rejection. I have to end this fast or I might pass out.

“I-I accept your rejection.” My voice shakes with every word.

Then it snapped. The bond cut off in a single, painful stroke, it left me crawling on the ground, gasping for air. I know even if I die here no one would care, or if I die on some day, no one would notice. But still, I tried, for the last time, to shamelessly ask for help. I lifted my head to looked around, although blurry, I could tell they’re looking at me. I mouthed help, but no one came.

Although hurting, I found myself half smiling. What am I even thinking? I already knew no one would help me. Alpha Raulf is right. I am nobody’s.

I was able to breathe for second. I thought it was over, but then heat came rushing from all over my body. I know for a fact that I wasn’t on fire, but rather a slow, enormous warmth spreading from my core outward. I tried to stand up, one foot then the other. With each stomp the ground shakes, dust surrounding the whole clearing.

As it settles, I suddenly can taste every wolf around me. I can hear a heartbeat in the trees hundred paces away from where I stand, and even the flapping of a moth wings behind one of the elder’s who was breathing, catching in her throat.

I held my chest. My heart beats differently. Was my wolf awake? I wasn’t sure at first, but I could hear her, inside me, it’s faint, but she’s here.

Raulf was already looking at me. I could no longer see the rage he had a while ago. He was just confused as I am.

“What the hell,” he said, voice uncontrolled, “did you just do?”

“I-I don’t know.”

I turned my head towards the crowd. Everyone my eyes meet seems to look away. That couldn’t be right, maybe I was just imagining it. But they were silent, not the cruel one I felt before, it was more like the silence before a storm. My head turns to the elder who took a step back, covering her mouth as she looked at me. The others around the ring are also stepping back.

Something is wrong. Even the air felt wrong.

Then, my ears clicked to a howl from far to the north. It was low, controlled. It sounded like a promise made by someone who never once broken one.

A breath later, a second answers from the east. Warmer, ticklish to the ear, like a laughter turned into a song.

And then a third, from the west. This one barely a sound at all. I don’t hear as much as I feel it. It was a vibration from his core, climbing down to the earth through my knees. Quiet but certain.

Three howls. Three directions. All of them coming closer to me.

Raulf suddenly became guarded. Around the ring, wolves are dropping their eyes. Some looked like they’re about to go on a fight. None of them looking at me anymore.

They’re looking past me, at the dark, beyond the clearing, at whatever is walking out of it.

“Nobody’s,” he said, his voice seemed irritated.

I stayed where I am. My whole body purring.  And in the silence around and inside me, my wolf, who has never once spoken, said a word. A word I wouldn’t dare to speak to anybody, especially not to the immense presence walking out of the dark.

“Mine.”