His Luna? Never, He Rejected Me First novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Moon Feast
At the Blackpine Moon Feast, Alpha Ronan rejects Eira before two hundred wolves on her best friend's lie. She can't answer, walks out, and Odessa waits at the border.
Alpha Ronan Strathmore rejected me with two hundred wolves watching and a roasted elk steaming on the table behind him.
He said it standing at the head of the long Feast table, with the full moon framed in the window over his shoulder.
"I, Ronan Strathmore, Alpha of Blackpine, reject you, Eira Wexley, as my mate."
The whole hall went quiet.
A fork rang against a plate somewhere near the back.
I had waited my whole life for the Moon Feast, because it was the night mates were named in front of the pack.
Three weeks before, my wolf had finally woken up.
She had turned toward Ronan at the harvest fire, and he had looked back at me as if someone had put a hand on his chest.
I thought that meant the Feast would be mine.
"Eira, sit up straight," Calista had whispered when we arrived, tugging my sleeve. "You're going to be Luna tonight. Breathe."
Calista Ravenscroft had been my best friend since we were six years old.
She had braided my hair for every Feast of my life.
That night she had also brought me a cup of her mother's honey tea.
"Drink it," she said, pressing it into my hands. "You're shaking so hard you'll spill the toast."
It tasted of honey and something green and bitter underneath.
I drank all of it, because she was Calista and she was standing right there smiling at me.
Now I stood at my place in the third row, and I could not feel my tongue.
"You went to the rogue camp," Ronan said.
He did not shout.
That was the worst part.
"You crossed the northern border alone, the night before the Feast, to meet a rogue. Calista saw you go."
Heads turned toward Calista.
She pressed her hand to her silver locket and looked at the floor.
Her eyes were wet.
"I didn't want to say it," she said softly. "I begged her not to go."
I had gone to the border, yes.
An old woman had been sick in a cave up there, and I had carried her fever medicine from the pack clinic.
I tried to say so.
My mouth opened and nothing came out, not even a breath.
My throat felt packed with wet wool.
"A mate who hides things from her Alpha is no mate to me," Ronan said.
His voice cracked on the last word, but he finished anyway.
"Say it back, Eira. Say you accept it, and be done."
That is the rule at a rejection.
The Moon hears the words, and the one who is rejected answers with the same words, and then the bond is cut clean.
I stood there with my lips parted.
Two hundred faces were turned to me.
I saw the Beta, Calista's father, watching with his arms folded.
I saw the elders nodding.
I saw Ronan's hand grip the back of his chair until the knuckles went white.
Last night, behind the stables, that same hand had cupped my face.
"I'd pick you in any life," he had told me.
Now he waited for my answer with his jaw locked and did not ask me one single question.
I couldn't make a sound.
The silence stretched until someone coughed.
Then Ronan looked away from me.
"She won't even speak," he said to the room. "Fine. It's done. Blackpine, drink."
The cups lifted.
Nobody looked at me as they drank.
Calista caught my elbow and leaned close, her voice sweet and warm in my ear.
"Come on, sweetheart. Let's get you out of here. I'll walk you home and make you a proper tea."
I looked down at her hand on my arm.
It was perfectly steady.
Mine was shaking so hard the empty cup rattled in it.
I set the empty cup down on the table.
I took her fingers off my sleeve, one at a time.
So I walked out.
I walked through the whole hall, between the benches, past the Beta and the elders and the girls I had grown up with, and nobody stopped me.
The doors were heavy oak, and I pushed them open with both hands.
The night air hit my wet face.
I did not say the words back.
I did not say anything at all, all the way down the mountain road in the dark, past the border stones and the last pack light.
At the northern marker, a short woman in a canvas coat stepped out from behind a pine.
It was the old woman from the cave.
She looked at my face and then past me, down the road, toward the lights of Blackpine.
"Did you say it back to him?" she asked.
I shook my head.
Her eyes sharpened.
"Good girl," she said. "Then don't. Not to anyone. Not until I tell you. Come with me."
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