The Alpha Rejected His Scentless Mate at the Altar, So She Came Back as the Luna He Kneels For novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Altar
On their mating night Alpha Tiernan Ravensdale rejects scentless Selene at the Moon Stone as a traitor and casts her out in her slippers, and at the border bridge a rival Alpha is waiting with a coat.
The silver cord was already tied around my wrist when my mate told the whole pack I was a traitor.
It was Midwinter, five years ago, and I was twenty-two.
Three hundred wolves filled Ashenveil Hall that night.
The iron chandeliers were lit, and pine boughs hung from every beam.
I stood at the Moon Stone in a white wool dress I had sewn myself.
My slippers were white too.
I had stitched little silver moons on the toes.
Tiernan Ravensdale stood across the stone from me, the Alpha of Ashenveil, in black.
The other end of the cord was tied around his wrist.
Four years earlier, on my eighteenth birthday, this same stone had glowed for us in front of everyone.
The moon had picked me for him.
He had never once looked happy about it.
Everyone knew why.
I had no scent.
I had never shifted.
Every wolf in the hall could smell what everyone else was feeling, except me.
To them I was a blank space in a room.
"Scentless," they called me when they thought I couldn't hear.
The pack's oldest elder lifted the knife to bless the cord.
Then Garrick Crowley stood up from the high table.
He was the Beta, Tiernan's second, and the man who had raised me since my parents drowned.
"Alpha," he said. "Before this goes any further, the pack deserves to hear something."
He held up three folded letters.
My stomach dropped, and I didn't even know why yet.
Garrick unfolded the first one and read it out in his big, sorry voice.
"The east patrol changes at midnight. Two wolves, not four. Come by the river."
He read the second and the third.
Patrol routes. Guard counts. The night the Alpha would be away.
Each one was signed S.V.
Each one was addressed to K.
"These were sent across the river," Garrick said. "To Ironclaw."
The hall went dead quiet.
Then his daughter Imogen stood up beside him.
She was holding a scarf.
It was grey wool, the grey every Ironclaw wolf wears.
"I found this under her mattress," Imogen said, and her eyes filled up on cue. "I didn't want to believe it."
I had never seen that scarf in my life.
"That isn't mine," I said.
My voice came out tiny in that huge room.
"I've never written to anyone. Tiernan, I don't even know anyone in Ironclaw."
Tiernan didn't look at me.
He looked at the letters.
"Your initials," he said.
"Anyone can write two initials!"
"On the patrol schedule I only shared with my Beta and my Luna-to-be."
"Then ask your Beta!"
A few wolves laughed at that.
Tiernan finally lifted his eyes to mine.
They were amber, and they were cold all the way through.
"Four years," he said. "Four years I've stood next to a girl with no wolf and no scent because a rock told me to."
Someone at the back whistled.
"I defended you," he said. "To every elder in this hall."
"I know you did."
"And you were selling us to Theron Stannard the whole time."
"I wasn't!"
He took the blessing knife out of the elder's hand.
"I, Tiernan Ravensdale, Alpha of Ashenveil, reject you, Selene Vaughn, as my mate and my Luna."
He cut the cord.
Pain went through my chest.
I grabbed the edge of the Moon Stone to stay standing.
He didn't flinch at all.
"Say it," he said. "Say the words and it's done."
Everyone in the hall knew the words.
I accept your rejection.
That was all it took to tear the bond the rest of the way.
I looked at him, and at the cut cord hanging off his wrist.
"No," I said.
His jaw went tight.
"No?"
"I didn't do it. I won't say I accept a lie."
"Then freeze with it," Tiernan said.
He took my left hand and pulled the pack's silver ring off my finger.
Every Ashenveil wolf wears one.
Without it, I belonged to nobody.
"Walk her to the bridge," he told his warriors. "If she's on our land at dawn, she's fair game."
Four of them came up the aisle for me.
Imogen leaned in as I passed her chair.
She smelled like vanilla and honey, like she always did.
"Don't worry," she whispered. "I'll keep his bed warm."
The warriors marched me down the length of the hall.
Three hundred faces turned to watch.
Nobody said a word for me.
Then a small figure pushed through the crowd at the doors.
Freya Ravensdale, Tiernan's little sister, nineteen and furious.
She was already pulling off her red parka.
"Selene, take it. Take my coat, it's snowing."
"Freya."
Tiernan's voice cracked across the hall.
"Nobody helps a traitor."
Freya's hands shook on the zipper.
She looked at her brother, then at me.
She put the coat back on.
She was crying when they pushed me out into the snow.
The Greyfrost Bridge was three miles east of the hall.
I walked all three in my slippers.
By the first mile the silver moons on my toes were soaked through.
By the second I couldn't feel my feet.
The warriors walked behind me with their flashlights and talked about the hockey game.
At the bridge they stopped.
"Keep going," one of them said. "Ironclaw's your pack now."
They turned around and left me in the dark.
The old iron bridge creaked in the wind.
Below it the river was frozen solid, the same ice my parents' truck went through when I was eleven.
I stood there in my wedding dress with my arms wrapped around myself.
I was going to die on this bridge.
I almost didn't care.
Then something moved in the trees on the far bank.
Eyes.
Six pairs, then ten, then more, glowing gold in the dark.
Ironclaw wolves.
A man walked out between them onto the bridge.
He was tall and smiling, in a long black coat with a fur collar.
Over his arm he carried a second coat, thick and white.
He stopped in front of me and held it open.
"You're late," said Theron Stannard. "I was told six."
Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend