Rejected By My Alpha: My White Wolf Ignited novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Hand Me the Scroll
Rejected at the altar while Cressida wears her mother's moonstone, Linnet signs the scroll in blood, takes the stone back off Cressida's throat, and her white wolf wakes in fire, as the visiting Alpha Rhys Kinloch stands and says "Mate."
My fated mate rejected me at the altar while his new she-wolf wore my dead mother's moonstone.
Three hundred wolves waited for me to fall apart.
All I said was, "Hand me the scroll."
The Great Hall of Stalbridge Pack went dead silent.
Firelight moved on the stone walls.
The ceremonial stands were packed to the rafters with his people.
His father and mother sat in the front row.
His betas stood behind them, and his enforcers lined the aisle.
And Cressida Pyle stood at the altar beside him, pressed against his arm.
She was wearing my moonstone.
It was a pale opal on a silver chain, and it had been my grandmother's, and then my mother's.
Since the winter my mother died, it had lived in a little iron vault under the floor of my bedroom.
Only two people in this pack could open that vault.
One of them was me.
The other was sitting in the front row in pearls, smiling at her hands.
The stone glowed against Cressida's throat.
Alaric Stalbridge, Alpha of Stalbridge Pack and my fated mate of three years, stood at the altar with his jaw locked.
He had the scroll in his fist.
"Did you hear me, Linnet?" he said. "I, Alaric Stalbridge, reject you as my mate and my Luna."
I had heard him.
I had heard him the first time, and so had everybody in the stands.
Someone in the back laughed.
Then more of them did.
I knew what they called me.
The charity mate.
Twenty-four years old and still no wolf.
The Alpha's good deed, the girl who kept the pack's bees and smelled like smoke and wax.
I was standing in my mother's white mating dress.
I had let out the hem myself.
"I heard you," I said. "Hand me the scroll."
Alaric blinked.
He had been ready for me to cry.
I could see it on his face, the speech he'd planned for when I begged.
Cressida leaned into his ear and whispered something, and her mouth curved.
"Linnet, you don't have to make this harder," Alaric said, softer now, like he was being kind. "You can go quietly. Mother will find you a place in the kitchens."
"The scroll, Alaric."
He held it out.
I took it.
A rejection in Stalbridge is read aloud and signed in blood by both.
His name was already there at the bottom, still wet and dark.
A beta stepped up with the little silver knife on a cushion.
I didn't wait for him to offer it.
I took the knife and drew it across the pad of my thumb and pressed it under Alaric's name.
The bond snapped.
It was like a rope cut under a weight I'd been carrying for three years.
I rocked on my feet.
I didn't fall.
The laughter in the stands stopped.
"There," I said, and put the scroll back in his hand. "You're free."
He looked down at my thumbprint.
I turned to Cressida.
She lifted her chin.
"Something you want?" she said, loud enough for the stands.
"My mother's stone."
"Alaric gave me this."
"Then he gave you something that wasn't his."
I reached up and unhooked the clasp at the back of her neck.
She was so shocked she let me.
Somebody in the front row stood up fast.
"Linnet Harrowby," Rosamund Stalbridge said, in the voice she used on the help. "Put that down. You are stealing from the Luna's house."
I closed my fist around the moonstone.
It was hot.
It wasn't warm from Cressida's skin.
It was hot, and it got hotter, and white light came through the gaps between my fingers.
Cressida stumbled back off the altar step.
My back cracked.
I dropped to my knees on the stone and my mother's dress tore down the seam.
Every bone in me pulled long.
The hall filled with a sound.
I knew what it was.
I had waited twenty-four years and I knew it the second it came.
My wolf.
She came out of me all at once, and she was white.
White as frost on a window.
And she was burning.
Pale fire ran along her fur from her ears to her tail, and it didn't hurt me at all.
The altar cloth curled black where my paws stood.
Three hundred wolves went silent.
Then, row by row, they lowered their heads.
Not to Alaric.
To me.
Alaric stood frozen with the scroll in his hand.
His mother didn't lower her head.
She was white to the lips, staring at me.
Cressida was pressed against the far wall, both hands over her bare throat.
I lifted my head and looked at all of them.
At the back of the hall, a chair scraped.
A man stood up from the guest bench where the neighbouring Alphas sat as witnesses.
He was tall and dark-bearded, in a plain flannel shirt among all those ceremonial coats.
I had never spoken to him in my life.
Rhys Kinloch, Alpha of the pack across the river.
He was looking at me.
"Mate," he said.
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