After My Groom Rejected Me, His Uncle Claimed Me

The dress was silver and white, and it looked like moonlight when I moved.

I stood at the top of the Silvercrest Pack house stairs and looked down at the hall. Hundreds of wolves. Alphas and Lunas from every allied pack. Candles flickering along the aisle. My father, Elliot Rose, Alpha of the Moonveil Pack, waited near the front row with his jaw tight. He had walked me half the way and then let me go, the way fathers do.

Inside me, Sera hummed. My silver wolf. She was quiet tonight, almost shy. *He is here,* she said. *Preston is here.*

I took the first step down.

I had prepared for this night since I was old enough to understand what a mate bond was. My mother had held my hand on her last day and made me promise. *Bond into the Ironvale Pack, Camila. Please. Do this for me.* Her voice had been thin as paper. I had promised. I had carried the promise like a stone in my chest for eight years.

Preston Miller stood at the altar in a black suit, his Alpha-heir pin catching the light. Handsome in that polished, practiced way. He watched me come down the aisle and did not smile.

His mother Raina stood behind him in dove gray. She was smiling. It was the wrong kind of smile.

I reached the altar. I lifted my eyes to Preston. My scent should have hit him now — floral, faint, the kind of thing that would tell him I was his.

He cleared his throat.

"I, Preston Miller, Alpha heir of the Ironvale Pack…" His voice carried through the hall. Loud. Formal. "...reject you, Camila Rose, daughter of Alpha Elliot Rose of the Moonveil Pack, as my mate."

The words hit before my mind caught up. The pain hit half a second later.

It was fire. Real fire, inside my ribs, burning outward from where our bond had lived. I heard Sera howl inside my head — a broken, keening sound I had never heard from her in my life. My knees wanted to fold. I did not let them.

Someone in the crowd gasped. Someone else covered their mouth. My father moved forward one step and then stopped, because I had not asked him to move.

Preston turned. A young woman came out from behind the curtain in a pale pink dress, her hand already resting on the swell of her belly. Phoebe Jacobs. An Omega I had met once at a pack function and forgotten. She kept her eyes down.

Preston pulled her hair aside and set his teeth to her neck. The mark bloomed dark against her skin.

My chest burned harder. I breathed through it.

Then Preston turned back to me, and I saw the thing I had never quite believed was there — the small, cold satisfaction under his composure. He straightened his cuffs.

"Camila," he said. Softer now, like he was doing me a favor. "You have served our alliance well. There is still a place for you at Ironvale. As a subordinate Luna. To help Phoebe with the pup, and support the pack."

Behind him, Raina folded her hands. "Your mother would want you at Ironvale, sweetheart," she said gently. Loud enough for the front rows to hear. "In whatever role the Goddess grants you."

My mother. She used my mother.

The hall waited. I could feel it — hundreds of wolves holding their breath, waiting for me to sob, to plead, to accept the scraps.

I did not sob.

I lifted my chin.

"I hear you," I said. My voice was very quiet, and very level. It carried further than a scream. "You have rejected me, Preston Miller. So I am no longer yours to place."

I turned to face the hall.

"I will accept," I said, "the next wolf who claims me."

The hall inhaled.

For three heartbeats, nothing.

Then the back doors moved. A man walked forward down the aisle. He walked without hurry. Every wolf he passed leaned back an inch without meaning to.

Joaquin Miller. Preston's uncle. The Lycan Prince the Ironvale elders had spent years pretending was not standing right there.

I had not seen him in almost four years. He had scars along his jaw I did not remember. A worn dark leather cord around his wrist that I did remember, because I had braided it myself, at sixteen, and given it to him at my Come of Age Ceremony because he had looked so alone in the corner of the hall.

He stopped in front of me.

The scent hit us at the same moment.

Dark cedar. Wild honey. It rolled through my chest and put out the fire Preston had left there like water over coals. Sera went completely still and then whispered, clear as a bell: *Mate.*

Joaquin's eyes were on my face. Only my face.

"Camila," he said. Low. Careful. Like my name was made of glass.

He reached into his jacket. He took my left hand — his palm was warm and enormous and steady — and slid a ring onto my finger. A moonstone, pale and shining, set in dark silver.

"Mine," he said.

His Lycan aura rolled outward across the hall like a tide going out. Wolves I had known all my life took a step back. Preston straightened his cuffs. Then, a second later, straightened them again.

"Come with me," Joaquin said. Just to me. "Tonight."

I put my hand in his.

---

The county courthouse smelled like old carpet and vending-machine coffee. The clerk at the after-hours window did not look up from her phone until Joaquin set the paperwork in front of her.

"Marriage license," he said.

She glanced at me. My hair was still pinned up from the ceremony. My silver dress was still on under my coat. She did not ask.

Joaquin signed his name first. Neat, hard letters. Then he passed the pen to me.

I thought about my mother. I thought about her deathbed. I thought about the promise.

*Bond into the Ironvale Pack.*

I signed. *Camila Rose.*

I had. Just not the way anyone had planned.

Joaquin's thumb brushed the leather cord on his wrist. His eyes found mine.

Outside the window, the sky was just starting to turn gray.