BEAST OF THE NORTH

The moon was full tonight. It should have been the brightest night of my life.

Instead, it felt like a funeral.

Today I turned eighteen. Today my wolf was supposed to wake up. Today my mate was supposed to claim me in front of the entire Silver Fang Pack. That was how it was supposed to go for every she-wolf.

That was not how it went for me.

The whole pack stood in a circle around the stone altar. Hundreds of eyes on me. No one was cheering. No one was smiling. They were waiting to watch me fail.

Beta Victor shoved the rejection stone into Alpha Kyle's hand. Kyle was my mate. We grew up together. I knew the shape of his hands, the sound of his laugh. Tonight, he looked at me like I was a stranger.

"Do it," Victor said.

Kyle lifted his head. His golden eyes were empty. "I, Alpha Kyle of the Silver Fang Pack, reject you, Selena Woods. You are not my mate. You are not my Luna. You are nothing to me."

The word _nothing_ hit harder than a fist.

Pain exploded across the side of my neck. A red mark burned into my skin. The mark of a rejected wolf. Now everyone would see it. Now everyone would know I was worthless.

My twin sister Bella stepped forward. She had a wolf. She always had. She was perfect. Kyle took her hand like she was a prize he had won.

"And I choose Bella Woods," he said. "At least she has a wolf. At least she is not broken."

Laughter broke out. Cruel. Loud.

"Wolf-less freak."

"Mutant."

"Even rogues would not take her."

My mother turned her face away. My father, the pack's beta, spat on the ground near my feet. "I have no daughter like you."

I was eighteen years old. No wolf. No mate. No family.

Kyle turned to leave. His boot "slipped" and his heel came down on my ribs. I hit the dirt. Blood filled my mouth. It tasted like metal and shame.

I lay there, bleeding in the mud while the moon watched and did nothing. I pressed my palm to the rejection mark on my neck and made a promise to no one but myself.

One day, they would choke on that word. _Nothing._

One day, Alpha Kyle would kneel at my feet and beg.

I did not know that day would come in five years. I did not know I would return wearing the crown of the Alpha King he feared more than death.

I only knew this: the game had started. And I was done losing.

*I got you bro. Let's continue Chapter 1 from where Selena lay in the dirt. Same voice: proper English, raw, human. No AI fluff.*

The laughter faded eventually. Footsteps scattered. The pack left me there in the dirt like spilled water. No one offered a hand. No one said my name.

For a long time, I just lay there and let the cold ground press against my cheek. The rejection mark on my neck throbbed. Every heartbeat felt like someone was pressing a hot iron to my skin.

_Nothing. You are nothing._

Kyle's words kept playing in my head. He had said them so easily. Like he had been practicing. Maybe he had. Maybe he and Bella planned this whole thing weeks ago, laughed about it while I was saving berries for him like an idiot.

My ribs hurt where his boot came down. But the pain in my chest was worse. That was the kind of pain that didn't bleed. The kind that sat there and rotted.

The moon was still watching. Useless.

I pushed myself up on shaking arms. My palms were full of dirt and blood. My dress was torn. The white fabric my mother had sewn for my birthday was now brown and red. She wouldn't care. She had turned her face away when Kyle spat the word _reject_.

I was not a daughter anymore. I was not a pack member. I was not a mate.

I was nothing.

The word followed me as I stood up. My legs felt like they belonged to someone else. My vision blurred at the edges. I needed to get inside before I collapsed, but the doors of the packhouse were closed. Locked.

Of course they were.

Bella's voice drifted through the window, bright and cruel. "She's probably crying in the mud right now. She always did cry too much." Kyle laughed. The same laugh I used to love.

I pressed my hand against the cold wood of the door. "Let me in," I whispered. No one answered.

That was when I understood it. Really understood.

They didn't just reject me as a mate. They rejected me as a person. I had no home now. No pack. No name that meant anything.

The wind picked up and cut through my torn dress. Winter was coming early this year. Without a pack, without shelter, I would not last the night.

So I did the only thing left to do. I turned away from the packhouse. From the people who raised me. From the boy I thought loved me.

My bare feet sank into the mud as I walked toward the forest border. The trees looked black and endless. Beyond them were rogue lands. Beyond them was death.

But death felt kinder than staying.

Halfway to the trees, I stopped. The rejection mark burned again, sharp and sudden. I gasped and grabbed my neck. For one second, I thought my body was tearing itself apart.

Then I heard it.

A sound so low and ancient that it shook my bones. Not a howl. Not a growl. Something older. Something that had been sleeping inside me for eighteen years, waiting for the world to call me _nothing_.

My knees hit the ground again. But this time, I wasn't falling.

This time, I was waking up.

The last thing I saw before darkness took me was the tree line. And standing just beyond it, watching me. A tall figure in black, with eyes like storm clouds.

He had been waiting.