Rejected and Chained by My Mate

I heard Hadlee's voice before I saw her.

The banquet hall hummed with celebration—Ironvale's territorial expansion, another triumph Marcus would claim as his own—and I was weaving through the crowd with a silver tray of wine glasses when the sound stopped me cold. It was coming from the shadowed alcove near the west gallery, where a cluster of pack members had gathered in a tight circle.

Hadlee stood at the center, arms flailing in exaggerated panic. Her voice pitched high and pathetic. "Help! I can't shift! My wolf won't come out!" The gathered wolves erupted in laughter. Someone clapped. Hadlee's grin was vicious as she dropped the act and leaned in, voice sliding into that conspiratorial purr she used when she wanted everyone to listen. "Three months," she said. "Three months since Marcus last slept in her quarters. She actually waited outside his door one night. Crying."

My hands locked around the tray. The stem of a wine glass cracked under my thumb.

Deep in my skull, something stirred. My wolf—silent for so long I sometimes forgot she existed—let out a low, wounded sound that scraped against the inside of my ribs. Then she went quiet again. Always quiet. Always buried.

I set the tray down on the nearest table. Smoothed the front of my dress. Walked toward the pack house.

Marcus was in his private study, bent over territorial maps spread across the mahogany desk. He didn't look up when I entered. I shut the door behind me and kept my voice steady. "Hadlee was performing for the pack tonight. Mocking me. She told them about the night I waited outside your door."

His hand stilled on the map. His eyes flashed gold when he finally looked at me. "And?"

"And she's been broadcasting intimate details of our private life to anyone who'll listen. She's eroding my authority as Luna in front of the entire—"

The Alpha tone hit me like a fist to the throat.

My vocal cords locked. My muscles seized. The words I'd been about to speak dissolved on my tongue, and all I could do was stand there, frozen, while Marcus rose from his chair. The command in his voice was absolute, biological, impossible to disobey. "You will not cause a scene at my banquet," he growled. "Hadlee is part of this pack. Learn to live with it."

My wolf screamed.

It was internal, soundless, but it tore through me with the force of a physical blow. She hurled herself against the mental walls I'd spent seventeen years building, clawing, snarling, begging me to let her surface. Then she crumpled. The Alpha tone crushed her back into silence.

The command released. I could breathe again. Move again. But I couldn't push a single word past my lips.

Behind Marcus, in the open doorway, Hadlee appeared. Her smile was slow and satisfied, and I knew she'd heard everything. She'd been listening the whole time.

I turned and walked out. My right hand found the doorframe as I passed. I gripped it so hard the wood splintered under my fingers with a sharp crack that echoed down the hall.

In my quarters, my wolf lost control.

I barely made it through the door before the heat slammed into me. My temperature spiked. My bones ached at every joint, a deep grinding pressure that made me double over and gasp. My fingernails lengthened—sharp, silver-tipped claws breaking through the skin for three agonizing seconds before I forced the shift back down with a brutal act of will. My wolf's voice was no longer a whisper. It was a roar, hammering against my skull.

*Let me out. Let me out. Let me OUT.*

I slammed the mental block back into place and slid down the wall to the floor, forehead pressed to my knees, breathing hard. I couldn't let her surface. Not yet. Not here. Not until I knew what surfacing would mean.

I rose before dawn.

The pack house was silent as I made my way to the secure communications room—the one only Marcus and I had access to. I unlocked the hidden panel in the wall and pulled out the encrypted contact ledger. My fingers moved automatically, sending the latest update to my Silvercrest border contacts: patrol schedules, resource pipeline adjustments, everything that kept the blood-pact alliance intact. Everything that kept Ironvale standing.

When I finished, I held the ledger in my hands. Nine years of correspondence. Every page signed in my birth name. The legal foundation of everything Marcus thought he'd built alone.

I locked it back in its hidden compartment. Straightened my Luna pendant. Walked to the kitchen.

The Omega assigned to morning meal prep had called in sick, and someone had to do it. It had always been me.

I was at the stove, stirring oatmeal in a massive iron pot, when Reed stepped through the doorway. Marcus's Beta. He stopped when he saw me. His jaw worked. His coffee mug hung loose in one hand.

He said nothing. Poured himself a cup. But before he left, he looked at me—really looked at me—and I saw it. The look of a man who'd been watching something wrong happen for a very long time.

He walked out without a word.

I turned back to the stove and kept stirring.