Rejected By My Mate, Claimed By His Uncle

Arlene POV

The corridor leading to the main hall was dark and narrow. Blake bent his arm, offering it to me. I slipped my hand through the crook of his elbow. My fingers brushed against the bespoke fabric of his suit. The sudden, intense heat of his body radiated through the material. The warmth hit me like a physical blow. My brain misfired. A violent wave of PTSD crashed over me.

Memories from the moment of death in my past life came flooding back.

I remembered the agonising cold. Kendall had framed me. The Wooten family had thrown me out without a dime. The temperature was twenty below zero.

I remembered dialling Adrien's number with frostbitten fingers. I remembered hearing Seraphina's sweet, giggling voice on the other end before the line went dead. I remembered Eleanor's voice on the voicemail: Die in the snow, Arlene. Just don't bleed on my carpets.

The phantom ice clawed at my lungs. My chest tightened. I couldn't breathe. My knees buckled, and I stumbled forward. Blake's arm shot out. His large hand clamped around my waist, gripping me tight, pulling me flush against his solid chest, stopping my fall.

“Are you afraid?” his voice rumbled right against my ear, deep and incredibly grounding.

I looked up at the sharp, perfect lines of his jaw. The memories shifted again. I remembered floating above my own dead body. I saw Blake – the ruthless tyrant of the werewolf world – standing in a sterile morgue, taking off his own wool coat and draping it over my frozen corpse.

I saw his private armed security storming the Wooten estate, taking my ashes by force. I saw him standing alone in a private cemetery in the Long Island territory, hosting a funeral for a woman he barely spoke to in life.

I remembered the suffocating weight of the dirt, the terrifying finality of death. I remembered the sheer, incomprehensible shock of waking up today, breathing, my heart beating in my chest.

Why was I back? How was I back? The Moon Goddess had given me a second chance – a miraculous reversal of fate that defied all logic. And in this new life, the only man I knew I could trust was the one who had shown me mercy when I was nothing but a memory.

He had stood in that freezing cemetery, a solitary figure of absolute power, giving me the dignity in death that my own blood had denied me.

In the present, my fingers dug into his arm. My knuckles turned stark white. I took a ragged breath and shoved the vulnerability deep into my stomach, shaking my head.

Blake looked down at me. His eyes dropped to the faint redness at the corners of my eyes. A violent, terrifying darkness flashed in his pupils. His assistant's voice crackled over the communication crystal. “Sir. The main hall screens are rebooted. The press is in position.”

Blake lifted his hand and gently adjusted the edge of my lace veil. The softness of his touch completely contradicted the lethal aura surrounding him.

“Once we push these doors open,” he said in a low gravel, “you are the Luna of Manhattan. No one will ever make you lower your head again.”

The ceremonial drums abruptly stopped. A second later, the grand, imposing chords of a royal mating march shook the walls. The heavy oak doors at the end of the hall were slowly pulled open by two ushers. Blinding white light from hundreds of camera flashes spilled into the dark corridor. I straightened my spine, lifted my chin, my eyes turning into chips of ice. I looked like a queen stepping onto a battlefield.

“Pleasure doing business with you, Uncle,” I whispered.

Blake heard the word. His jaw twitched. A dark, possessive smirk touched his lips. “According to the blood contracts being drafted right now,” he corrected me, “you will call me husband.”

The doors opened completely. A thousand eyes and camera lenses snapped directly onto us.