After My Alpha Rejected Me, the Lycan Prince Marked Me

The half-formed mark on my neck went cold at 7:47, exactly thirteen minutes before my Mate Ceremony was supposed to start.

I was standing in the doorway of the preparation room. Fletcher's back was to me. Juliana's hands were on his chest, small and pale against the black of his ceremonial shirt. His mouth was against her hair, not moving, just resting there like it belonged.

I counted three seconds. One. Two. Three.

The mark went cold before my brain caught up. It was a slow, sinking chill, like ice water sliding down inside my collar from the inside. I pressed two fingers to the spot without meaning to. Under my skin, the bond that had been half-formed for ten years pulled back like a tide going out.

Juliana lifted her head. Her eyes met mine over Fletcher's shoulder. She did not startle. She did not step away. She smiled, slow and small, the kind of smile she used to give me when we were children and she had broken something of mine.

I stepped back into the hallway. My heels made no sound on the rug. I walked to the ceremonial platform because there was nowhere else to go, and because it was 7:49 now, and the pack had already started to gather in the clearing below.

I stood at my mark. I kept my fingers pressed to my neck. My wolf, thin as a thread inside me for as long as I could remember, curled against my ribs and went still.

Fletcher came up the steps at 8:00.

He did not look at me. He looked at the pack. His voice was steady and clean, the alpha tone pulled tight across every word.

"I, Fletcher Scott, Alpha of the Silverfang Pack, reject you, Anastasia Dunn, as my mate."

The cold on my neck went to nothing. Not warmth. Not pain. A door closing on an empty room. Inside my chest, the thread that was my wolf snapped so quietly I only knew it by the silence after.

My knees gave. I caught the railing. Splinters bit into my palm and I used the pain to lock my elbow.

Fletcher turned. Juliana was already on the platform behind him, because of course she was, in the white dress she had told me last week she could not afford. He lifted the Luna circlet from the velvet stand. He set it on her hair. Her tears fell exactly on cue, one from each eye, no smudging.

I let go of the railing. I straightened. I walked down the steps.

Nobody stopped me. The pack parted the way water parts around a stone. Somebody whispered *cursed* and somebody else whispered *twenty-five* and I did not turn my head.

By 10:00 I was on the floor of my Omega quarters with my back against the bed frame, and I knew.

The pressure in my chest was the pressure I had lived with since I was a child, the one Eileen called "the family sickness" and the healers called "the curse." But it was climbing now. Metallic taste on my tongue. The edges of the room softening at the corners of my vision. I counted, because counting was the only thing left that worked.

No wolf. No bond. No rank. Wolfsbane at the level I had been warned about my whole life. One night, maybe. Maybe less.

I stood up. I changed the mud off the hem of the dress with a wet cloth because I would not walk into that room looking like something Fletcher had thrown away. I opened the herb manual on the dresser and slid my mother's photograph out from under the cover and put it in the pocket over my heart.

The Lycan Court's banquet was on the ridge. I had never been invited to anything in my life. I did not need to be invited now.

---

The hall smelled of wine and cold stone and too many Alphas in one place. My dress was wrong. My hair was wrong. My scent, whatever thin thing was left of it, was wrong. Heads turned. Whispers rose and fell like a tide.

*Omega. Silverfang. That's the cursed one. Look at her neck.*

I walked through them.

He was at the far end, alone, because a ten-foot circle had cleared itself around him without anyone deciding to move. Orion Evans. Lycan Prince. The one whose three fiancées had died. He was taller than I expected, and stiller. His aura pressed on the room the way a low ceiling presses on a tall man.

I stepped inside the circle.

His head turned. His nostrils flared once. I saw something behind his eyes move, fast and animal, before the stillness came down over it again.

"My name is Anastasia Dunn." My voice came out low. I had wondered if it would shake. It did not. "I was rejected two hours ago. I am dying tonight. I am proposing a contract mating. Lycan protection and a completed bond mark, in exchange for a mated heir on your arm before the Council. Terms in writing. No expectations past the contract."

The hall behind me had gone absolutely silent. Somewhere a glass touched a table and the sound was enormous.

Orion looked at me for a long moment. His jaw moved once.

"Accepted."