Rejected, Reborn, and Ruthless: A Lunas Revenge Chapter 10

Rejected, Reborn, and Ruthless: A Lunas Revenge Chapter 10 – Twelve Thousand to One

The Silverpine Trial grounds hold nine thousand.

They fit eleven that day, because word had gotten out that the rejected wolfless girl had registered a pack of two, and

everybody loves a public execution.

I walked out onto that sand in black, with the Widowmakers at my hips, and eleven thousand people booed me.

Cassie was in the Alpha’s box in white fur. Damien sat beside her with his father’s ring on his hand. Julian lounged

one row back with a drink, watching me like a man who’d placed a bet.

And in the north stands, in grey, were the Kaldrenn observers.

I found their faces in the crowd and memorized every single one.

ROUND ONE: HOLLOW vs. GREYWATER.

Greywater sent out a hundred-and-ten-kilo enforcer named Boyd who’d broken a man’s spine at last year’s Trials and

grinned about it on camera.

He shifted mid-charge. The crowd roared.

–

I stepped inside the charge like Vaelith had taught me serpent’s step – and drew one shallow line down his flank as he passed.

ROT APPLIED. 1/3.

He wheeled. I cut him again.

2/3.

Third time, I let him get close enough to feel his breath, and cut him under the jaw.

3/3. HEALING SUPPRESSED. SHIFT SUPPRESSED.

Boyd of Greywater fell out of his wolf form halfway through a lunge and hit the sand as a naked, screaming man with grey rot spidering up his throat.

The stadium went absolutely silent.

“He’ll live,” I called up to the officials, “if a healer sees him in ten minutes. Nine, now.”

They stretchered him out.

ROUND TWO. ROUND THREE. ROUND FOUR.

Rhys took the fourth alone, and I will remember it until I die: a man with no wolf, barefoot on the sand, dismantling a

full pack champion with his hands in under ninety seconds. The crowd didn’t boo him. The crowd made a sound I’ve

never heard before, this low collective oh, the noise people make when they realize the thing in front of them is not a

story.

By the semifinals the betting book had crashed twice.

By the final, HOLLOW was 3/1.

And in the final, they sent out Silverpine.

Damien Thorne came down onto that sand himself, in his father’s coat, because his pack was hemorrhaging faith and

he needed to beat me in front of them to get it back.

He looked at me across ten feet of sand.

“Last chance, Wren,” he said, low, so only I could hear. “Withdraw. Come home. I’ll take you back – quietly, as a second and this all goes away.”

The old me would have cried.

I checked my nails.

“Damien,” I said. “In one year, three hundred and thirty days, Kaldrenn comes through the northern fog. And I need you to know, in this exact moment, that I could have saved you.” I looked up and smiled. “I’ve decided not to.”

Then I put a knife in him.

—

He shifted huge, black, the biggest wolf in the province, and for one heartbeat every doubt in that stadium.

evaporated.

He came at me like a train.

One cut. Two. Three.

ROT: 3/3.

He crashed into the barrier fifteen feet past me and came up wrong, dragging a back leg, foam grey at his jaws. He tried to heal.

He couldn’t.

He tried to shift back.

He couldn’t.

I walked toward him across the sand with eleven thousand people screaming, and I let him see my face while he

understood, in slow motion, that the wolfless girl he’d thrown away in front of his entire pack had just taken his wolf

away from him.

“Beg,” I said quietly.

He howled instead. Which honestly, I respected.

I put my boot on his throat and looked up at the Alpha’s box, at Cassie’s white, frozen face.

“YIELD OR HE DIES,” the official bellowed.

Cassie yielded for him. Of course she did.

WINNER: HOLLOW. SOLVAINE.

PROVINCIAL RANKING: 1.

REALM STANDING: SOLVAINE 1st. ASCENSION TRIALS, ROUND ONE.

The board that had held no Solvaine name in a hundred years put mine at the top.

And thirty-one million coins landed in my account at 12,000 to 1.

I stood in the middle of that sand with my ex-mate poisoned at my feet and eleven thousand of my own people chanting a word I’d only ever heard used against me —

“HOLLOW. HOLLOW. HOLLOW.”

– and up in the north stands, every single Kaldrenn observer stood and walked out.

Rhys caught me on the tunnel steps as my legs finally gave.

“You beautiful, terrifying woman,” he breathed into my hair.

And then he went rigid.

Because the blood was seeping through my sleeve – Damien had gotten one claw in, right at the end – and Rhys had it on his hands.

My blood. On his hands.

“When your blood spills on that sand,” Vaelith had said, “he will remember what he is.”

Rhys’s grey eyes rolled back to white.

And every light in the Silverpine Trial grounds shattered at once.