Reborn, I Rejected My Alpha First Chapter 01

In my last life, my sister drank wolfsbane and swore I poured it.

My mate rejected me in front of four hundred wolves.

My daughter learned to call her Mama.

I died in silver chains, and he never came for my body.

Then I opened my eyes, and it was the morning of my Luna Ceremony.

…

The dressing room at Silverpine House smelled exactly the way I remembered. Pine resin. Crushed moonflowers. The beginning of the end.

My hands were whole. No silver burns. No scars around my wrists where the chains had eaten down to the bone. I pressed them flat against the vanity and breathed until my wolf stopped shaking inside me.

Then the knock came. Soft. Apologetic. Perfectly timed.

Celeste.

My adopted sister. Twenty-three. Taken in by my parents at nine, when they found her half-starved at the edge of our territory. She wore white today, a shade too bridal for someone else’s ceremony, and she carried the silver moon-chalice in both hands like it might bite her.

“Sera, I’m so sorry to bother you.” Her eyes were already wet. “Mother Ysolde asked me to carry the moon-wine tonight, but look at my hands, I’m shaking so badly. You’re always so steady. Could you hold it for me? Pour it with your own hand? Just bless it?” Her voice cracked, beautifully. “Nobody in this pack ever lets me forget I’m a stray. If I spill it in front of everyone, I’ll die.”

In my last life, my heart broke for her.

I took the chalice. I poured the wine. I put my scent and my fingerprints all over the silver.

I handed her the weapon she used to bury me.

I looked at her now, at the tears balanced perfectly on her lashes, never quite falling, and I felt nothing except a cold, clean clarity.

“No.”

Celeste blinked. “I… what?”

“Mother Ysolde gave the chalice to you. It’s your job. Not mine.”

Aunt Delphine, the pack matron, looked up from pinning my hem and frowned. “Seraphina. That’s cruel. She’s your sister. What would it cost you?”

I turned and smiled at her. “Wonderful. Then you hold it. Put your scent on the silver. Sign your name in the Steward’s ledger as the one who poured.”

Delphine’s mouth went stiff. “She asked you.”

“Exactly,” I said. “Everyone in this house feels sorry for her. Not one of you will put your scent on that cup. Fascinating how that works.”

I turned back to the mirror.

And in the glass, I caught Celeste’s reflection.

The tears were gone. Completely gone. Her eyes followed me the way a fox follows a rabbit that has suddenly grown teeth.

Good, I thought. Now we both know what you are.

…

When they left, I made one call.

“Rook. The west alcove camera. The one that’s been dead for weeks.”

My father’s old head of security grunted. “Went live at noon, like you ordered. Didn’t tell a soul.”

“And if the Alpha asks?”

“Still broken,” Rook said. “Got it, Miss Sera.”

…

The moon rose at eight.

The Great Hall glowed with candles. Four hundred wolves in their finest. My daughter Lily, six years old and missing her front tooth, waved at me from my mother’s lap.

And Damon Blackwood waited at the altar in black. My mate. The boy I fell for at seventeen. The Alpha who had ruled this pack for seven years because my blood gave him the right.

He smiled at me, and in my last life I would have melted.

This time, I counted the exits.

Mother Ysolde lifted her hands. The first chant began.

Then Celeste screamed.

She folded at the foot of the altar like a dropped scarf. Red bloomed down the front of her white dress, spreading fast, impossible to look away from.

“My baby!” she shrieked. “My pup! She did it! Sera cornered me in the west alcove at six and forced wolfsbane down my throat! She said if I wouldn’t give up Damon’s pup, she’d kill it herself!”

Four hundred heads turned toward me.

Damon’s eyes flooded black.

“Seraphina,” my mate said, in a voice I had heard once before, in the last hour of my last life. “What did you do?”

I lifted my chin.

“Nobody leave this hall,” I said. “I’d hate for anyone to miss what happens next.”