Reborn, I Rejected My Alpha First Chapter 02

They dragged the ceremony into the Elders’ chamber, and the crying reached me before I reached the door.

Delicate. Musical. Rehearsed.

Celeste lay curled on the velvet bench, the healer kneeling beside her, blood drying on her white dress. The moment she saw me she pressed herself back against the wall as if I had walked in holding a blade.

“Please. Please don’t let her near me.”

Damon stood by the fire. Seven years my mate, and in my last life I never once saw what lived beneath that handsome, reasonable face.

I saw it now.

“Sera.” His jaw was tight. “Tell me you didn’t do this.”

“I didn’t do this.”

“Then explain the blood!” Elder Morwen slammed her cane against the stone. Damon’s aunt. Keeper of pack law. “Explain the wolfsbane the healer smells on her breath! You think a pregnant girl poisoned herself?”

“Why couldn’t she?” I said.

The chamber went silent. Celeste’s sobbing hiccupped. Half a second. A stutter in the performance.

Morwen recovered first. “Do you hear yourself? This girl was a stray. No family, no rank, nothing but this pack’s charity. What could she possibly gain by lying about the blood heir of Silverpine?”

“Blood heir,” I repeated. “Daughter of Alpha Aldric Vale. Let’s be very precise about who I am tonight, Morwen. It’s going to matter.”

Damon crossed the room and lowered his voice, and here it came. The tone I remembered. The tone I once mistook for love.

“Sera. Listen to me. Nobody outside this room has to know. You confess to the Elders privately. You sign your lands under the Blood Clause into my keeping, and you accept a quiet exile to the northern cabins. I won’t reject you. I’m trying to protect you. I’m trying to protect Lily. Do you want our daughter watching them put you in silver?”

In my last life, I wept when he said that. I thought he was on my side.

In my last life, three days later, he rejected me in front of the entire pack, and Celeste slept in my bed before the bruises on my wrists turned yellow.

“Protect me,” I said. “By having me confess to something I never did.”

“By being smart!”

The door banged open. Ravenna Blackwood, Damon’s mother, swept in on a cloud of perfume and fury. She took one look at Celeste’s tear-streaked face and came straight at me.

The slap cracked through the chamber like a snapped branch.

My head whipped sideways. My cheek burned.

“You jealous, vicious creature!” Ravenna’s finger shook in my face. “Murdering an unborn pup! I told my son not to bind himself to you. I told him Vale blood runs cold!”

Celeste wailed from the bench. “Please, don’t fight over me. I’m not worth it. I’ll leave the pack. I’ll go back to the woods where you found me. I never wanted to break up anyone’s family.”

“Sweet girl.” Ravenna rushed to gather her hands. “You’re going nowhere. The one leaving this pack will be her.”

Morwen folded her arms. “Seraphina. Your choices. A signed confession. Your lands and your daughter’s custody transferred under the Blood Clause. Or the Silver Trial. Wolfsbane chains until the moon priestess rules. In front of the whole pack.”

Damon said quietly, “Think of Lily. Do you want her visiting you in the Pit?”

I touched my burning cheek.

I looked at the four of them. My mate. His mother. His aunt. His mistress. Arranged around me like a firing squad.

And I began to laugh.

Ravenna recoiled. “She’s lost her mind.”

“No,” I said. “I’ve never been saner.”

I raised my right hand. On my finger sat the old Vale signet, a moonstone set in iron, passed from my father to me. Every wolf in that room knew what it could do. Not one of them believed I would ever use it.

“The Silver Trial? Excellent idea, Morwen.” I pressed my thumb hard against the stone until it glowed. “But let’s do it properly.”

“Seraphina, don’t you dare—”

“I invoke the Crown’s Right,” I said, clear enough for the hall beyond the door to hear. “I call the Lycan King’s Justice to Silverpine.”

The moonstone flared white.

Morwen went the color of ash. “Nobody has called the Crown in ninety years. You’ll bring the King’s Hand down on this whole pack!”

“I know,” I said.

Then, from the black ridge above Silverpine, a howl split the night. Deeper than any wolf in our territory. Close. Far too close.

Damon’s face drained.

“He was already at the border,” he whispered.

I smiled at my mate.

“Then he won’t keep us waiting.”