Reborn, I Rejected My Alpha First Chapter 04

The screen lit up on the chamber wall.

The west alcove. 5:52 p.m. Empty.

Four hundred wolves had crammed into the Elders‘ chamber and the hall beyond it, and not one of them breathed.

At 5:54, Celeste walked in.

Alone.

Not cornered. Not crying. Not dragged by anyone. She strolled in, checked the corridor in both directions, and

smoothed her white dress like a woman about to go on stage.

“I don’t consent to this!” Celeste lurched off the bench. “That’s private! I’m the victim! I want an advocate, I

want-”

“Sit,” Kael said.

He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t have to. The Alpha command in that single word rolled through the chamber, and Celeste dropped back onto the bench like her strings had been cut.

I pressed play again.

On the screen, Celeste unclasped the silver locket at her throat. The one my mother gave her on her sixteenth birthday. She twisted the back off. Inside sat a tiny glass vial, purple–black.

Wolfsbane.

A gasp moved through the room like wind through wheat.

She counted drops onto her tongue. One. Two. She winced, gagged, and steadied herself against the wall.

Then she reached under her skirt and pulled out a small, soft pouch. She bit the corner open and poured it

slowly down the front of her white dress.

Red. Thick. Spreading.

“That’s not blood,” the healer whispered from the floor. “That’s… that’s a deer bladder. Hunters use them for

bait.”

“Oh, Moon,” someone said behind me. “Oh, Moon.”

On screen, Celeste tucked the empty pouch into a planter. She tugged her hair loose. She raked her nails along

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her own collarbone until red lines rose, then studied her reflection in the dark window glass with the calm focus of a woman applying lipstick.

Then she picked up her phone.

And before she walked back into the hall to wait for moonrise, she made one call.

I paused the footage. The room was so quiet I could hear the candles burn.

“How?” Ravenna’s voice was a thread. “How could you possibly know to put a camera there?”

I didn’t answer her. I was watching Damon.

He hadn’t moved from the fire. His face had gone to stone, and his right hand was sliding, slow and casual, toward the pocket of his jacket.

That stillness told me everything.

In my last life, I never understood how he believed her so instantly. So completely. So easily. He never asked me a single question. He never once looked at me like he had doubts.

He didn’t believe her.

He briefed her.

Kael followed my gaze. He saw the hand. He saw the pocket. One step, and he was between Damon and the

door, and the temperature in the room dropped ten degrees.

“Alpha Blackwood,” he said pleasantly. “Keep your hands where I can see them.”

“This is my pack,” Damon said through his teeth. “You’re a guest in my territory.”

“Actually,” I said, “it’s my territory. You’re the guest.”

A murmur. Wolves looking at each other. Doing the math they should have done seven years ago.

Kael leaned toward the screen. “Is there audio?”

“There’s audio,” I said.

Celeste made a sound I had never heard from her. Not a sob. A small, animal whimper. The sound of something realizing the trap has a floor.

“Sera,” she breathed. “Sera, please. We’re sisters. Mom loved me. Don’t do this to me.”

In my last life, she visited me exactly once in the Pit. She sat on the other side of the silver bars wearing my

mother’s pearls, and she told me Lily had stopped crying for me at night. She said it kindly. That was the worst

part.

“You’re right,” I said. “Mom loved you.”

My cursor hovered over the volume.

I looked at my mate.

“Let’s all hear who she called.”

I turned it all the way up.