Reborn, I Rejected My Alpha First Chapter 09

The trial came at the Harvest Moon, on a morning so bright it felt like an apology from the sky.

The Lycan King’s court at Greyhollow was carved from black stone, older than any pack. I sat in the second row with Ines on one side and, to my surprise, my mother on the other. She had ridden two days to get there and refused an inn, sleeping in my room “to be there when they read it out.”

In my last life, my mother’s heart gave out nine days after I was put in silver. She died believing her daughter/ had murdered a pup. So when she reached over and squeezed my hand with her small, warm one, I had to stare at the ceiling for a long time.

Celeste came in wearing prisoner grey. The months had scraped the softness off her. The stray was gone. What shuffled to the accused’s bench was a young woman doing arithmetic on the rest of her life.

Briar Thorne sat beside her, looking at no one. Her father’s advocates had abandoned her when his own charges dropped.

And Damon.

The rejection had aged him. His wolf had gone quiet, the healers said, the way wolves do when the bond is

torn by the one they wronged. He looked like a man wearing someone else’s skin. When they led him in, his eyes found me instantly, the way they used to across crowded halls.

I let him look. I gave him nothing back.

The King’s magistrate was efficient.

“Celeste, called Vale. For self–poisoning to fabricate a crime, false accusation before the pack, and conspiracy to seize a bloodline’s lands.” She paused. “The court notes the royal healer’s finding. There was never any pup.

A ripple through the gallery.

One last bloodstained dress.

“Four years in the Greyhollow cells.”

Celeste swayed. Didn’t fall.

“Briar Thorne. As accomplice, and for false oath before the Crown. Two years.”

Briar burst into tears. Real ones, finally. They looked nothing like Celeste’s.

Real crying is ugly.

“Damon Blackwood.”

The chamber leaned forward.

“For conspiracy against your own Luna, falsifying pack security, suborning false oath, and abusing the trust of an Alpha. Seven years. Stripped of rank. Banned from Silverpine for life.”

The gavel fell.

Seven years. In my last life, I got eight, for a crime that never existed. He got seven for building it. I sat with that unfairness for a moment. Then I let it go. The dead me wanted blood. The living me had a pack to run and a daughter waiting outside with honey cakes.

As the guards led him past my row, Damon stopped. They allowed it. Three seconds of grace.

“Sera.” His voice was rust. “Seven years. Was any of it real?”

The gallery held its breath, hungry for my forgiveness or my hatred,

I gave him something worse. The truth.

“Yes,” I said. “That’s what you spent.”

They took him away.

On the courthouse steps, the sun was warm, and Kael Draven was waiting without his royal cloak, holding two

cups of hot cider.

“Figured you’d forget to eat,” he said, handing me one. “Everyone does on verdict days.”

“Does the King’s Hand bring cider to every she–wolf whose life he helps un–ruin?”

“Only the ones who solved it before I arrived.” He studied me over his cup. “Two hundred years of Crown records. I’ve never seen anyone that ready. The camera. The ledgers. The witnesses. It’s as if you’d already watched it all happen.”

My mother, small and sharp beside me, answered first.

“Your Grace, my daughter was born knowing. She just wasted seven years pretending to be soft.”

Kael laughed. Low and warm. Then, as we turned to go, he said, casually, not casually at all:

“The north ridge is good for running. I’m usually there Saturdays. At dawn.”

My mother’s elbow found my ribs with surgical precision.

“Maybe,” I said.

Then the wind shifted. It carried his scent straight to me. Cedar, rain, and something like lightning.

And deep inside my chest, the wolf who had stayed silent since the night I tore my bond in half lifted her head

and whispered one word.

Mate.