Rejected, Reborn, and Ruthless: A Lunas Revenge Chapter 01

Rejected, Reborn, and Ruthless: A Lunas Revenge Chapter 01 — The Blade, the Smile, the Second Chance
The silver went in slow.

My mate held my arms. My sister held the knife. Neither of them looked away.

“Don’t fight it, Wren,” Damien whispered against my hair, gentle as a lullaby. “You were never meant to be Luna. You were meant to be the sacrifice.”

Cassie twisted the blade. “Thanks for the pack, sis.”

I died on the marble floor of the temple I’d rebuilt with my own inheritance, under a blood moon, with silver eating my heart.

And then—

“Wren Calloway. Do you accept my rejection?”

I gasped so hard my lungs burned.

Torches. Pine smoke. Two hundred faces turned toward me in the Silverpine ceremonial hall. Damien Thorne stood on the dais in his father’s Alpha coat, jaw tight, eyes bored, the way he always looked when he was about to hurt someone and call it duty.

I looked down at my hands. No blood. No scars. My grandmother’s ring, the one Cassie stole and sold six months from now, still sat on my finger.

The Rejection Ceremony.

One year. I was one year back, standing in the exact spot where my first life had cracked in half.

My knees wanted to buckle. I locked them.

“I said,” Damien repeated, louder, enjoying it, “do you accept my rejection, Wren? You’re wolfless. A defect. The pack needs a Luna who can shift, not a girl who plays bookkeeper.”

Behind him, Cassie stood in white, hands folded, eyes wet with fake sympathy. In my last life, I’d sobbed. I’d begged. I’d crawled after him down that aisle in front of everyone, and I’d spent the next year making myself small enough to be forgiven.

And a year after that, she’d put a knife in me while he held my arms.

Something inside my chest went very quiet and very cold.

“Yes,” I said.

The hall went dead silent.

Damien blinked. “What?”

“I accept your rejection, Alpha Thorne.” My voice carried, steady, almost cheerful. “Bond severed. Effective immediately. Congratulations to the happy couple.”

Two hundred wolves inhaled at once.

Cassie’s mask slipped. She’d been waiting to comfort me. She’d rehearsed it, I knew she had — the tearful hug, the I’ll take care of him for you, Wrennie.

I gave her a smile that had teeth in it.

Damien recovered fast, but not fast enough. “You—that’s it? No argument?”

“You wanted a clean break. It’s clean.” I stepped forward, and the crowd shifted back, which was interesting. “There’s just the small matter of the money.”

“Excuse me?”

“The temple restoration. Eight hundred thousand. Your father’s medical debts, three hundred and twenty. Cassie’s four years at the Academy, two hundred. Your Alpha coronation feast — you told the elders it was pack funds. It was mine.” I tilted my head. “One point eight million, Damien. Round number. I’ll take the transfer tonight.”

His face went the color of curdled milk. “You’re insane.”

“I’m itemized,” I said. “There’s a difference.”

Cassie found her voice, shrill and sweet. “Wren, how dare you? He’s grieving—”

“He’s engaged,” I said. “To you. In eleven days. I’d tell you to act surprised, but you never could act.”

That landed. Cassie’s mouth opened and shut like a fish, and Damien’s hand twitched toward her before he caught himself — and every wolf in that hall saw it.

Now the whispering started.

I turned my back on my mate, on my sister, on the pack that had watched me bleed and applauded, and I walked down the aisle alone with my spine straight for the first time in my life.

At the doors, a voice stopped me. Smooth. Amused. Expensive.

“One point eight million,” Julian Ashgrove said, stepping out of the shadows in a coat that cost more than my car. Heir to the richest pack on the coast. In one year, he’d open the northern gates and let our enemies slaughter forty thousand of my people.

He smiled at me like I was a puzzle he wanted to break.

“I’ll pay it,” he said. “Tonight. For Cassie’s sake, of course.”

I smiled back.

Because I knew exactly what I was going to buy with his money.

And by dawn, I was going to own the most dangerous man alive.