They Rejected an SSS Bloodline, Big Mistake Chapter 02

They Rejected an SSS Bloodline, Big Mistake Chapter 02

I froze right where I stood.

My bracelet buzzed right then.

It was a pack update Delilah posted three minutes earlier.

[Family trip! Off to the market to get my coming-of-age gift!]

The photo was a selfie inside the car.

Dad driving, brother in the passenger seat, Mom and my baby sister in the back.

All four of them grinning big at the camera.

That five-seater truck never had a spot saved for me.

My fingers went stiff. I linked my wolf to Mom’s mindlink.

“Hello? Sera, what’s up?”

The line was noisy, I could faintly hear the crowd roar of the market in the background.

“You guys… left already?”

My voice came out so quiet I barely heard it myself.

“Oh shoot, I forgot to tell you!” Mom’s tone was so casual and bright. “You’d been locked in your room forever, I figured you didn’t want to come out ’cause it’s too hot out there.

“Just stay home and enjoy the AC, there’s another half melon in the fridge for you.”

She made the whole decision for me without even asking how I felt.

“Mom! I want those honey-glazed berries!”

Delilah’s spoiled little whine came through the link.

“Okay okay, I’ll buy you double.” Mom laughed back at her, then rushed to end it with me. “Got to go, Sera, we’re helping Delilah pick out a new cloak. Talk later.”

The mindlink cut out.

I silently wiped the lip tint off my lips.

It was the same when we were little.

When we played hide and seek, I was always the one stuck counting. My brother Dorian and Delilah held hands and hid in the master bedroom closet, leaving me all alone counting in the dark attic.

When I finished counting to a hundred and opened my eyes, I searched the whole main house and never found them.

I only found out later they’d snuck off to the market to get honey-glazed berries without me, just like before.

Grew up, and it was still exactly the same.

I pulled open a drawer and dug out an old, yellowed photo album.

In the pictures, my sister and I were barely two years old, and we looked identical back then.

Dad would hold me up, Mom would kiss my cheek soft, brother would make silly faces at the camera.

Back then, their love was split right down the middle.

Until the accident when I was three. My sister knocked over the sliver ion solution we kept for pack defense, and it spilled all over me.

I screamed in pain, my whole body burned and scarred from the corrosion.

Back then, their love even leaned toward me.

Once at a pack gathering, I heard a relative say.

“Sera, you don’t even know how much your brother loved you when you were little!

“I just offhand said your fur wasn’t shiny enough, and he chased me yelling for eight whole blocks!

“And your parents? They begged every healer in the whole pack to fix you, even got down on their knees to the old pack Alpha back then.”

Back then, they did care about me.

But slowly, as we grew up… the damage I got as a kid left me insecure and quiet. My wolf was slow too, I guess the silver residue from the accident messed her up and she slept most of the time.

But Delilah got prettier and prettier. She was fair and glowing, her fur shone like moonlight. We might as well be from different worlds.

When relatives came over, they only ever gushed, “Lila looks just like a little princess!”

Then they turned to me, and the only thing they could mumble out was “This one’s such a quiet, good kid.”

Quiet, sensible, didn’t rock the boat.

That was the label they stuck on me, and the cage that was kept me locked up for eighteen years.

My parents grew more and more convinced I was just a regular wolf, not half as good as my sister, that I’d just be a dead weight at home forever.

That was what they thought they owed me, anyway.

Suddenly, a knock on the door pulled me out of my thoughts.

I put the photo album away and walked to open the door.

Gideon Vance was standing on my porch, holding two fancy dessert boxes.

He was wearing a white hunting tunic, and his smile was so bright it hurt my eyes.

“Sera, guess what I brought you?”