I was supposed to marry Aaron, the future Alpha of the Blackwood Pack, and finally have my fairy tale.
But right before our Unity Celebration, I caught him buried between my stepsister’s legs in our bridal suite.
When I refused to bind my soul to his at the altar and exposed his betrayal, my world completely shattered.
My own mother called me a crazy, wolfless bitch and disowned me on the spot for ruining a political alliance.
Aaron publicly humiliated me, screaming that as a wolfless Omega, I should have been on my knees thanking him for the chance to be his breeding mare.
Driven to absolute despair by the betrayal of everyone I trusted, I tried to jump off a freezing roof.
But a pair of strong arms pulled me back from the edge.
In the dark, a stranger consumed my grief, wrapping me in a terrifyingly dominant scent of cedar and leather, making me feel an intoxicating mate bond I thought I was incapable of having.
I thought it was just a desperate, one-night mistake to make me forget.
But the next morning, when I went to the Blackwood estate to return Aaron’s gifts and leave as a Rogue, a suffocating aura filled the room.
The man who stepped between me and my furious ex-fiancé, the man whose marks were currently hidden beneath my clothes, stared at me with glowing golden eyes.
“Get your hands off her.”
He was Kaelon Blackwood. The supreme Alpha King.
Aaron’s father.
And he had just locked the door, declaring that I belonged to him.
Rejected the Heir, Claimed by the Alpha King Chapter 1
Liv POV
The bass from the Grand Ballroom throbbed against my temples, but it was the suffocating weight of a hundred powerful predators that made it hard to breathe. The Unity Celebration was supposed to be my fairy tale. Instead, surrounded by the elite Warriors and Alphas of the Blackwood and Stone packs, I was painfully reminded of what I truly was: a wolfless Omega.
I needed air. Slipping away from the crystal chandeliers and the overwhelming clash of aggressive pheromones, I hurried down the hushed, carpeted hallway toward the Alpha’s Suite.
But as I neared the heavy oak door, my steps faltered.
A scent leaked into the corridor. Aaron’s familiar sunlit grass and musk—the scent of my fiancé—was entirely smothered by a sickeningly sweet, heavy wave of gardenia.
Vivienne. My stepsister.
A soft, breathless moan echoed through the slight crack in the door. My blood turned to ice. Trembling, I pushed the wood just a fraction of an inch wider.
The luxurious suite blurred, narrowing down to the tangled limbs on the edge of the bed. My fiancé, the future Alpha of the Blackwood Pack, was buried deep between the legs of the Stone Pack’s platinum-blonde princess.
“You’re so lucky to be the future Luna, Liv,” Vivienne’s saccharine voice echoed in my memory, twisting into a venomous sneer.
A violent wave of nausea hit me. I didn’t scream. I couldn’t. My world simply shattered into jagged, bleeding pieces.
I stumbled blindly back toward the ballroom, my chest heaving. The glittering lights now looked like mocking eyes. Before I could reach the exit doors, two imposing figures blocked my path.
Eleonora and Beatrice, the Elders of the Blackwood Pack.
“You look terribly pale, dear,” Eleonora purred, her gaze raking over my trembling frame with thinly veiled disdain. “Nerves are natural. It is a profound blessing from the Moon Goddess for a… wolfless Omega to join our ranks.”
Beatrice took a slow sip of her champagne. “Just remember your duty, Olivia. Bear strong heirs for the Pack, blend into our traditions, and you will be tolerated. You truly are lucky.”
Lucky. The word tasted like ash in my mouth. I wasn’t a bride to them, nor to Aaron. I was a pathetic, broken thing. A breeding mare they pitied.
I couldn’t stay in this gilded cage for another second.
Snatching a full bottle of amber whiskey from a passing waiter’s tray, I bolted for the only sanctuary left—the roof.
The Moonlit Ledge was freezing. The biting night wind whipped my brown hair across my face as I marched right to the glass railing. Below me, the city lights blurred into a dizzying abyss. Above me, the moon hung cruel and indifferent.
I tipped the bottle back, letting the liquid fire burn down my throat, and let out a raw, agonizing scream that tore at my vocal cords. The alcohol, combined with the crushing weight of the double betrayal, spun my reality off its axis.
My heel caught on the slick marble edge. The world violently tilted.
I tipped backward, the bottle slipping from my numb fingers as gravity claimed me. I was falling into the dark.
Before the scream could even leave my lips, a pair of arms—hard and unyielding as steel—snapped around my waist. They violently jerked me back from the edge, crushing me against a wall of solid muscle.
The exact second his skin brushed mine, a terrifying, intoxicating jolt of electricity shot straight to my core. My breath hitched. I was instantly enveloped in an overwhelming scent of winter-bitten cedar and ancient leather. It was the most dominant, predatory scent I had ever encountered, yet it wrapped around my shattered soul like a warm blanket, making me feel inexplicably, completely safe.
Trembling, my heart hammering against my ribs, I tilted my tear-streaked face up.
I found myself staring into a pair of intense, steel-gray eyes that seemed to hold the weight of the world.
Rejected the Heir, Claimed by the Alpha King Chapter 2
Kaelon POV
I pulled her back from the edge, my heart hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs. The moment her small, trembling body crashed against my chest, a violent, terrifying jolt of electricity ripped through my veins.
Then, it hit me.
Rain-washed grass and wild lilies.
It was pure, intoxicating, and completely overwhelming. The scent punched the air straight out of my lungs, wrapping around my hardened soul like a lifeline.
Mine!
Ragnar, my inner wolf who had been a cynical, silent shadow for over two decades, slammed against the confines of my mind. He roared with a possessive, earth-shattering fury that nearly brought me to my knees. Mate. Our Mate.
I stared down into a pair of wide, hazel eyes swimming with a shattered, agonizing despair. She was trembling violently, her pale skin freezing in the biting wind. She reeked of amber whiskey and profound heartbreak, a fragile creature pushed to the absolute brink.
Before I could even process the miracle in my arms, she surged upward. Her lips crashed into mine.
It was a messy, desperate kiss, tasting of salt, liquor, and pure ruin. Reason screamed at me. Downstairs, my son Aaron’s Unity Celebration was in full swing. I was the Alpha of the Blackwood Pack; I was a man built on control and ruthless discipline. I should have pushed her away.
But the Moon Goddess had woven a trap I couldn’t escape.
A low growl rumbled in my chest. I tangled my hands in her soft brown hair and kissed her back, letting my dominance and hunger swallow her pain. The kiss ignited a wildfire in my blood, burning away twenty years of ice and isolation.
I scooped her into my arms. She weighed absolutely nothing.
Clear the top floor. Now. Anyone in the hallway gets thrown out, I mind-linked my Beta, my Alpha’s Command lacing the mental order with absolute, undeniable authority.
I carried her down the hushed, carpeted corridors, my scent of winter-bitten cedar and ancient leather flaring to blanket us both, hiding her from the rest of the world. We reached the heavy oak door of my private Alpha Suite.
I paused, my breathing ragged. I looked down at the beautiful, broken woman in my arms. I didn’t know her name. I didn’t know what had driven her to the edge of that roof. But I knew her soul belonged to me.
“Little one,” I rasped, my voice thick with restraint, giving her one final chance to run. “Once we cross this threshold, there is no going back. You are mine.”
A tear slipped down her cheek, catching the dim light of the hallway. Her gaze held mine, entirely consumed by the invisible pull of our bond.
“Please,” she whispered, her voice trembling but resolute. “Just make me forget.”
That was the final blow to my sanity.
I kicked the door open and let it slam shut behind us, locking the rest of the world away. Clothes were torn and discarded in a frantic blur. When my skin met hers under the pale moonlight spilling through the floor-to-ceiling windows, the sparks ignited into a roaring inferno.
For the first time since my chest was ripped open decades ago, I felt whole. I claimed my Luna in the shadows, entirely blind to the catastrophic storm we were about to unleash upon my Pack.
Rejected the Heir, Claimed by the Alpha King Chapter 3
Liv POV
I woke to the sound of rushing water and the overwhelming, intoxicating scent of winter-bitten cedar and ancient leather.
My body ached with a delicious, heavy soreness. Tangled in the dark silk sheets of a massive, unfamiliar bed, the memories of last night crashed over me. The shadowy stranger. The terrifying jolt of electricity when his skin met mine. The way he had completely consumed my grief, making me feel cherished and anchored in a world that had just shattered.
For a fleeting second, wrapped in his lingering scent, I felt safe.
Then, my phone buzzed sharply on the nightstand.
I reached for it, my fingers trembling slightly. The screen lit up with a message from Aaron.
Good morning, my future Luna. I can’t wait to stand before the Moon Goddess and bind our souls today. You are my everything.
Bile rose in the back of my throat. The illusion of safety vanished, replaced by the sickening, vivid image of my fiancé buried between Vivienne’s legs. My everything. The hypocrisy was so thick it was suffocating. While a stranger had held my broken pieces together in the dark, the man I was supposed to marry was playing the perfect, devoted Alpha heir, completely unaware that I knew his filthy secret.
Disgust and a sudden, fierce anger burned through my veins. I couldn’t stay here. I couldn’t face the man in the shower, whoever he was, and I certainly couldn’t let Aaron get away with this.
Snatching my torn dress from the floor, I ignored the phantom sparks still dancing on my skin and bolted from the Alpha’s suite, fleeing down the empty corridors back to my bridal room.
Hours later, the Grand Ballroom felt like a beautifully decorated execution chamber.
I stood at the moonstone altar, suffocating in layers of white lace. Hundreds of elite Warriors and nobles from the Blackwood and Stone packs watched me in solemn silence. My bridesmaids—Lara, Rose, and Vio—beamed at me from the front row, completely oblivious to the storm raging inside my chest.
Aaron stood across from me, his golden hair perfectly styled, his handsome face arranged into a mask of loving devotion. But beneath his youthful scent of sunlit grass and musk, my heightened anxiety picked up the faint, sickeningly sweet phantom trace of gardenia.
Vivienne’s scent.
“Olivia Holcomb,” the Pack Elder’s voice boomed, echoing off the crystal chandeliers. “Do you accept Aaron Blackwood as your Alpha and mate? Do you vow to bind your life to his, to lead the Pack by his side, and never part?”
The silence that followed was heavy, expectant.
I looked at Aaron. His smile faltered slightly at my hesitation.
“No,” I said.
The word was quiet, but it dropped like a bomb in the silent room. A collective gasp rippled through the crowd.
Aaron’s eyes widened in shock. “Liv? What are you doing? It’s just nerves—”
“I refuse!” My voice cracked like a whip, loud and unwavering. “I refuse to bind myself to a man who spent the eve of our Unity Celebration screwing my stepsister in the suite meant for us!”
Chaos erupted. Whispers turned into shocked shouts. I watched Vivienne, standing near the front, drain of all color, her icy blue eyes wide with terror. Aaron’s face twisted from confusion into a dark, ugly mask of humiliation.
“You’re lying,” Aaron hissed, stepping toward me, his hands balling into fists. “You crazy, wolfless bitch—”
I stepped back, my heart pounding a frantic rhythm. But as I moved, my gaze drifted past Aaron’s shoulder and locked onto the man standing at the head of the Blackwood delegation.
The supreme authority of the room.
He was tall, broad-shouldered, radiating an aura of absolute, terrifying dominance. Silver threads gleamed in his dark hair, and his jaw was set like carved granite. But it was his eyes—intense, piercing steel-gray eyes—that made the blood freeze in my veins.
The air was instantly sucked from my lungs as a heavy, possessive wave of winter-bitten cedar and ancient leather slammed into me, cutting through the scent of every other wolf in the room.
It was him. The stranger from the dark.
My mind violently short-circuited. The man who had claimed me, the man whose marks were currently hidden beneath my wedding dress… was Kaelon Blackwood.
Aaron’s father. The Alpha King.
His steel-gray eyes widened slightly as the realization hit him at the exact same moment.
Pure, unadulterated panic seized my chest. I shoved past the gasping nobles, my bare feet hitting the thick carpet as I bolted for the exit, desperate to escape the suffocating gravity of the Blackwood men.