“Prince Kael of the Northern Pack rejects you, Ella of no house, as his fated mate.”
The words struck before she could brace. One moment Ella stood at the foot of the marble dais, hand extended in the formal greeting she had practiced until her wrists ached. The next, four hundred faces turned toward her like blades.
She did not move.
She had known since the archive room. Three months ago, when Kael’s fingers had brushed hers over a cracked ledger and lightning had shot up her arm. She had seen the silver mark bloom on her wrist that night—a crescent moon caught in a wolf’s paw. She had hidden it beneath gloves, beneath long sleeves, beneath the careful lie of being Beta.
She had told herself the bond was one-sided. A mistake. A genetic echo.
But when their eyes met across the Autumn Equinox Ball, the bond had snapped taut between them. His amber gaze had flared. His hand had gone to his chest. And then he had walked to the dais and spoken loud enough for every noble house in the Northern Pack to hear.
“I have no fated mate,” Kael said. “The bond is a trick. A flaw. You are a Beta. You are nothing to me.”
A ripple of whispers broke through the hall. Ella heard fragments—impossible—did he just—poor thing—but the loudest sound was the blood roaring in her ears.
She should have curtsied. She should have lowered her eyes and retreated like a good, invisible Beta. Instead, her Omega glands—suppressed for three years by black-market tinctures and herbal cocktails—seized.
Heat climbed her spine. Her scent glands behind her ears pulsed once, twice, and then a wisp of jasmine and rain-soaked earth curled from her skin.
The Alpha nearest her stiffened. Lord Hawk-nose, she thought wildly. His nostrils flared. His eyes bled gold.
No.
Ella clamped her hand over her wrist. The mark beneath her glove burned like a brand. She bit the inside of her cheek until blood filled her mouth. The pain anchored her.
“Forgive the interruption,” she said. Her voice came out steady, which surprised her. “I misread a signal. It won’t happen again.”
She turned. She did not bow. She did not curtsy. She walked.
The crowd parted. Silk rustled. Someone laughed—a sharp, cruel sound—and someone else hissed for silence. Ella kept her spine straight. She kept her chin high. She kept her hands at her sides even as the mark seared up her forearm.
Ten steps to the door. Fifteen. Twenty.
Behind her, a chair scraped. Someone stood. She did not look back.
The oak doors were three inches thick, carved with the crest of the Northern Pack—a wolf rampant, jaws open. She pushed them open with both palms and stepped into the corridor.
Cold air hit her face. Moonlight streamed through the tall windows, silver and indifferent.
Ella made it twelve feet before her legs gave out.
She caught herself on a stone pillar, knees hitting marble with a crack that sent pain up her thighs. The suppressant dam inside her was crumbling. She could feel the Omega hormones flooding her bloodstream, feel the scent glands at her wrists and throat waking after years of forced sleep.
Not now. Not here.
She reached into the hidden pocket sewn inside her gown—the one no Beta would ever suspect—and pulled out a small vial. Dried wolfsbane. Crushed moonflower. A pinch of ash from a burnt fated mark. The cocktail was illegal. The cocktail was dangerous. The cocktail was the only reason she had survived three years at Thornfield Academy without being detected.
She uncorked it with her teeth and swallowed.
The liquid burned going down. The effect was immediate. Her scent glands quieted. The heat receded. Her heartbeat slowed from a gallop to a canter.
She leaned her forehead against the stone and breathed.
You are nothing to me.
She had prepared for rejection. She had prepared for cruelty. What she had not prepared for was the way the bond had tugged when he spoke—the way her soul had reached for his even as his words cut her open.
The fated mark pulsed again. She looked at it. Even through the glove, she could see the faint silver glow. A crescent moon entwined with a wolf’s paw. The mark of the Luna.
Her mother had told her stories about the Luna bloodline. Ancient. Extinct. A fairy tale for children.
The Luna does not choose her mate. The moon chooses for her. And the moon does not make mistakes.
Ella pulled her glove up to her elbow.
The mark was spreading.
Silver tendrils branched from the crescent like veins of frost. They climbed past her wrist, past her forearm, toward the inside of her elbow. She stared for three full seconds before she yanked the glove back down.
No. No, no, no.
This was not supposed to happen. The mark was supposed to stay dormant. The suppressants were supposed to keep everything dormant. She was supposed to graduate, get a license, open an apothecary in a neutral territory where no one cared about pack politics or fated bonds or Alphas who rejected you in front of four hundred people.
She was supposed to be free.
A door slammed somewhere in the distance. Footsteps. Heavy. Alpha footsteps, by the sound—long strides, confident, the click of polished boots on marble.
Ella scrambled to her feet. She wiped her face with the back of her hand—when had she started crying?—and forced her expression into neutrality.
The man who rounded the corner was not Kael.
He was older, mid-thirties, with silver-streaked hair and the insignia of the Royal Guard on his collar. His eyes swept over her, sharp and assessing.
“Beta,” he said. “You are out past curfew.”
“I was returning to my quarters, sir.”
“Your scent is unusual.” His nostrils flared. “Sweet. Almost Omega-like.”
Ella’s blood turned to ice. “I was near the kitchens. The pastry chef was making honey cakes.”
The guard studied her for a long moment. Then he grunted. “Get to your dormitory. The ball is ending. The prince has retired early—apparently he was taken ill.”
Taken ill.
The words hit her like a second slap. She kept her face still. “I hope His Highness recovers swiftly.”
The guard snorted and continued down the corridor.
Ella waited until his footsteps faded. Then she ran.
The Beta dormitory was a converted east wing, three floors of narrow rooms and shared bathrooms. Ella’s room was on the top floor, at the end of a hallway that always smelled of dust and old paper. She shared it with Lia, a Beta from the Southern Plains whose only ambition was to marry a minor lord and never work a day in her life.
Lia was not there when Ella burst through the door.
Good. Lia would have questions. Lia would have concern. Lia would look at Ella’s face and know something was wrong.
Ella locked the door. She pulled the curtains. She lit a single candle.
Then she opened the wooden chest at the foot of her bed and took out her kit.
Mortar and pestle. Glass vials. A small scale. Jars of dried herbs, each labeled in her own precise handwriting: Valerian root. Chamomile. Lavender. Moonwort. Silverleaf. Ash of the Burned.
She worked by candlelight, hands moving with the efficiency of long practice. Two parts valerian, one part moonwort, three drops of silverleaf tincture. She ground them together until the mixture was fine as dust, then added a pinch of ash.
The suppressant she had taken in the corridor was temporary. This was her emergency blend. Stronger. Faster. More dangerous.
She measured out a dose and swallowed it dry.
The effect was immediate. Her heartbeat slowed. The heat in her blood cooled. The scent glands behind her ears went dormant.
But the mark on her wrist did not fade.
She stared at it. She had tried everything over the past three months: concealment creams, glamour spells, even a poultice of crushed diamonds that had cost her half a year’s savings. Nothing worked. The mark was not a physical thing. It was a soul thing. And souls did not respond to herbs.
A knock at the door.
“Ella? You in there?”
Lia.
Ella yanked her sleeve down. She shoved the kit under her bed. She blew out the candle and threw herself under the covers, her back to the door.
“Ella?”
The door handle rattled. Then a key turned—Lia had a spare, of course she did—and the door swung open.
Lia’s footsteps crossed the room. The bed dipped as she sat on the edge.
“I heard what happened,” Lia said softly. “The whole academy is talking about it.”
Ella said nothing.
“Ella. Look at me.”
Slowly, Ella turned. Lia’s face was round and kind, her brown eyes filled with a sympathy that made Ella want to scream.
“The prince is a fool,” Lia said. “Everyone thinks so. Rejecting a Beta in public like that—it’s barbaric. The old laws say you only reject a fated mate if they’re a criminal or a traitor. You’re neither.”
“The bond was a mistake,” Ella said. The words tasted like ash. “I’m a Beta. He’s an Alpha. It happens sometimes—false bonds, genetic anomalies.”
“False bonds don’t make the prince collapse at his own ball.”
Ella’s heart stopped. “What?”
Lia leaned closer. “After you left, he grabbed his chest and fell to his knees. His guards carried him out. They’re saying he’s in the infirmary. They’re saying—” She hesitated.
“What? They’re saying what?”
“They’re saying his skin was cracking. Like porcelain. And something was glowing underneath.”
Ella’s hand went to her wrist. The mark pulsed.
Rejection sickness.
She had read about it. Every Omega learned about it in whispered lessons their mothers gave them before they were old enough to understand. When a fated mate rejects the bond, the bond rebels. The Alpha’s wolf, denied its other half, turns on its host. The first symptom is pain. Then the marks—the beastification marks. Then the loss of reason.
Then death.
Or worse.
“Ella?” Lia’s voice was worried now. “You’ve gone pale. Do you need—”
“I need to sleep.” Ella pulled the covers up to her chin. “Please, Lia. I just want to sleep.”
Lia hesitated. Then she sighed. “All right. But if you need to talk—”
“I know. Thank you.”
Lia stood. She walked to the door. She paused with her hand on the frame.
“Ella?”
“What?”
“The prince—he looked scared. When they carried him out. I’ve never seen an Alpha look like that.”
The door closed behind her.
Ella lay in the dark, staring at the ceiling. Her wrist burned. Her heart ached. And somewhere in the infirmary, the man who had called her nothing was paying the price for his words.
Good, she thought. Let him suffer.
But even as she thought it, the bond inside her—the soul-deep thread that connected her to Kael—tugged. A pull toward the infirmary. A need to go to him. A whisper in her blood: He is yours. You are his. Go to him.
Ella rolled over. She pressed her wrist against her chest, where the mark could not be seen.
“I am nothing to him,” she whispered to the dark. “And he is nothing to me.”
The bond did not believe her.
Neither did she.
She woke at dawn to the sound of boots in the hallway.
Not the soft shuffle of students. Not the chatter of Betas heading to breakfast. These were Royal Guard boots—hard soles, measured strides, the clink of metal on stone.
Ella sat up. Her wrist throbbed. The mark had spread again in the night; she could feel it beneath her sleeve, a silver itch crawling toward her elbow.
She reached for her kit. Her fingers found the vial of emergency suppressant—and stopped.
It was nearly empty.
She had used too much. The dance, the rejection, the scent leak, the second dose. She had maybe one full dose left. Maybe less.
A knock cracked against her door.
“By order of the Crown,” a voice announced. “All attendees of the Autumn Equinox Ball are confined to quarters. A pheromone inspection will begin at dawn. Have your registration seals ready.”
Ella’s blood went cold.
Pheromone inspection.
She looked at the door. Then at the empty vial in her hand. Then at her wrist, where the silver mark glowed through her glove like a secret trying to burn its way out.
Outside, the guard moved to the next room. Knock. Announcement. Knock. Announcement.
Ella had one dose left.
And the sun was already rising.