Chapter 6 CHAPTER SIX | REJECTED

Alexi POV

“Son of a bitch,” I yelled while weaving through traffic.

I’d been at the mall all day trying to find the perfect outfit for Aaron and Alaia’s party; me being me, I decided to wait until the last minute, and now I was trying to rush back to the packhouse to get ready. I hit a button on the dashboard and heard the phone begin to ring. After the 3rd ring, Aaron picked up the phone.

“Lex, where the hell are you, man? I’ve been calling you all day, and the party starts in an hour!”

“Yeah, sorry, man. I’ve been at the mall getting my shit for tonight.”

“Lex, you won’t believe it, but I found her. She’s been right under my nose this whole time!” Aaron said.

I was calling him to tell him about the chick I almost banged in the food court, but he seemed so excited that I forgot all about her.

“What are you talking about, bro?”

“My mate! I found my mate, and she’s perfect. She’s smart and beautiful, and a total badass. She’ll make the perfect Luna for the pack one day...”

My mind started to wander as I thought about my mate. I absolutely did not want one. It’s not that I didn’t want to experience that kind of love, but it was more that I didn’t think I was worthy of it.

I’d slept with almost every girl I’d come across, and I was proud of that fact. It wouldn’t have been fair if my mate were a good girl who’d been saving herself for me and only me. She deserved someone like Aaron, a perfect guy, which I was not.

When I turned eighteen last month, I thought I was starting to feel the mate pull for Alaia, and that totally freaked me out. Don’t get me wrong, she was the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen, and I would have loved nothing more than to bend her over a desk and bury myself deep inside her.

But I couldn’t.

I didn’t deserve her, and out of respect for her brother, I would never approach her. She deserved someone special like her.

I came back to my senses when I heard Aaron yell, “It’s Jordyn!”

“Well, shit,” I said, “I guess congratulations are in order. Since you’ve been waiting eighteen years for a chick who’s been right there this whole time, I know you’ve marked her already.”

“Nah, Mom is forcing us to keep it in our pants until after the party. Then it’s on!” he said.

I smiled.

“Congrats again, Aaron. I’m happy for you, man. Look, I’m about ten minutes from the packhouse. I’ll come to find you once I get myself together, cool?”

“Yeah, man,” he said, “Just be quick about it.”

With that, we hung up.

The closer I got to the house, I felt my wolf Max starting to get more and more agitated.

“What the hell, man, what’s up?” I asked him, but he didn’t answer.

“Whatever,” I thought as I pulled up to the packhouse and jumped out.

I grabbed my stuff from the back seat and proceeded into the house. It was still pretty chaotic, but I saw that the Luna had it all under control. I knew for sure that when the clock struck 6:00, everything would be perfect.

I weaved my way around a few omegas holding flower arrangements before the sweetest smell ever hit me. It was like warm honey on a cold winter day. It smelled so sweet that it was like I could almost taste it.

Max started to loudly howl as I forced my feet to move forward to find what this smell was.

As I got closer to the stairs, I saw Alaia, looking sexy as hell in a tight teal dress. I was taken aback by how beautiful she was, and when we locked eyes, I heard myself say, “Mate.”

The word came out of me before I'd even decided to speak. Like Max had grabbed the wheel for half a second and floored it.

Well, shit.

I stood there, looking at her, Alaia, in a dress that made every coherent thought in my head evaporate, and felt the bond snap into place like a key turning in a lock I hadn't known was there. Warm. Certain. Hers.

I shook my head. Hard.

No.

She was looking at me the way I'd always pretended not to notice her looking at me, with those golden eyes wide open, no guard up, nothing held back. Like I'd just handed her something she'd been waiting for without knowing she was waiting. It physically hurt to see.

“She deserves someone like Aaron,” I told myself. “She deserves someone who hasn't already burned through half the pack. Someone clean. Someone whole.”

Someone who isn't you.

Max was snarling at me, frantic, clawing at every rational thought I tried to form. But I'd made this decision before today. I'd made it the month I turned eighteen and felt the first pull toward her and walked, ran, in the opposite direction. I wasn't going to undo it just because she was standing three feet away, looking at me like I'd hung the moon.

"Would you come to my room with me real quick?"

I didn't wait for her answer. I moved past her and up the stairs before I could change my mind, before I could let myself smell her properly, before Max could take over completely.

She followed. Of course she followed; she trusted me. She'd always, inexplicably, trusted me. That was the thing about Alaia that made the whole thing worse.

I said the words. Formal, final, no room for negotiation. “I, Alexi Kostov, future Beta of the Opal Moon pack, reject you, Alaia Miller, as my mate and partner.”

And she fell.

Not dramatically, she didn't crumple or sob. She just went down, like something essential had been knocked out from under her, and sat on the floor of my room looking up at me with those eyes, and asked, very quietly: "But why?"

I gave her the answer I'd rehearsed. The true one, if not the whole one. “I can't be tied down to one girl. I'm happy the way I am.”

She stood up.

That was the part I hadn't planned for. I'd braced for tears, for argument, for the kind of scene that would make it easier to stay certain. Instead, she pulled herself off my floor with what was left of her dignity, looked me straight in the eye, and said the words that severed it.

“I, Alaia Miller, daughter of Alpha Miller of the Opal Moon Pack, accept your rejection.”

The bond snapped. The warmth was gone so instantly it felt like plunging into cold water, and I went to my knees before I could brace for it, a full Alpha-level pain, which meant she'd been my true mate, which meant I'd known exactly what I was throwing away and done it anyway.

I heard her footsteps crossing the room. Steady. Unhurried. Head up.

She hadn't cried once.

I stayed on the floor of my room for a long time after the door clicked shut behind her. Max had gone silent, completely, terrifyingly silent, in a way I'd never felt from him before. Not angry. Just... gone somewhere I couldn't reach.

“She wasn't supposed to do that,” some small, ruined part of me thought. “She was supposed to fight.”

She hadn't fought. She'd accepted it with more grace than I deserved and walked away, and I'd gotten exactly what I said I wanted.

I pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes and sat with that for a long time.

---

Alaia POV

I made it exactly six steps down the hallway before my legs started shaking.

I counted them. Six. I don't know why I counted — something to focus on that wasn't the sound of the formal words still ringing in my ears, the way he'd said my full name like he was reading from a document, like I was something to be filed away and closed.

I, Alexi Kostov, future Beta of the Opal Moon pack, reject you, Alaia Miller, as my mate and partner.

I kept walking. Head up. Back straight. The daughter of an Alpha does not fall apart in a hallway where anyone could see her.

Amethyst was howling in my head, and I realized that she, too, had lost her mate tonight.

I'm so sorry, Amethyst.

She was too raw to respond. She just kept howling, low and broken, the sound of something that had been promised something and had it taken back.

I reached my room. Got the door closed and locked behind me. Pressed my back against it.

Then the floor came up to meet me, and I let it.

Once my back hit the door and I slid down to the carpet, the floodgates opened — everything I'd held in for those six steps and the thirty seconds in his room before them, all of it, at once. I'd never felt pain like this. Not in training, not ever. They say rejection is almost as bad as losing your mate to death. I believed it now. I understood it in my bones.

I didn't even notice when I curled onto my side. I just found myself there, knees drawn up, cheek against the carpet, breathing through it the only way I could.

Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale.

I wasn't sure how long it took before I heard the knock.

Aaron.

“Alaia, I know you’re in there, so open the door, please,” I heard Aaron say.

I heard him, but I couldn’t move, and I couldn’t speak. All I could do was focus on my breathing.

Inhale, exhale. Inhale, exhale.

Aaron, sensing that something was terribly wrong, pulled out the key I gave him for emergencies only and unlocked the door. Because my small frame was resting right in front of the door, he applied gentle pressure and slid me across the floor a bit, giving himself just enough space to squeeze in.

Once his head came around the door, and he saw me, he immediately bent down to get a closer look at me.

“Alaia, what happened? Why are you lying there on the floor?”

His voice was laced with worry, and it’s pained my already broken heart to see him this way. I just looked up into his eyes as more tears poured from my own.

Seeing this, Aaron scooped me up and carried me towards my bed.

“He rejected me,” I said, barely above a whisper.

I felt Aaron’s body tense and watched his eyes turn black.

“Who rejected you?” he growled.

I couldn’t even bring myself to say his name; it was like glass being jammed down my throat. I shook my head furiously as more tears began to spill over.

Aaron knew not to push any further and simply sighed. He gently laid me in the bed before he pulled the covers up over me. He then crawled behind me and pulled me close to his chest while I cried.

I didn’t know how long I had cried for, but when I opened my eyes, it was morning, and I had the worst headache ever. I looked down and saw that I was still in my dress from the night beforeand it all came rushing back to me.

I’d been rejected.

My mate had rejected me.

I pulled my blanket back over my head and willed the world to just swallow me whole.

So far, being an adult had absolutely sucked.