Chapter 3
I hadn't slept a single second. My clothes were still damp from the midnight storm, clinging to my shivering skin as a bleak dawn broke over the Moonveil territory. In the next room, my mother's ragged, shallow breathing was the only thing keeping me tethered to reality. I had rejected my fated mate. I had shattered a ceremonial boundary stone. I had walked away from the Alpha heir.
Then, the mind-link tore open.
It wasn't the standard, polite chime of a pack announcement. It was a violent intrusion, a forced broadcast echoing directly inside the skull of every wolf in the territory. I gasped, dropping the damp towel in my hands as a piercing migraine spiked behind my eyes.
Images violently flashed across my consciousness. It was a grainy, heavily edited video.
There I was, standing in the dark woods with Kayson. But the audio was chopped, the context entirely butchered. *“Fifteen thousand dollars...”* my voice echoed through the link, sounding whiny, calculating, and desperate. Then the footage skipped. It showed me stepping toward him, my body angled in a way that made me look like I was begging, throwing myself at him. It was immediately followed by the clip of me violently yanking off my Omega ID and throwing it at his chest.
But in this twisted version, Kayson stood tall and immovable, his Alpha aura radiating absolute, disgusted rejection. It didn't look like a woman fighting a mate bond. It looked like a pathetic, greedy Omega throwing a tantrum after trying to buy an Alpha’s affection with her body and failing miserably.
The mental channel instantly exploded with hundreds of overlapping voices.
*Whore.*
*Look at her begging in the dirt.*
*Trying to trap the future Alpha for money? Disgusting.*
I gripped the edge of the kitchen counter until my knuckles turned white, my breath coming in jagged, panicked gasps. Samantha. She had weaponized the footage. She had taken the most agonizing moment of my life and turned it into a public execution.
I wanted to curl into a ball and disappear, but a harsh wheeze from the back room forced my eyes open. I couldn't hide. My mother’s pain medication was completely gone, and her chest was rattling. I forced myself out the door, pulling my thin, damp hood over my head.
The walk to the central healing clinic felt like a march to the gallows. The torrential storm had turned the pack grounds into a muddy swamp, the freezing morning air biting brutally at my cheeks. As I rounded the corner toward the pristine white building of the central clinic, my heart dropped into my stomach.
They were waiting for me.
A mob of at least thirty wolves blocked the clinic’s double doors. Deltas, Gammas, and even a few higher-ranked Omegas stood shoulder-to-shoulder. Their eyes locked on me the second I appeared, burning with collective, unadulterated hatred. The air was thick with the suffocating scent of aggressive, sour pheromones.
I kept my head down, clutching my mother's empty prescription bottle to my chest. "Excuse me," I whispered, my voice trembling as I tried to slip past a massive Delta warrior.
He didn't move. Instead, he slammed his heavy shoulder directly into my chest.
I stumbled backward, gasping for air.
"Where do you think you're going, parasite?" a female Gamma spat from the front of the crowd.
"Trying to steal more pack funds to buy some lingerie?" another sneered, drawing a chorus of cruel laughter.
"Please," I begged, tears pricking the corners of my eyes. "My mother needs her medicine. Just let me pass. I'll leave right after."
A thick wad of spit landed in the mud mere inches from my boots. Before I could react, someone grabbed the back of my jacket and shoved me with brutal force. My worn boots slipped on the wet earth. I crashed down hard into the freezing mud, my knees striking the hidden gravel beneath the sludge. The empty plastic bottle bounced out of my hands, rolling uselessly into a dirty puddle.
"Disgrace," the Delta growled, stepping forward so his massive shadow swallowed me whole. "You're a filthy stain on the Moonveil territory."
Laughter rippled through the mob again. It was an ugly, monstrous sound. I pushed myself up on my scraped, bleeding palms, my jeans soaked to the bone with freezing brown water.
Then, the crowd parted.
The sickly-sweet scent of vanilla hit my nose, and my stomach violently churned.
Samantha stepped out from the wall of wolves. She was wearing pristine white boots that stopped just short of the mud I was kneeling in. She looked down at me, her arms crossed over her chest. There was no pity in her eyes today. No fake, patronizing concern. Just a cold, triumphant sneer.
"Sam..." I breathed, the betrayal hitting me harder than the physical shove.
"Don't call me that," she snapped, dropping her facade entirely. Her voice carried easily over the snickering crowd. "I defended you for years, Juliana. I pitied you. I gave you charity. But this?" She gestured to me, a pathetic heap in the dirt. "You disgust me."
"You know what really happened," I whispered, my voice breaking. "You were there. You filmed it."
Samantha’s eyes flashed with a dangerous, manic warning. She took a half-step closer, lowering her voice so only I could hear the venom. "No one cares about the truth, Jules. They care about the hierarchy. And you just tried to jump to the top. Know your place."
She straightened up, projecting her voice to the mob with theatrical disgust. "Omegas who try to trap Alphas deserve to be exiled! We don't want your kind here!"
The crowd roared in agreement, their angry shouts deafening, pressing down on me like physical weights.
I knelt there in the freezing mud, the cold seeping into my very marrow. The girl who had taught me how to navigate pack politics, who had shared her secrets with me when I had nothing, was looking at me like I was a diseased rat.
The isolation was absolute. I had no mate, no friend, and no pack. I was entirely, fundamentally alone. But as the mud soaked through my clothes and the vicious laughter echoed in my ears, the terrified, grieving Omega inside me finally went completely still.
Deep within my soul, the wolf I had suppressed for a decade opened her golden eyes in the dark, and began to snarl.
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