The Alpha's Collared Pet: Rejected and Reborn

For ten years, I lived for Dante Moretti. I waited for my eighteenth birthday, knowing that the Alpha of the Dark Nebula was my fated mate.

But when the day finally came, he didn't claim me.

He brought Isabella home instead. A warrior. A political asset.

"Welcome home, my future Luna," he announced to the pack, shattering my heart in front of everyone.

I was just the orphan girl who couldn't Shift. A liability.

To ensure I knew my place, Isabella offered me a "gift." A collar made of pure silver.

To a human, it is jewelry. To a wolf, it is acid.

When she locked it around my neck, the metal sizzled. The smell of my own burning flesh filled the room.

I fell to my knees, screaming, looking at Dante with tears in my eyes. I begged him to stop her.

But he just looked at me, his face a mask of cold logic.

"Wear it," he commanded, ignoring the smoke rising from my skin. "Consider it discipline. If you take it off, you leave the Pack."

He thought he was protecting me. He thought making me look weak would save me from his enemies.

He didn't realize he was killing the girl who loved him.

That night, I didn't just take off the collar.

I closed my eyes, found the golden thread of our Mate Bond in my mind, and snapped it in half.

Dante collapsed in the hallway, clutching his chest in agony as he felt our connection die.

"What did you do?" he whispered into the void.

"I set you free, Alpha," I said.

Then I ran into the storm.

He thought I was a defenseless human. He didn't know I was the lost daughter of the Royal White Wolf bloodline.

And when I returned, I wouldn't be kneeling.

Chapter 1

Seraphina POV:

The noise in my head was deafening.

It wasn't a sound you could block out. It was the Pack Link-the psychic hive-mind of the Dark Nebula. Usually, it was white noise: patrol logs, hunger pangs, petty drama.

Today, it was a riot.

Our Alpha has chosen!

Isabella is the one!

Finally, a warrior Luna!

I stood in front of the floor-to-ceiling mirror in the Moretti estate. My knuckles were white against the marble counter. Inside my ribcage, my wolf was thrashing, clawing at my lungs like she was trying to dig her way out of a grave.

She knew.

She knew Dante Moretti was ours.

I closed my eyes. The memory was ten years old but still drew blood. I was eight, caked in the ash of my family's home. Dante had pulled me from the rubble. He was eighteen, newly Alpha. When he lifted me, the smell hit me.

Pine and fresh blood.

The Mate Bond. Biology's cruelest joke.

For ten years, I lived in his shadow, waiting for my eighteenth birthday. Waiting for my wolf to surface so I could stand beside him.

But I was a dud. A late