After My Mate Humiliated Me, the Lycan Prince Chose Me

I found them at 9:47 p.m., three hours before the Come of Age Ceremony would begin.

The back corridor of the pack house was empty. My footsteps made no sound on the stone floor. I'd followed Dallas's scent—cedar and smoke, the smell I'd memorized across two years of believing it was mine to follow—and it led me here, to a door left cracked open like an invitation no one meant to send.

I stopped two feet from the threshold. Through the gap I saw them.

Dallas had Arielle pressed against the wall, her legs wrapped around his waist, her fingers tangled in his hair. They were laughing. Not the quiet, stolen kind of laughter. The loud, careless kind that comes from people who know no one is listening.

"She actually believes it," Dallas said, his voice rough with amusement. He pulled back just enough to look at Arielle's face. "The scentless little Omega. She thinks I'm going to mark her tomorrow."

Arielle's laugh was bright and sharp. "Of course she does. She's too wolfsbane-dulled to smell us on each other. Poor thing probably thinks you're saving yourself for her."

"Saving myself." Dallas grinned, leaning in to kiss her throat. "For an Omega who can't even shift. Who keeps herself so suppressed she might as well be human."

"You keep her around to make me look good," Arielle murmured, tipping her head back. "She's so grateful for every scrap of attention you throw her. It's almost sweet."

"It's pathetic," Dallas corrected. "But useful. Every pack needs an Omega to remind the rest of us what we're not."

I pressed my thumbnail into my opposite wrist. Hard. The skin went white under the pressure. I kept pressing until I felt the edge of bone.

I didn't make a sound. I turned and walked back down the corridor, my steps as silent as they'd been coming in. The half-formed bond on my neck—the mark that had appeared three months ago, faint and cool, the mark I'd told myself was the beginning of something real—throbbed with a cold, dull ache that spread down into my chest.

I made it to my quarters before my knees gave out.

The room was small. Omega housing always was. A bed, a chair, a narrow window that looked out onto the training grounds. I sat on the floor with my back against the door and stared at the opposite wall.

Arielle had been my best friend. Once. In another pack, in another life, before everything went wrong. She'd followed me here to Silverfang. She'd told me it was loyalty. I'd believed her.

Dallas had been my future. The Alpha-heir who smiled at me in the corridors, who asked about my day, who let his hand linger on my shoulder just long enough to make me think it meant something. The mark on my neck had appeared after a night we'd spent talking under the stars—he'd touched my throat, his fingers warm, and I'd felt the bond begin to form. Faint. Fragile. Mine.

I'd been so sure.

I pulled the small glass vial from my pocket. Wolfsbane tincture. I took it every morning, three drops under the tongue, to keep my wolf dormant and my scent suppressed. It was the only way I knew to survive here. The only way to be small enough that no one noticed. No one hurt.

I unscrewed the cap and stared at the dark liquid inside.

For a long moment I thought about taking the whole vial. Just tipping it back and letting it burn through me until there was nothing left to feel.

Then I thought about the voice.

Shadow.

I didn't know his real name. I didn't know his face. I only knew the shielded mind-link channel that had opened on my worst nights—the nights the wolfsbane felt like the only solution that made sense—and the voice that came through it. Warm. Steady. Telling me to hold on. Telling me I wasn't alone.

I'd never traced it. I'd never asked who he was. I only knew he'd kept me alive.

I screwed the cap back on and put the vial away.

The ceremony was tomorrow night. The entire pack would be there. Dallas would stand on the platform in front of everyone—the Alpha-heir in his formal role—and I would stand in the Omega section along the wall, and he would look at me and say the words I'd been waiting two years to hear.

Except now I knew what words were coming.

I pressed my thumbnail into my wrist again. The ache in my neck spread deeper, colder, like something inside me was already starting to break.

I didn't sleep that night.

When dawn came I dressed in the pale gray dress Omegas wore to ceremonies. I braided my hair. I took my three drops of wolfsbane and felt my wolf—whatever was left of her—go quiet and still.

Then I walked to the great hall and took my place along the wall with the other Omegas, and I waited for Dallas Harrison to destroy me in front of everyone I knew.

He arrived at exactly eight o'clock. The hall was full. Ranked wolves in formal rows. Visiting dignitaries in the upper gallery. I didn't look at them. I looked at Dallas.

He stepped onto the ceremonial platform. The Alpha's son. The wolf everyone said would be the strongest leader Silverfang had seen in generations. He wore the formal black of the Alpha line, and the mark of his rank gleamed at his throat.

He looked across the hall. His eyes found mine.

I felt the bond on my neck pulse once. Cold. Hollow.

Dallas spoke in the voice that carried to every corner of the room.

"I, Dallas Harrison, Alpha-heir of Silverfang, reject you, Clementine Grant, as my mate."

The bond didn't just break.

It ripped.

I felt it tear through my chest like silver through flesh—burning and freezing at the same time, a pain so complete it had no edges. My knees hit the stone floor. I couldn't breathe. Couldn't see. The mark on my neck went ice-cold, then empty, like a door closing in an abandoned room.

The hall was silent.

I looked up through the blur of pain and saw Arielle standing behind Dallas, her hand resting on his arm, her face arranged into perfect, visible sympathy.

And then I felt something else.

Something deep inside me—something I'd buried under years of wolfsbane and fear and the belief that being small was the only way to survive—stirred.

My wolf opened her eyes.

And she was furious.