Chapter 1

• Raven's POV:
• "You honestly think, I, Kalen Blackmane, would take you as my mate? Is the Moon Goddess playing a sick joke on me?" he growled, his eyes shifting as I could tell he was battling his inner wolf.
• "I...I am sorry, I didn't—" I stammered, cowering under his intense gaze.
• "Oh, shut up, omega. How can I, the future Alpha of this pack, be mated to an omega like you? Worse, a half-breed who can't even shift?" His words cut deep as I sat in the corner, shoulders shaking, trying to hold back the tears threatening to spill.
• "Stand up," he commanded, his alpha tone compelling me to obey, even unwillingly. As an omega, those of alpha blood made us cower and submit. I quickly stood up, keeping a respectful distance.
• Kalen took a step back, his nose wrinkling in disgust. "You stink. When was the last time you even showered?" He spat the words like venom. How could I not reek when I woke at 4 am every day, worked like a slave in this pack house, and went to bed at 11 pm? It was summertime, for the Moon Goddess's sake—of course, I would sweat from such relentless labor under the unforgiving heat. But I knew better than to rebut this future alpha and held my tongue.
• "I, Kalen Blackmane, future alpha of the Novilian Pack, reject you, Raven Wildheart, as my mate and future luna." There, he said the words I knew were coming, the same words I had heard twice before. Oh yes, the Moon Goddess had been playing a sick joke on me ever since I turned 18, giving me mate after mate, only for Kalen to be the third rejection. They all rejected me because I was a weak half-breed who couldn't shift.
• "Say it," he growled, jolting me back from my thoughts.
• "I, Raven Wildheart, accept your rejection," I whispered, the pain searing through my heart like a hot blade. I had heard stories of how excruciating the pain was when rejected by one with alpha blood, but now I knew they were telling the truth. A searing agony ripped through my chest, as if someone had plunged a white-hot dagger into my heart and twisted it viciously. Every nerve ending felt like it was being set ablaze, the fiery torment spreading through my veins. I gasped for air, clutching my chest as waves of anguish crashed over me, threatening to drown me in a sea of torment.
• I could tell he was also in pain from breaking our mate bond, though not as severely as me. Breaking a mate bond was no easy feat, but these men had been doing it to me so easily. But hey, I didn't blame them—who would want me?
• Kalen stormed out of the storeroom, and as soon as he left, I fell to my knees, clutching my chest in agony, the searing pain refusing to subside. Tears streamed down my face as I curled into a ball on the cold, hard floor, my body wracked with sobs. How much more rejection could I endure before I shattered completely?
• I don't know how long I laid there, curled up on that cold, hard floor, body wracked with sobs. It could've been minutes or hours—the agony was so all-consuming that time ceased to have any meaning. This brutal rejection was just the latest in a long line of suffering I'd endured in my cursed life.
• My mother, Zahara Wildheart, was an omega who had dared to love a human man—my father, Ezra Ash, a skilled hunter. Their unconventional union had caused quite the scandal in our pack, the Novilian wolves, but my parents didn't care. They had me, and we were a happy little family, my father's human nature balancing out my mother's calmer omega wolf.
• But on my 18th birthday, the pivotal day I was supposed to undergo my first shift into a wolf...nothing happened. We stayed up all night, my parents trying in vain to coax out my wolf, to trigger that elusive first transformation. But no matter what we tried, I remained stubbornly human, a cruel reality that dawned on us with the rising sun.
• My mother held me as I sobbed, promising it didn't matter, that I was her precious daughter no matter what. My father stroked my hair, his warm, earthy scent enveloping me as he said we'd figure this out together. United, they vowed to stand by me, to protect me from those who would surely judge me as less for being the half-breed who couldn't shift.
• If only we'd known then just how fleeting that promise would be.
• That very night, rogue wolves—savage, feral ones with no pack—attacked our home. My father fought valiantly with his crossbow and blades, but how could a mere human hope to fend off monsters? I still have nightmares about the snarls, the snapping jaws, his anguished cries as they tore him apart before my eyes.
• My mother shifted with a terrifying roar, her deep auburn fur glistening in the moonlight as she threw herself at the rogues. I watched in horror as her blood spilled, staining her beautiful coat, but she kept fighting to allow me to escape. With her dying breaths, she screamed for me to run, to save myself.
• So I ran. I ran until my legs gave out, collapsing in the forest just as the sun began to peek over the horizon. When I awoke, I was surrounded by Novilian pack guards who had tracked the rogue scent. They brought me, broken and sobbing, back to the pack lands where Alpha Carter Blackmane took me in, his gruff words saying it was the honorable thing to do.
• But the "mercy" of giving me a home again in the pack was a cruel lie. Once there, I was treated as an outcast, a pitiful half-breed who had been too weak to manifest her wolf, too pathetic to save my own parents. The whispers, the mocking looks, the shoves when no one was watching—it never ended.
• For two years, I endured it all. The backbreaking labor them deemed fit for someone as low as me—cooking, cleaning, tending to their needs from sunrise to sunset. The unrelenting misery of being an omega with no wolf, a non-entity unworthy of being treated as anything more than vermin underfoot.
• Enough. I had endured enough suffering in my two decades of life. Scrambling to my feet, I didn't even try holding back the tears as I fled the storeroom, fled the mocking jeers and glares of the other wolves. Let them laugh—this would be the last time they ever saw me.
• I burst into the small room I'd been allocated and grabbed the tattered rucksack, flinging in the few meager possessions I owned—some clothes, a couple of precious mementos from my parents, and most importantly, the documents proving my human identity, my birth certificate and social security information.
• My hands shook as I quickly scribbled a note to Alpha Blackmane:
• "I quit. I'm leaving the pack. Don't try to find me—from this day on, I'll live among the humans as one of them. I am officially a rogue wolf, free from your judgment and cruelty."
• Slinging the rucksack over my shoulder, I cast one last glance around the cramped, dingy space that had been my whole world for far too long. Then, without a shred of regret, I turned and strode out, head held high.
• I marched through the Novilian pack village, drawing confused looks but no confrontation—even the cockiest of wolves wouldn't dare challenge a rogue, no matter how nonthreatening they might think me. My heart hammered in my chest, but I kept going, not allowing myself to pause or look back.
• Finally, I reached the tree line cloaking the eastern border of the territory. The boundary where Blackmane laws no longer applied. Drawing a deep, resolute breath, I stepped across that invisible line, leaving the world of my birth behind.
• I didn't stop walking until I'd made it halfway through the forest separating the pack lands from the nearest human town. Only then did I pause, sinking down to sit on a fallen log as the weight of what I'd done finally hit me.
• I was alone now. Utterly alone in the world, with no alpha's protection, no family, no home. Just me, a half-human girl with frail human limitations in a supernatural world of powerful wolves.
• But I was also free—free from the persecution, the daily torment of being seen as a defective mistake. Pulling my knees to my chest, I let the tears flow again, this time not from anguish but from the uplifting realization that I would choose my own path now.
• Resting my forehead on my knees, I whispered fiercely, "I have had enough, Goddess. I won't be coming back, not ever. I'll find my own way, with or without the wolf inside me."