"You are not worthy to stand beside an Alpha King. I, Dante Silvercrest, reject you as my mate and Luna."

The words echo across the sacred Moon Claiming ceremony as every wolf in the kingdom watches Elara Moonwyn—daughter of disgraced traitors—reach for a bond that will never be hers.
Publicly humiliated, stripped of her dignity, Elara flees into the one place no wolf dares to enter: the Forbidden Veilwood, where rejected mates go to die and ancient magic devours the broken-hearted.

But Elara doesn't die.

She awakens something older than the Moon Goddess herself—a bloodline sealed away because it was too powerful, too dangerous, too divine. The mark on her skin is no longer the rejected mate brand. It's the Starborn Sigil, proof that she descends from the first children of the cosmos, the ones who created the Moon Goddess and the werewolf species.

And the moment her seal breaks, Alpha King Dante begins to die.

Deadly visions plague him. His heart stops whenever hers races. His wolf howls in agony, claiming its mate was never truly rejected—the bond merely transformed into something darker, a cosmic punishment for scorning what the universe itself blessed.

But when Dante comes crawling back, desperate and dying, Elara has already caught the eye of another: Alpha Kieran Nightshade, the mysterious Wolf King of the North, who kneels before her and calls her what Dante never did—Queen.

Now Dante must watch the woman he rejected become the most powerful being in their world while he suffers the consequences of breaking a bond the universe never meant to be broken.
The prophecy was always clear: When the Moon is rejected, the Stars will claim their daughter back, and all wolves will kneel or burn.

Elara Moonwyn was never just a rejected mate.
She was always the end—and the beginning.

For hours after the canyon attack, the bond pulsed with Elara's exhaustion and pain. I felt every ache in her body, every moment of fear as she fought for her life. Then suddenly—nothing. Just empty, terrifying silence where her presence used to be.


Either she's learned to block me out completely, or she's dead.


My heart clenches violently at the second possibility. No—if she were dead, I'd be dead too. The curse binds us that completely, that absolutely. Her death would drag me into darkness within seconds.


But the silence is almost worse than the pain. At least when I felt her suffering, I knew she was alive.


"Alpha King." Lord Marcus enters my chamber without bothering to knock, his expression carefully neutral in that way that always sets my teeth on edge. "The scouts have returned with news. The Northern King has crossed into our territory. He's traveling with a woman matching Elara Moonwyn's description."


Chapter 8 - The Northern King Arrives