Rejected by My Alpha

The night of the Blood Moon Solstice was supposed to be the moment Serena Vance’s life finally began.

High in the frozen pine forests of the Montana Rockies, the Blood Moon Pack’s sacred stone amphitheater was illuminated by towering bonfires of white cedar and pitch pine. The crimson full moon hung heavy in the midnight sky, casting a bloody, supernatural luminescence across five hundred gathered werewolves. For an unmated wolf turning twenty, the solstice was sacred. It was the night the Moon Goddess Selene revealed the invisible, celestial threads of the mate bond.

Serena stood at the foot of the raised stone dais, her fingers clutching the hem of her simple, faded cotton dress.

At twenty, Serena was the lowest-ranked member of the Blood Moon Pack. After her parents—humble border scouts—had died in a rogue border raid twelve years ago, the pack council had stripped her of her family's land and relegated her to the status of a kitchen omega. She spent her days scrubbing flagstones, gutting elk, and enduring the cruel taunts of the pack's highborn wolves. Yet she was stunningly beautiful in a way that provoked the envy of the council's daughters: silken platinum-blonde hair that cascaded in waves to her waist, luminous violet-blue eyes fringed with thick dark lashes, and skin as smooth and pale as freshly fallen snow.

A sudden, violent vibration struck Serena’s chest like a silver spear.

Her inner wolf, normally quiet and timid, threw back her head and howled. The air in the amphitheater suddenly exploded with the intoxicating scents of crushed pine needles, dark leather, and woodsmoke. A golden, electric cord materialized in her soul, pulling her gaze toward the top of the dais.