Elara's POV
I wake up drowning in pain.
My chest feels like someone carved out my heart with a dull knife. Every breath is agony. Every heartbeat sends fire through my veins. I try to scream, but nothing comes out except a broken wheeze.
"She's awake!" Ivy's face appears above me, tears streaming down her round cheeks. "Elara, please, stay with me. You have to stay with me!"
Where am I? The ceiling above me is cracked stone. The air smells like herbs and blood. The healing house. I'm in the healing house at the edge of the Border Settlements.
How did I get here?
Then the memories crash into me like a tidal wave.
The ceremony. The golden thread. Dante's disgust. The rejection.
"I reject you as my mate."
A sob tears from my throat. My hand flies to my chest, and I feel it—the rejection mark. Where the mate bond used to glow with golden light, there's now a black scar spreading across my skin like poison. It burns with cold fire, and I know what it means.
I'm dying.
"How long?" My voice sounds like gravel. "How long have I been unconscious?"
Ivy's face crumbles. "Two days. You've been unconscious for two days, and the healers say—" She chokes on the words. "They say most rejected mates don't survive a week."
Two days. I lost two days to darkness.
I try to sit up, but my body won't cooperate. Everything feels wrong. Hollow. Like the most important part of me was torn away and all that's left is a broken shell.
"My wolf," I whisper. "Ivy, I can't feel my wolf."
She's silent, and that silence tells me everything. My wolf is gone. Either dead or so broken she can't respond. Without my wolf, I'm not really alive. I'm just waiting to die.
"You need to eat something." Ivy tries to smile, but it wobbles. "I made your favorite soup. The one with—"
A door slams open.
Lord Marcus Ironfang fills the doorway, his scarred face twisted with contempt. Behind him stand two royal guards in their silver armor. Their expressions are cold, professional. They don't look at me like I'm a person. They look at me like I'm garbage they need to remove.
"Elara Moonwyn." Marcus's voice is sharp as broken glass. "By order of Alpha King Dante Silvercrest, you are hereby banished from the Moonveil Territories. You have until dawn to leave."
The words don't make sense at first. Then they do, and they're somehow worse than the rejection.
He's not just rejecting me as his mate. He's erasing me completely.
"She can barely stand!" Ivy jumps to her feet, her small body shaking with rage. "You can't throw her out like this. She'll die out there!"
"That's not our concern." Marcus's smile is cruel. "The Alpha King has decreed that the Moonwyn bloodline is no longer welcome here. She leaves, or we drag her out. Her choice."
My choice. As if I have any choices left.
I force myself to sit up, even though it feels like my chest is splitting open. The black mark burns hotter, spreading further across my skin. I can feel it killing me slowly, eating away at what's left of my life force.
"I'll go," I whisper.
"Elara, no—"
"I'll go," I say louder, looking at Ivy. "There's nothing left for me here anyway."
The truth of those words cuts deeper than any rejection. This place was never home. These people were never my family. They've hated me for eleven years, and now their Alpha King gave them permission to be rid of me permanently.
Marcus nods, satisfied. "Dawn. If you're still here, the guards will remove you by force."
He leaves, and the door slams behind him like a coffin closing.
Ivy helps me pack my few belongings into a small cloth bag. A spare dress. The wooden bracelet my mother made me before she died. A half-empty bottle of pain medicine. Everything I own in the world fits in one bag.
"Come with me," I beg Ivy as she walks me to the edge of the settlement. "Please. You're the only friend I have."
She's crying again, but she shakes her head. "I can't leave my grandmother. She's too sick to travel, and she's all I have left." She hugs me so tight it hurts. "But I'll never forget you, Elara. You're the strongest person I know."
I don't feel strong. I feel like I'm made of broken glass.
The sun is just starting to rise when I reach the border of the territories. Behind me, the settlement is waking up. Smoke rises from chimneys. Wolves start their morning routines. Life goes on like I was never there.
Ahead of me is the Forbidden Veilwood Forest.
The trees are black and twisted, their branches reaching toward the sky like claws. No one goes into the Veilwood. It's where rejected mates go to die, where ancient magic devours the broken-hearted. The stories say the forest is cursed, that it feeds on pain and despair.
Perfect. I have plenty of both.
I take one step toward the tree line, and something strange happens.
The rejection mark on my chest flares with heat. Not the cold burning from before—this is different. Warmer. Almost like... recognition?
I look back one last time at the only home I've ever known. At the people who never wanted me. At the Alpha King who destroyed me without a second thought.
"I hope you choke on your regret," I whisper to the wind.
Then I walk into the Veilwood.
The moment I cross into the shadow of the trees, the air changes. It feels alive, electric, like the forest is breathing. The black trees begin to glow with faint silver light. And deep in my chest, underneath the dying bond and the broken pieces of my heart, something stirs.
Something that's been sleeping.
Something that's been waiting.
The rejection mark burns brighter, and I hear a voice—not with my ears, but in my soul. It's ancient and powerful and it sounds like starlight given sound.
"Daughter of the cosmos," it whispers. "You have finally come home."
I freeze.
What did it just call me?
Before I can process the words, the ground beneath my feet begins to glow. Silver symbols light up the forest floor—old magic, powerful magic, magic that shouldn't exist anymore. They form a path leading deeper into the trees.
My dying body should tell me to stop. To lie down and let death take me peacefully.
But something else is happening. With each step I take on the glowing path, the rejection mark hurts less. The hollow feeling in my chest fills with something new. Something wild and ancient and impossibly strong.
I follow the path for what feels like hours. The trees grow denser, the magic grows stronger, and that voice keeps whispering words I almost understand.
Starborn. Cosmic daughter. The one who was hidden. The one who was sealed.
Finally, I reach a clearing.
In the center stands a temple made of white stone that glows like moonlight. It's ancient—older than anything I've ever seen. Covered in symbols that hurt to look at, symbols that seem to shift and change when I'm not staring directly at them.
At the heart of the temple is a crystal pillar wrapped in silver chains.
And the moment I see it, I know.
This is what's been calling me. This is what the rejection woke up.
I walk forward like I'm in a dream. My hand reaches out, and I touch the crystal.
The world explodes.
The silver chains shatter. The temple blazes with light so bright it should blind me. And power—raw, cosmic, infinite power—pours into my body like a flood.
The rejection mark on my chest burns away completely, replaced by something new. Something beautiful. A mark that glows with starlight, swirling patterns of constellations and cosmic fire.
I throw my head back and scream as memories that aren't mine flood my mind. Memories of the beginning of everything. Of cosmic beings who walked among the stars. Of the Starborn—children of the universe who created the Moon Goddess herself.
Of my bloodline.
My true bloodline.
And in the Royal Stronghold, hundreds of miles away, Alpha King Dante Silvercrest wakes up screaming.
His heart has stopped beating.
And it won't start again until mine allows it.