Moonlight pooled across the ceremonial grounds of the Silvermere Pack, turning the ancient stone circle into something stark and unforgiving. The night air carried a bite that slipped beneath the thin ceremonial fabric clinging to my skin, but the chill had nothing to do with the tremor running through me.
Every eye was on me.
I stood alone at the center of the circle, aware of the press of bodies beyond its boundary three hundred witnesses waiting for the same thing.
Waiting for me to become whole.
To my right, my father Alpha Cassian Veythorne watched in silence. His posture was rigid, carved from discipline and authority, his expression revealing nothing that might resemble encouragement.
There was no warmth in his gaze.
Only expectation.
And beneath it… something darker that I'd spent years trying not to name.
Disappointment.
On my left stood Darian Blackmere, the man who had been promised to me since childhood. Tall, composed, dressed in formal black that marked him unmistakably as the future Alpha of his own line.
My future mate.
Our union had always been presented as inevitable two powerful families bound together to secure alliances, strengthen territory, and reinforce bloodlines.
For eighteen years, I had shaped my life around that certainty.
Tonight was meant to seal it.
Our eyes met across the ring of carved stone, and for a fleeting second I searched for reassurance.
I didn't find it.
Around us, whispers began to stir.
"Why hasn't she shifted yet?"
"It should have happened already…"
"Oh Goddess… don't tell me"
A bead of sweat slid down my temple despite the cold.
My fingers curled inward, trembling as I reached inside myself toward the place where every wolf carried the presence of their beast.
Toward the place that should have been alive with instinct and power.
There was nothing there.
Just silence.
A hollow, endless quiet where my wolf should have been.
"Aurelia."
My father's voice cut cleanly through the murmuring crowd.
"We are waiting."
"I know," I whispered, though the words barely left my lips. "I'm trying."
His jaw tightened.
"Then try harder."
I clenched my fists until my nails bit into my palms, welcoming the sting of pain as something tangible something I could use to anchor myself. I reached again, deeper this time, searching desperately for any flicker of connection.
Any sign of the wolf that had defined my entire existence before I'd even taken my first breath.
Please, I begged silently. Please just be there.
Nothing answered.
Nothing stirred.
"She should have shifted years ago," someone muttered from the crowd.
"She did," another voice replied quietly. "On her sixteenth birthday. A grey wolf strong, fast…"
Everything I was supposed to be.
"Enough."
Darian's voice carried across the clearing, stilling the whispers instantly.
He stepped forward, boots striking softly against the stone as he approached the edge of the circle.
But he didn't cross it.
He didn't come to stand beside me as a mate should.
Instead, he stopped at the boundary line, his gaze settling on me with a detached scrutiny that made my chest tighten.
As if he were looking at something damaged beyond repair.
"Darian?" My voice fractured around his name.
For the briefest moment, I thought I saw hesitation in his amber eyes.
Regret.
Then it vanished.
His expression cooled into something distant. Resolute.
"I, Darian Blackmere," he announced, his voice clear and formal, "heir to the Blackmere line and future Alpha of my pack, do hereby dissolve my betrothal to Aurelia Veythorne."
The world seemed to tilt beneath my feet.
A sharp intake of breath rippled through the gathered wolves.
"I will not bind my future," he continued, each word measured, "nor the future of my people, to weakness."
The words struck harder than any blade.
"I will not tie my pack's destiny to a wolf who cannot even claim her own beast."
Weakness.
The term echoed inside my skull, louder than the shocked murmurs rising from the crowd.
I'd heard it before in passing comments, in hushed conversations when they thought I wasn't close enough to listen.
Excuses for my delayed development.
Reassurances that I was simply late to awaken.
I had believed them.
Believed that when this night came, everything would finally fall into place.
That I would stand before them and prove I wasn't the disappointment they feared I might be.
Now, beneath the mocking glow of the full moon, the truth stood bare.
I wasn't late.
I was broken.
"Darian, wait"
I took a step toward him, but he was already turning away.
"The betrothal is dissolved," he declared to the assembly. "Let it be witnessed."
"Witnessed," the Elders echoed in unison.
Just like that.
Eighteen years of preparation of lessons and expectations gone in a single breath.
I searched the crowd for my father.
For anything that might resemble defense.
Support.
Acknowledgment of the humiliation burning through me.
He didn't look at me.
"The ceremony will proceed," Elder Corvin announced, his voice ringing across the clearing with ritual precision.
The crowd fell silent again, though their attention had shifted from anticipation to something far less kind.
Pity.
Disgust.
Barely concealed amusement.
My younger sister, Mira, stood beside our mother at the front of the gathering, her mouth pressed thin as though fighting a smile.
"Begin the shift, Aurelia," Elder Corvin commanded.
I closed my eyes.
Reached again for that empty place within me the place that should have pulsed with instinct, with life, with the wild presence of my wolf waiting to be unleashed.
Every lesson I'd ever endured came rushing back.
Feel the pull of the moon.
Let the change take you.
Let the beast rise.
I dug deeper.
Called louder.
Searched harder.
Nothing answered.
Minutes dragged by in suffocating stillness.
Five.
Ten.
The whispers returned, growing louder with every passing second.
"The Veythorne heir can't shift…"
"Defective…"
"All that arrogance, and she's not even an Omega…"
"Not even that. She's nothing."
My eyes snapped open.
The faces encircling me blurred together some sympathetic, most openly mocking.
Cold judgment radiated from all sides.
"There's no warmth there either," someone murmured.
"Just emptiness."
"Aurelia Veythorne has failed to demonstrate her wolf form," Elder Corvin finally declared, his tone devoid of sympathy. "As such, she cannot be recognized as a full member of the Silvermere Pack."
The words closed around me like iron bars.
The stone circle felt smaller now.
Confining.
I stood at its center a spectacle for them all to witness.
Alone. Rejected. Broken.