Rejection Number Six
The taxi driver didn’t even wait to see if I made it through the gates. Just took my father’s money, gave me a look that said, "Good luck with that," and peeled out like he was fleeing a crime scene. Maybe he was. Maybe delivering the alpha’s disappointing daughter to her sixth potential rejection qualified as an accessory to emotional murder.
I stood there with my two duffel bags—everything I owned, again—and stared up at the iron gates of Lycan King’s estate. They were impressive in that deliberately intimidating way that screamed old money, and we’re better than you. Gothic spires, intricate metalwork, probably cost more than my father’s entire pack house.
“They’re expecting you,” my father had said, pressing cash into my hand for the taxi. “The King himself requested you. This is different, sweetheart. This is your chance.”
My chance. Right. Chance number six, if we were counting. And we were always counting.
I approached the guard station, where two Lycans in tactical gear were doing their best to look like statues. The pretty one—because there’s always a pretty one—glanced at me with the kind of casual dismissal I’d learned to recognize at age eighteen when my first fated mate took one look at me and said, “There must be some mistake.”
There wasn’t a mistake. There never was. The moon goddess just had a sick sense of humor.
“I’m here to see the King,” I said, keeping my voice level. Professional. Like I was here for a job interview and not to offer up my womb to save a dying species. “My name is—”
“We’ll need to verify,” Pretty Guard interrupted, already turning away. “Wait here.”
So, I waited.
The sky, which had been threatening rain since I left pack territory three hours ago, finally made good on its promise. It started as a drizzle—the kind that’s almost worse than a downpour because it’s just persistent enough to soak you slowly, methodically, like the universe is taking its time ruining your day.
I set my bags down and stood there, watching the guards make phone calls through the window of their heated station. They looked warm. Dry. Completely unconcerned with the she-wolf getting progressively wetter outside their door.
My wolf stirred restlessly beneath my skin. We should leave.
And go where? I asked her silently. Back to the pack where everyone calls me the milkman’s daughter because surely the alpha couldn’t have produced something this disappointing?
She didn’t have an answer for that. She never did.
The drizzle turned into proper rain. Cold, autumn rain that soaked through my jacket in minutes and turned my hair into a plastered mess against my skull. I could see the guards inside, still on their phones, occasionally glancing out at me like I was a package they’d forgotten to bring inside.
Twenty minutes passed. Then thirty.
I sat down on my duffel bag, because standing felt like giving them too much respect. The rain ran down my face, mixing with something that might have been tears if I had any left to cry. But you can only cry so many times before your body just... stops. Conserves resources. Saves the water for more important things, like staying alive.
Rejection number one: My first fated mate, when I was eighteen. He was beautiful, strong, everything the moon goddess supposedly chose for me. He took one look at me and rejected the bond on the spot. Said he’d rather die alone than be tied to me.
Rejection number two: A arranged match my father set up when I was twenty. The male was kind about it, at least. Said I seemed nice, but he just couldn’t. Couldn’t what? Couldn’t look at me. Couldn’t imagine touching me. Couldn’t bear the thought of our children inheriting my face.
Rejection number three: Another fated mate. Because apparently the moon goddess thought, “You know what would be hilarious? Let’s try this again.” He laughed when he saw me—actually laughed.
Rejections four and five blurred together now. Different faces, same disgust. Same apologies that weren’t really apologies. Same pitying looks from pack members who whispered about how tragic it was, how unfortunate, how someone should really do something about the alpha’s ugly daughter.
And now here I was, sitting in the rain outside the Lycan King’s estate, sent here by my father with taxi money and false hope, waiting for guards who couldn’t even be bothered to let me inside while they verified my existence.
Forty-five minutes.
I watched the rain create puddles around my bags. Watched it darken the stone pathway leading up to those massive gates. Watched it blur the Gothic spires into something almost beautiful, if you squinted and pretended you were somewhere else, someone else, anyone else.
And then, with the clarity that only comes from sitting in cold rain for three-quarters of an hour while being treated like an inconvenient delivery, I understood.
This was it. This was my life, distilled into one perfect moment.
I was the backup plan. The desperate measure. The “well, if nothing else works” option. My father had sent me here because the Lycan King needed breeders, and I was fertile even if I was ugly. They’d use me until someone better came along, someone prettier, someone worthy of being chosen rather than settled for. And then it would be rejection number six.
I’d spend however long being treated like livestock, poked and prodded, and assessed for my breeding potential, only to be discarded the moment a suitable alternative appeared. I’d be the practice round—the placeholder. The “at least we tried” footnote in Lycan King’s desperate attempt to save his bloodline.
Twenty-five years old, and I’d finally figured out what I was worth: whatever my womb could produce, minus the cost of looking at my face.
I’m done; I told my wolf.
For once, she agreed.
I stood up, grabbed my duffel bags, and turned my back on the iron gates. My legs were stiff from sitting in the cold, my clothes were soaked through, and I had exactly forty-three dollars left in my pocket after the taxi fare. I had no plan, no destination, no idea where I was going.
But I was going.
The guards didn’t even notice me leave. They were still on their phones, still making calls, still treating my arrival like a bureaucratic inconvenience rather than a person standing in the rain.
I walked.
The road leading away from the estate was long, winding through dense forest that probably looked picturesque when you weren’t dragging two duffel bags through it while soaking wet. My shoulders ached. My hands were numb from gripping the bag straps. The rain came and went in waves—downpour, drizzle, downpour again—like even the weather couldn’t commit to a consistent level of misery.
An hour passed—maybe more. Time felt strange when you were this tired, this wet, this done with everything.
But my mind was clear. Clearer than it had been in years.
I’d spent my entire adult life trying to be acceptable. Trying to make myself smaller, quieter, more palatable to males who would never want me anyway. I’d smiled through the rejections, apologized for existing, thanked people for their honesty when they told me I was too ugly to love.
I’d let my father trade me like livestock because what else was I supposed to do? Where else was I supposed to go?
But sitting in that rain, waiting for guards who didn’t care, heading toward a King who saw me as a last resort—that was the bottom. That was as low as it got. And from the bottom, the only direction left was up.
Or sideways. I wasn’t picky.
The sound of an approaching vehicle made me step to the side of the road. A sleek black SUV—because of course it was—pulled up beside me and the window rolled down.
The man inside was handsome in that effortless lycan way, all sharp features and natural authority. His eyes widened when he saw me: soaking wet, dragging luggage, looking like a drowned rat with a death wish.
“Miss—” he started, then seemed to recalibrate. “Are you the wolf from Crescent Moon pack? The alpha’s daughter?”
I stopped walking but didn’t fully turn to face him. “Depends on who’s asking.”
“I’m Marcus, the King’s Beta. There was a terrible mix-up at the gate—the guards didn’t receive the message about your arrival. The communication was delayed, and—”
“Stop.” I finally looked at him, and I must have looked as done as I felt because he actually stopped mid-sentence. “You’re going to stand there and tell me that palatial estate back there, with its Gothic spires and tactical-gear guards and obvious wealth, has a communications problem?”
He had the grace to look uncomfortable. “The message was delayed—”
“The message was delayed, or I was left in the rain for forty-five minutes because no one thought the ugly wolf was important enough to bring inside while you verified her existence?” I shifted my grip on my bags. “Because I’m pretty sure I know which one it is, and I’m pretty sure you do too.”
Marcus opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. “Please,” he finally said. “Let me drive you back. The King is expecting you. This was a genuine mistake—”
“No.” The word came out flat, final. “I’m done being someone’s mistake. I’m done being the backup plan. I’m done waiting in the rain for people who don’t give a shit if I exist.”
“Where will you go?”
Good question. I didn’t have an answer.
But I had my bags, my forty-three dollars, and for the first time in seven years, I had my dignity.
“Anywhere but here,” I said, and kept walking. Marcus drove alongside me for another fifty feet before he spoke again.
“Look,” he said, and his voice had lost that polished corporate edge. “If I don’t come back with you, the King will have me on night patrol for a year.”
I didn’t stop walking. “Not my problem.”
“No,” he agreed, still driving at my walking pace. “It’s not.”
I stopped. Looked at him through the rain. He wasn’t smiling, wasn’t trying to charm or manipulate me. He was just... honest. Tired, maybe. As done with this shit as I was, just in a different way.
My feet hurt. My clothes were soaked through to my skin. I had forty-three dollars and nowhere to go, and the heater in his SUV was probably on full blast.
“Fine,” I said, and got in the car.
