The Rejected Mate

I, Lilith Shaw, faithful and dedicated daughter of Elright Shaw and Talia Shaw, pledge myself before the feet of the council with virtuous and true intentions. As I prostrate myself before you in total, uncoerced submission, abiding to the law of the pack of the True Walkers, I vow to serve my mate and the elders that I will perform my duties without hesitation and virtuous intentions.

The lives of the packs members will always stand above my own. The life of my Alpha and my mate will always stand above my own. I will give my life without hesitation to protect our people and swear to serve my mate as a faithful, true wife with proper etiquette and manners befitting of a future Luna.

I promise to love my mate and husband with all my heart and soul, and will never succumb to selfish desires. I will forever and truly be devoted to my husband, my mate, my life partner. There will never be anyone else for me and I swear the only bond I will ever share is the one that I share with my mate.

I love him and will love him devotedly even after death...

I will always love him and only him, this is my Luna's vow

It’s amazing how such simple words could scar the mind and permanently haunt a person’s thoughts, even after nearly ten years since Lilith spoke those words.

Some days those words snuck up on her, lingering in her thoughts, and other days they consumed her to the point where she could barely focus on anything.

As a twenty-seven year old woman who preferred to pull her long, rich tempered chocolate brown hair into a messy bun, Lilith found hiding her emotions much easier considering she was mostly alone in the city of Yakima.

It hadn’t always been her home but considering the painful trauma and circumstances of her youth, this place had become home for her. It was a painful and difficult transition, finding her footing after losing nearly everything dear to her, but somehow she managed to get there.

There was blood, sweat, tears and every ounce of her soul poured into getting where she is today. Contrary to popular belief among her pack members, being a single young woman was far more challenging when you were all on your own. After growing up under the tutelage of the elders who proclaimed and educated the youth in the old ways of life, the modern world was far crueler than any punishment for disloyalty in the pack.

When Lilith was fifteen years old, she watched a woman, who was rumored to have broken the sacred vow to her mate, was cast out the pack after having her bond severed with her mate. She always proclaimed that she was innocent, that the claims were fabricated, but the judgement was swift and without hesitation. She had not even been allowed to defend herself, she was accused of her crimes and cast out within the same day.

Lilith promised herself that she would always be true to her word, and would rather die than break her promises she’d make.

But no matter how honest you were, nothing could protect you if you were accused, not even if you were the wife of the future Alpha and leader of the pack.

Lilith was once apart of an ancient and mysterious world where fiction became reality, where werewolves and shapeshifters were real. Where mythology became reality and the idea of turning into beasts upon the rise of the full move was real life. She was meant to be one too, but she had never transformed. She was nothing extraordinary among her pack, she was just an ordinary mortal, plain Jane brunet who would never be more than that.

Lilith let out a heavy sigh as she reached up and pressed her thumb and middle fingers to her temples and rubbed them gently. She could feel the oncoming headache that threatened her calm work environment, all because she thought about her past vow.

“Lilith, earth to Lilith.” An voice said, laking in enthusiasm spoke in a mocking tone drew Lilith out of her thoughts. She turned her head and faced a blonde haired woman frowning down at her. Her arms were crossed over her large breasts, barely held within the confines of her two sizes to small button-up peach blouse.

“Sorry Hayley.” Lilith apologized with a sincere voice as she reached up and massaged her temples, “I was a little distracted. What can I help you with?” Lilith said as she smiled a small genuine smile, well it felt genuine but Hayley Towels looked a few drinks short of being ridden like a horse.

Hayley huffed as she stood up, chewing her signature flavor of cherry and cola bubble gum, blowing a bubble and letting it pop like a 80s teenage girl in the twenty-first century as she looked at her finger nails. “Haynes wants to see the article on the bootleg alcohol seller markets arrest on his desk as well as the anonymous written submission article for page five.” Hayley’s blue eyes were filled with condescension; Lilith found that very annoying and it probably stemmed from the fact that she disliked this girl with a passion.

Lilith sighed as she leaned against her chair and let out a huff. “Let me go speak with him. I need at least another hour to finish editing them and applying them to the final layout.” Lilith said as she stood up, grabbing her tablet and heading off to her the office of the chief editor and boss of the Yakima Herald.

When push comes to shove, Scott Haynes could go from slaver driver to gentle giant in the blink of an eye. Lilith found it not just endearing but also very infuriating. The man certainly knew what he was doing to get the best out of his workers. Even though they had the paper online as well as physical papers, the paper itself was very successful as the content was actually not that bad.

Lilith’s personal favorite of course was page five. The anonymous submission page where writers of all age groups could submit work if they wanted. It’s how Lilith herself was offered a position at the Yakima Herald just two years ago. She was fresh out of University with her Bachelors in Creative Writing, something she only picked up after she was sent away from her pack.

Being mortal was considered a crime in a pack of pure-blood werewolves, and being the mate of the future leader of her pack, meant in the eyes of the pack elders, she was tainted filth. If she was unable to change, then it meant she would never bare pure-blood alpha children to continue the lineage of her husband’s family.

So she was rejected.

By her friends who once held her close and dear, laughing at the silliness of the toddlers of that waddled round the gardens chasing butterflies like she had in her naïve youth.

By her pack who threw her out her home and all she had ever know.

By her mate who had rejected their connection, the bond severed in the harshest of manners, a permanent scar marring the skin where her neck and shoulder met.

She still remembered the irony smell of her blood as it rolled down from her damaged skin after the mate mark was cut with a knife, a simple X permanently placed in her memory. She remembered the smell burning flesh when they burned her skin and severed the connection permanently.

She had been rejected by those she had held most dear and loved without being coerced, but wholeheartedly like the blood family she would never see again.

The pain was jarring and damaged her.

The love she once felt in her heart gave way to anguish and hate.

She made a new vow once she found her path.

A vow that if she ever saw that man who haunted her nightmares, she would tell him she hated him because of the pain he had caused her by rejecting her.

She hadn’t been given her chance to speak to even defend herself.

She didn’t even get to say good bye, to beg her husband to believe her.

He just accepted it and rejected their bond without hesitation.

Did that man ever truly love her at all? If he loved her, he would not have agreed to reject the bond so easily.

Lilith let out an exhausted breath as she walked to her boss’s office, fixing her knee length, black form fitting skirt, her low heels barely making a sound against the floor as she moved towards her destination.

She did not hesitate when she arrived at the door, knocking in a consistent series of four knocks before announcing her arrival as she had heard more than one voice behind the closed door. “Mr. Haynes, it’s Lilith.”

“Come in, Lilith.” Spoke the familiar timbre of Mr. Haynes and Lilith smiled softly to herself because he sounded in a relatively good mood.

She turned the door handle and entered the room, closing it behind her and approached the man seated at his desk. “Sorry for the delay Mr. Haynes I was struggling on editing the new layout you requested and I-”

“Please don’t worry about that. We will discuss it later.” Spoke the man who stood up to his full height, a full head taller than Lilith herself. His brown eyes were filled with a genuine form of excitement that Lilith had not seen before, black hair cropped and gelled back in a neat and tight suppressed form as his large hands buttoned up his suit jacket. “There is someone I’d like you to meet.” The man said with a big smile, his eyes directed to the seat next to Lilith who turned to see who was seated there.

She froze.

In the seat was a man.

A man with a familiar head of shoulder length black hair that she used to love running her fingers through.

A man whose figure was well proportioned and defined, the white button up shirt he was wearing left little to the imagination, not that she had to imagine it.

She remembered every inch of his skin like she had just seen it for the first time yesterday.

She remembered this man with haunting sapphire blue eyes that stared deep into her soul in this moment and all the times before when they once looked at her with warmth and love, and then disgust and hate.

She remembered this man who now stood up to his full height, eyes never leaving hers as he took a hesitant breath, whilst she felt like an anaconda had coiled around her throat, slowly suffocating her the longer she stood there.

“Hi.” He said in his deep, velvety voice that was richer than dark chocolate dancing on her tongue.

Lilith could not move. She could not speak as she stared at the eyes that haunted her dreams and her nightmares.

“Lilith, I’d like to introduce you to Ehren Sullivan. He’s just bought the Yakima Herald.”

The first thought that ran through Lilith’s mind was this:

Well fuck.