I Rejected My Fated Alpha, Reborn Queen

Forty degrees below zero in the Icebound Forest. The wind howled, hurling shards of ice that sliced at her cheeks like razor blades.

Eira lay crumpled in a snow pit. Her left chest was hollow—where her wolf core should have rested, nothing remained but a ragged, bleeding crater. The blood oozing from the wound had frozen into dark red icicles before it could even seep into the snow.

Pain.

It was no superficial ache, but a torment that lanced through her veins, straight into the very core of her skull. Even breathing was a cruel luxury; every inhale felt like swallowing a mouthful of shattered glass. The bones of her left wrist jutted at a grotesque, broken angle—crushed half an hour prior by the strongest Alpha on the continent, Kaelen, the Black Rock Wolf King.

“How tragic, my dearest sister.”

The crunch of leather boots on fractured ice stopped right in front of her.

A pair of exquisitely crafted black leather boots came into view, the vamps stitched with the golden Soulfire sigil of Black Rock royalty. Her gaze lifted slowly, settling on Lila’s perfectly made-up face. She was wrapped in an extravagant fire fox fur cloak, and beneath it, she wore the black-and-gold coronation gown of the Black Rock Queen.

In this frozen wasteland where even the fiercest beasts lay dormant, Lila looked every inch the victor.

Eira struggled to move her eyes, her lashes crusted with frost, her vision already blurring at the edges.

“Don’t look at me like that.” Lila stared down at her, a sharp, sneering laugh bubbling in her throat. “Did you truly think Kaelen threw you into this forest to reflect? He gave the order himself—cripple your wolf core, leave you here to rot.”

Eira bit down so hard on her lower lip that her teeth chattered, the sharp, metallic tang of blood flooding her mouth.

“Why…?” The words tore from her throat, broken and ragged.

Lila knelt, her scarlet-painted fingers curling around Eira’s frozen jaw, forcing her head up to meet her gaze.

“Because you’ve always been in my way.” She leaned in, her voice dropping to a venomous whisper, thick with unbridled triumph. “Your mother stole my father’s heart, and you stole Kaelen’s fated mate bond. Why should every good thing fall to you and her? Just because of that ridiculous Moon Blood in your veins?”

She let go, snatching a silk handkerchief to wipe her fingertips with open disgust.

“But it’s all over now. You’ve taken the fall for Princess Eve’s assassination perfectly—the whole continent knows you as the jealous she-wolf who killed the Black Rock princess. Tomorrow, I marry Kaelen. And you…”

Lila stood, dropping the soiled handkerchief directly onto Eira’s face.

“You’ll stay here, quiet and still, and be the beasts’ evening meal.”

A biting gale howled, driving snow and ice down the collar of Eira’s tattered clothes. She watched, helpless, as Lila turned and strode away, flanked by Black Rock royal guards.

The unforgiving cold and searing pain finally snuffed out the last flicker of life in her broken body. As her vision faded to endless black, her pitiful, wasted life flashed before her eyes.

After her mother’s death, she’d been a nobody, a ward in her uncle’s home, bullied and tormented by her stepmother and Lila. She’d thought her fated mate bond would be her salvation, throwing herself at Kaelen like a moth to a flame—only to have her wolf core ripped out, and her broken body discarded in this frozen hell.

If I could do it all again.

If I could just start over.

With the last of her strength, Eira let out a feral, dying curse, her voice raw and cracking: “Lila… Kaelen… If there is a next life, I will make you pay a hundredfold!”

Darkness swallowed her whole.

…

“Gasp—!”

Eira shot upright, gasping for ragged breaths. There was no searing pain of glass in her lungs, only warm air scented with burning charcoal filling her chest.

She stared around her, dazed and disoriented.

No Icebound Forest. No blizzard. Only the familiar rickety wooden bed, yellowed linen sheets, and a small iron stove glowing softly in the corner, radiating gentle heat.

This was her tiny, dim bedroom in her uncle’s estate, in the Silver Moon Kingdom.

Eira looked down at her left wrist. The skin was smooth and unbroken, no trace of the horrific fracture. She pressed a trembling hand to her left chest. A steady, strong heartbeat thrummed beneath her palm, her wolf core intact and whole—faint, but undeniably there.

She stumbled out of bed, bare feet slapping against the wooden floor, and threw herself at the fogged bronze mirror hanging on the wall.

A young face stared back at her. No older than seventeen, with messy silver-grey curls spilling over her shoulders, and ice-blue eyes still blazing with the embers of unquenched rage. Most striking of all was the faint beauty mark at the corner of her left eye, glinting with a sharp, untamed ferocity in the morning light.

The meek, cowed orphan was gone.

Eira curled her fingers tight around her unbroken left wrist. It was a nervous tic she knew all too well—she’d clutched this same wrist the moment Kaelen had crushed it in her past life.

She was reborn.

Eira closed her eyes, sorting through the memories flooding her mind. The parchment calendar on the wall marked the date clearly.

Today was the day before her 18th coming-of-age ceremony.

The countdown to the start of her tragedy. Tomorrow, at the grand ceremony, Lila would convince her to stand before the entire continent and confess her love to Kaelen with that sappy, humiliating speech. And Kaelen would reject her publicly, turning her into the laughingstock of the entire werewolf world.

Her heart thundered in her chest—not with fear, but with the sharp, thrilling rush of the hunt.

She released her wrist, stepped to the washbasin, and splashed cold well water over her face. Droplets dripped from her chin into the wooden basin, each tap a tick of the clock counting down to her reckoning.

“This time, I will not hand my fate over to anyone.” She stared at her reflection in the water, the words a quiet, unbreakable vow.

At that moment, soft footsteps sounded outside her door.

Then, two gentle, saccharine knocks.

“Sister? Are you awake?”

Lila’s sickly sweet voice drifted through the wooden door, thick with feigned warmth.

In her past life, it had been this very door, this very voice, that had pushed her into the abyss.

Eira grabbed a linen towel and dried her face, tossing it carelessly onto the rack. She straightened the collar of her faded nightgown, and stepped to the door. She did not open it at once, only stood still for a heartbeat, listening to the quiet breathing on the other side.

“I’m coming.” Her voice was calm, steady, unreadable.

As the doorknob turned, a reckoning that spanned life and death, had officially begun.