Chapter 3

Brena's vision blurred with tears as she stumbled out of the packhouse, the jeers and laughter of her former pack mates ringing in her ears. She could scarcely breathe through the all-consuming shame and devastation coursing through her.

Wolfless. A freak of nature, an embarrassment to the noble bloodline. Her entire life had been building towards this moment - the awakening of her predestined alpha wolf on her twentieth birthday. And it had all amounted to nothing. She was...nothing.

"Brena! Brena, wait!"

The familiar voice calling out to her was like a lifeline pulling her back from the brink. Ten's strong arms enveloped her trembling form, and she clung to him like a shipwrecked sailor grasping onto a life preserver in a raging storm.

"I've got you," Ten's gentle rumble soothed her ragged sobs as he stroked her hair. "Just breathe, B. I'm here."

She knew without looking that Damon would likely be hovering close by as well, offering protective solidarity. Her self-proclaimed brothers who had stuck by her through the darkest valley while her own parents shunned her humiliation.

A fresh wave of anguished weeping wracked Brena's body as memories of her father's expression of utter revulsion flashed through her mind. The man who had raised her to be a proud, perfect legacy to the Vadis alpha line could barely look at her now that she had failed so spectacularly.

"Spawn of a whore!" His enraged voice carried over the shocked gasps of the crowd as realization set in. "You shame me and sully our bloodline with your defect! Only the bastard child of an unfaithful bitch could be born so flawed and wolfless."

Brena trembled harder as Ten held her tighter, Damon's menacing growl unmistakable in her ears at her father's vicious slur towards her mother's honor. She had never seen her parents quarrel like this, such disgraceful accusations flung in front of their people.

"How dare you?" Her mother's impassioned voice broke through, thick with disbelief and hurt. "I have been nothing but devoted to you and our family!"

"Yet you birth me a whelp unfit to lead!" Her father's disdain dripped like acid. "Our great legacy dies with your unfaithfulness. I want that...that thing cast out!"

Brena flinched as his words cut her to the bone, deeper than any injury her wolf could sustain. Her shoulders shook with the force of her wracking sobs, shattering any lingering delusions of her worth. Her father was disowning her, exiling her in shame. What cruelty could be worse for a wolf than being discarded by their alpha leader and blood kin?

"Alpha Vadis!" Cicero, the elder shaman, tried to intervene with rational tones. "Be reasonable. While unfortunate, Brena may still awaken her wolf at a later junction. Many unmated females remain in purgatory until they find their path with their other half--"

"Silence!" Her father cut off the wizened wolf's pleas with a ferocious snarl. "This defect bears no markings of the Vadis line. She is an outcast, a filthy rogue from this moment forth!"

The finality of the declaration hit Brena like a death knell. Everything she had been working towards her entire life, stripped away in one fell swoop by the very man who drove her to succeed. She felt Ten's arms flex protectively around her as the crowd erupted in raucous murmurs, not a single voice raised in her defense.

"My decision is issue," her father's authoritarian tone brooked no argument as he turned away without a backwards glance at his disgrace of a daughter. "We have no use for a wolfless heir."

Hot shame coursed through Brena as the pack members she had known all her life turned their jeering mockery on her in full force once more. Ten and Damon stood as an anchoring barrier against the flood of derision, their hands on her arms the only thing keeping her upright.

"Come on," Ten murmured, voice strained with barely contained rage and sorrow. "Let's get you out of here." 

They began shepherding her away from the torrent of cruelty, but Brena couldn't resist one final glance back at the immense double doors to the den home she knew she would never be welcomed into again.

There stood her mother, luminous green fur glistening with a sheen of tears, the very picture of heartbreak and disbelief. Their eyes met for just a moment in shared devastation before the older woman turned away, form hunched in shame and sorrow. No fight left, no defense for her only daughter offered.

Brena crumpled against Ten fully then, forcing down the wail of anguish that threatened to rip from her throat. No mother's comfort, no soft melodic voice raised in her honor as the ancient birth songs demanded.

Just a hollow void of abandonment and loneliness where her identity, her pride should have blossomed into its full glory this day.

No wolf. 

No pack. 

No family.

Ten and Damon wordlessly led her farther from the jeering mob, back towards the outlying ranch houses and garages on the edge of the compound. Brena could only follow blindly, numb to anything but the burn of unshed tears and the searing loss of everything she held dear.

She was alone now, in every sense of the word that mattered. A disgrace, a freak in the eyes of the only life she had ever known.

So consumed in her anguish, Brena didn't even register where the two men were taking her until they arrived at a rustic log cabin sitting secluded in the tree line. She blinked dazedly as Ten ushered her inside, scrubbing at her puffy eyes while trying to get her bearings.

"What...what are we doing here?" she croaked out, voice sounding foreign and hollow to her own ears.

Damon's expression was uncharacteristically somber as he pulled a well-worn duffel bag from the hall closet, beginning to methodically fill it with various belongings.

"Grabbing your things," he replied gruffly. "You're not staying on the compound anymore after...well, after that shit show."

Panic lanced through Brena as the words registered. She was being kicked out, disowned from the only home she'd ever known. Cut off from any resources and ways to support herself.

"But...but where will I go?" she rasped out, hating how pitiful she sounded. Yet she couldn't seem to muster any of her usual spark and confidence, not after having the very core of her identity so brutally shattered.

Ten's strong hands cupped her face, his gentle green eyes awash with worry and care. "You'll come stay with me and Damon, at least for now. We'll get you set up somewhere safe and work this whole mess out."

Hot tears spilled over once more as gratitude broke through the numbness momentarily. Ten and Damon were all she had anymore, the only tether remaining now that she had been severed from her birthright so cruelly. The three of them were bound by circumstance, by that fateful betrayal two years prior that had shaken all their lives to the core.

Now the outsiders were being outcast together. 

Rogues.

Damon pressed the duffel into her hands, giving her shoulder a gentle, reassuring squeeze. "You got this, Bren-a-rina. No moping around and numbing out because you're not a furry bitch anymore, got it?"

His trademark roguish smirk was somehow both infuriating and comforting at the same time. Leave it to Damon to try and aggravate a reaction out of her, even when her whole world had collapsed.

"Thanks, jerk," she muttered, the briefest hint of her old spirit flickering in her chest. If those two assholes were sticking by her, maybe she could find the strength not to completely shatter.

She shouldered the duffel, full of the meager belongings allowed her now that she had been stripped of her status and home. Ten slipped a supportive arm around her waist as they headed for the front door.

"Let's blow this cesspool," Damon announced, pushing open the heavy oak exit with ease. "We've got a whole new path to forge now, just the three of us."

Harsh reality crashed over Brena once more as she emerged from the modest cabin and took in the grounds surrounding the Vector Hills compound with fresh, jaded eyes. No more could she linger on these lands, protected and provided for simply by virtue of her rank and bloodline.

She really was a rogue now, a nomad. 

Wolfless.

Pariah.

Squaring her shoulders, Brena turned away from the forest scape that had cradled her youth and followed Ten and Damon to their idling truck. She refused to look back, tried not to think of all the broken promises and lost dreams being left behind with each step.

A whole new life awaited her out there somewhere, harsh and uncertain as it was. And for better or worse, her self-appointed brothers were all the family she had left to see her through it.

No more Alpha heir Brena Vadis. Just...just Brena.

As the truck rumbled away from the compound, the jeers and laughter still ringing mockingly in her ears, she silently wondered just who that person really was anymore.

...

The glimmering moonlight slanted through the gauzy curtains, casting distorted shadows across the tangled sheets and bared bodies moving in unison. Ian felt like he was drowning in an ocean of bliss, the world reduced to nothing more than trembling limbs and ragged breaths intermingling.

Then the scent washed over him, thick and musky and so utterly intoxicating. A scent he would know anywhere, any place across realms. His heated gaze locked onto the flushed beauty beneath him, taking in her parted lips and hooded bedroom eyes as she arched shamelessly into his thrusts.

Mine.

The possessive thought blazed across his mind with the force of a celestial omen. This woman - this enchanting, devastating creature was his mate. The one he had been searching for his whole life across endless forays into the darkest corners of their world, all in hopes of stumbling across her.

Only to find her here of all places, in his own pack territory. Shedding her human glamor so carelessly before him in the dim recesses of Rawley's bar, not a single inkling to the power and sacred truth humming in every atom between them.

Brena. His fated mate. The wolfless rogue spun out by her own outcast family mere hours ago.

An ominous snarl rumbled through Ian's chest as his wolf side rose, scenting the blasphemy upon their mate of such abandonment and shame. She bore no stain nor dishonor - she was exalted, the light to guide their way. The other half of his very soul.

Wait...what was she doing at a seedy bar? Letting just any rogue male slake his lust? The very thought caused Ian's wolf to bristle with outrage.

"Look at me." His command came out low and rough, dripping dominance in a way that brooked no argument.

Brena's eyes fluttered open at his tone, a furrow creasing her brow in confusion for a brief moment before she gasped. Ian could only imagine what he looked like to her in this state - eyes no doubt blazing supernaturally bright, wolf battling for dominance with his human side in the wake of such a staggering revelation.

She opened her mouth, perhaps to cry out or question him, but Ian surged forward to capture her lips in a searing, claiming kiss. He delved deeper with his tongue, tasting every recess of her mouth as though committing her essence to memory. 

Because once joined, nothing would sever them again. Not pack, not bloodline status - nothing. She was his mate, his queen, his destiny.

Already the change was taking hold. Brena was writhing beneath him with renewed fervor, as though his wolf's aura was unlocking her own primal instincts and arousal. Her nails raked deliciously down his back as she rolled her hips in tandem with his increasingly feral thrusts.

Marking her, claiming her in these basest of ways. Letting the pleasure build to a transcendent fever pitch as Ian lost himself to the driving need to make this woman his in every sense of the word.

Mine. My mate. My queen.

With a harsh growl, he buried his face in the crook of Brena's neck, inhaling her intoxicating scent as their joining reached its electric crest. She cried out, back bowing utterly as he emptied himself into her welcoming depths.

For a long, drawn-out moment, they remained locked in that intimate aperture of pure bliss. Ian savoring the first, true union with his long-sought destiny. And when he at last raised his head to meet Brena's gaze once more, he was wholly unsurprised to see her eyes shining amber bright - awakened at last to the true power thrumming between them.

Alpha and Luna. 

King and Queen. 

His wolf preened, peace and triumph washing over the both of them in sublime waves.

Yes, his mate had been reborn at last. Found, cherished and adored above all as she was fated from the first spark of creation. 

And by the Gods, if the arrogant pup Vadis and his hapless pack dared try to shame or ostracize her again, Ian would raze them from existence before allowing another sliver of harm to befall his precious mate.

No longer wolfless, Brena was the key to it all. The true royal heir, the dawning new age itself. 

And she was his.