"Banishment!" came the voice of the elder. "She is to be banished!" Framed for a crime she didn't commit, orphaned from a young age, Aurelia Davids had grown used to being an outcast and didn't dare yearn for something else. But she found her mate and she began to think that everything would be fine, until her world came crashing down and he rejected her publicly. Would she be able to forge a new life for herself and move past the ruins of her former life? And will she have a second chance at love?
AURORA'S POV
It was cold. Very, very cold. The air seemed made of ice and every breath I took in was torture. The hard floor on which I sat was also cold and the coldness seeped through my flimsy clothing and into my skin but I could not move nor stand from my position and even if I could, there was no space to shift to. The cell that I had been thrown in was filled to the brim with young girls that were no more than my age. The only difference between me and them was that I had stopped crying ages ago. Tears hadn't stopped them from throwing me out of the only place I had ever known.
When my rejection and banishment had just taken place, I had cried and cried, thinking that perhaps my tears would move my former pack members and mate, but it had been for nothing. They had thrown me out and turned their backs on me.
I turned into a wanderer, a rogue with no roots. Days and nights had passed with me crying at the edge of our pack borders, hoping and praying they would take me back. Hoping and praying that they realize they had made a mistake and that I had been wrongly accused. My life at the pack hadn't been great, but it was the only life I had, the only life I had ever known.
It had taken me three days to realize that they didn't want me
anymore and that I would starve to death if I didn't leave there and find something to eat. I had wiped my tears and left, my survival now on the forefront of my mind.
Where would I go? Where would I stay?
I had survived and had been surviving until I stepped into the borders of the most vile, most unlawful pack in our history. The BloodMoon pack.
I had been chasing a squirrel, intent on catching it for breakfast that I didn't know when I stepped into their territory, and automatically I knew I had lost my freedom.
The pack members were well-known traffickers, selling most of their captives to breeders or whoever needed them. There were brutal and absolutely without mercy and their women were nothing more than their playthings. They had no say in anything other than the home and raising of their pups.
There was no chance of me ever getting away. I might as well be dead. There would be no one to mourn me anyways. So I would welcome death or whatever hellish world awaits me.
A WEEK AGO: FLASHBACK
I listened quietly as some of the girls in the pack spoke excitedly and gathered around Brie and gushed about how lucky she was that her longtime boyfriend, the Alpha's son, turned out to be her mate afterall.
Brie is the IT girl of the pack. You know, the one that everyone adores and tries to be friends with, so I think it's only natural that she gets the most eligible of the males in the pack irregardless of the fact that she totally despises me.
A whole lot of people don't like me in this pack but I think her hatred overshadows theirs. It wasn't hard to figure out why. Her uncle, the then beta, had been the man my mother rejected as mate. My mom had rejected him because he was a cruel man with no heart, and not only had she rejected him, she had gone ahead to fall in love with a rogue and had gotten pregnant with me. The Rogue, who was my father, had been exiled from his pack after being framed for killing his mother and brother. My father disappeared shortly after I was born.
Gone, they said, but my mother knew that the men she had rejected had something to do with her lover's disappearance. There was no evidence though, so there was nothing she could do. A year later, she died and I was left all alone. So yeah, my life had been bumpy from the beginning.
I tuned into the conversation around me when I realized that the girls had now moved closer to me and were now addressing me.
"What about you, Aurelia? " Brie said as she reached out and toyed with a lock of my golden brown hair. "Have you gotten your mate yet?"
"Um, no."
"Oh," she cooed in fake sympathy, "So sorry about that. Then again, we shouldn't hold our breaths or anything. Who knows if the moon goddess remembered to pair you with someone."
Lola, Brie's best friend, snickered. "She wouldn't know what to do with a mate, Brie. She would probably reject him."
"You're right, Lola," confirmed Brie. "Like mother, like daughter."
I hissed in a sharp breath of pain at the mention of my mother but I was used to this so I did not let my face betray my emotions. I kept it blank, devoid of any expression. Betraying my pain would only make them target me more.
"You made your point, Brie. Now move along, please."
The moment those words left my lips, I regretted it. I should have just kept quiet and let her run herself out, but now it was too late. She would begin ranting in earnest.
I watched as Brie opened her mouth, a scornful twist to it, but before a word could make it past her lips, a masculine voice rang out towards us, "What's going on?"
The scornful twist to Brie's mouth turned into a pout as she saw who it was that had appeared.
It was her mate, Gabriel. With the pout still on her face, she went towards him and clung at his chest.
"Baby," she began, "does she-" Brie pointed at me, "- have to be at the mating ceremony tomorrow?"
Tomorrow, a party was being thrown in celebration of the Alpha's son, Gabriel, finding his mate.
"Yes, baby," Gabriel replied. "Aurelia will be there. The whole pack is invited. Everyone is coming."
Out of everyone in the pack, Gabriel is one of the few who treated me decently in the pack and I couldn't help but wonder why the Moon Goddess paired him with such a bitch as a mate. If I were Gabriel, I would have prayed to be mateless than to have someone like Brie as a mate. The torture would have been to much for me to endure.
But who knew what the moon goddess had in store for me, I thought as I stood up to leave.
And that was where I went wrong. I shouldn't have wondered. I shouldn't have imagined.
Chapter 1 The Cold Embrace of Isolation
12/01/2025
Chapter 2 The Sting of Betrayal
15/01/2025
Chapter 3 Rejected and Banished
15/01/2025
Chapter 4 A Fight for Survival
15/01/2025
Chapter 5 A Clash of Alphas
15/01/2025
Chapter 6 Djurek's Claim
15/01/2025
Chapter 7 A Hidden Agenda
15/01/2025
Chapter 8 The Price of Freedom
15/01/2025
Chapter 9 Silence and Secrets
15/01/2025
Chapter 10 A Call for Help
15/01/2025
Chapter 11 A Spark of Hope
15/01/2025
Chapter 12 Whispers in the Dark
21/01/2025
Chapter 13 The Search Intensifies
21/01/2025
Chapter 14 Desperate Measures
22/01/2025
Chapter 15 The Hidden Diary
22/01/2025
Chapter 16 No Escape
23/01/2025
Chapter 17 The Shifting Sands
23/01/2025
Chapter 18 The Shadow of the Past
23/01/2025
Chapter 19 The Moon Goddess's Wrath
23/01/2025
Chapter 20 The Nightmare
25/01/2025
Chapter 21 The Scent of Blood
25/01/2025
Chapter 22 The Nun's Prophecy
25/01/2025
Chapter 23 The Last of its Kind
25/01/2025
Chapter 24 The White Wolf's Legacy
25/01/2025
Chapter 25 The Shaman Arrives
25/01/2025
Chapter 26 A Sacrifice for Immortality
27/01/2025
Chapter 27 The Hidden Passage
27/01/2025
Chapter 28 The Moon Temple's Call
04/02/2025
Chapter 29 The Gathering Storm
04/02/2025
Chapter 30 The Andals and the Nine Wolves
13/02/2025
Chapter 31 The Royal Physician
13/02/2025
Chapter 32 The Dark Skinned Luna
13/02/2025
Chapter 33 The Unknown Queen
13/02/2025
Chapter 34 The Familiar Enemy
13/02/2025
Chapter 35 Unraveling the Truth
16/02/2025
Chapter 36 The Lost Three Days
16/02/2025
Chapter 37 Stripped of Power
16/02/2025
Chapter 38 The Ancient Prophecy
16/02/2025
Chapter 39 Ransacked
16/02/2025