Alpha Sebestian REJECT ME

Penelope's pov

I stood motionless, my eyes locked on the shattered fragments of the mirror before me. The cracks webbed out like veins across its dusty surface, distorting my reflection into broken pieces, just like me. Around me, the damp, musty air of the cellar clung to my skin. Mold crept along the stone walls, and the faint stench of rot never truly faded, no matter how many times I tried to scrub it away.

This place, this dark, miserable hole in the ground, wasn't just my room. It was my prison. A constant reminder that I didn't belong.

They called it the servant quarters, but even that would have been a blessing. I had seen where the servants slept; small but decent rooms with actual beds and sunlight. What I had was a dungeon, a place no child, let alone the Alpha's daughter, should ever be forced to live in.

Except, I wasn't really his daughter, not in the way it mattered.

I had been adopted by Alpha Atlas, the proud, iron-hearted leader of the Crimson Fang Pack after I was discovered abandoned near the Moon-Crown Pack's borders, swaddled in a soaked blanket beside a stream. The one who found me said I wasn't crying. Just... staring silently at it, like I already knew I wasn't meant to be wanted.

They said all sorts of things even till date.

"Only a cursed child is left behind."

"She's not one of us. She's a bad omen."

"She'll bring ruin to this pack."

They never saw me as a helpless orphan in need of love. They saw me as a threat, a stain. A dark mark on the pack's otherwise spotless pride.

And so they shoved me into this cellar where I've grown up. They clothed me in rags and handed me chores.

Alpha Atlas, the man who was supposed to be my father, cared not a bit about me.

Every time he looked at me, I saw the pure disgust in his eyes, like I was something he had stepped in. An inconvenience and error. I often wondered why he even took me in. Maybe guilt? A sense of duty to the Moon Goddess? Or was it all just to parade his so-called "kindness" before the pack while making my life hell?

And then there was Amira, Alpha Atlas biological daughter.

My supposed "sister."

She was everything I wasn't; golden, adored and powerful. Her wolf had awakened at sixteen. A magnificent silver beast that everyone praised. The pride of our pack. Of course, she made sure to remind me every chance she got that I was beneath her and that I didn't even deserve to breathe the same air as her.

I was seventeen. Seventeen and still couldn't shift. Not even a hint of fur or a single whisper from the wolf inside me. It was as if she didn't exist. As if I didn't exist.

The other girls my age boasted about their first transformations, about how freeing it was to run through the woods under the moonlight. I had never run, howled or felt the pull of the pack bond in my bones.

And Amira reveled in that. She mocked me and laughed at me. Called me a "half-breed mutt." She wanted to see me break, to fall so she could watch and smile. To her, I was a game and target, but I'm tired of being hunted.

Soon, In two weeks, I'll turn eighteen.

That's when most wolves find their fated mates. When everything is supposed to change, but for me, there was nothing to look forward to; No wolf, no mate and no future.

Only more pain, I didn't want to wait, I'm tired of waiting and hoping.