His Runt

On my eighteenth birthday, I expected to find my Fated Mate. Instead, I found my executioner.

I shifted for the first time, but my wolf was small and frail. Marcus, the future Alpha and the man I had secretly loved, looked down at me not with adoration, but with cold, clinical disgust.

"A weak, scrawny Omega," he sneered, his voice echoing across the silent clearing.

"You have no muscle. Your bloodline is nothing."

He didn't just reject me; he humiliated me.

"I, Marcus, reject you as my mate."

The bond snapped, shattering my bones and my spirit. He banished me to the human city, leaving me to die in a freezing alleyway like unwanted refuse.

For weeks, I lay in the mud, my body ravaged by fever and the agony of a severed soul tie. I accepted that I was worthless, a mistake made by the Moon Goddess.

But just as the darkness threatened to swallow me whole, a pair of strong arms lifted me from the dirt.

A stranger with eyes like obsidian fed me his blood and whispered a truth that changed everything.

"You are not weak, Ellie," he growled, his power vibrating against my skin. "You are a White Wolf."

I wasn't a runt. I was a legend.

Now, fully healed and radiating power, I am returning to the pack that threw me away. Marcus is about to marry another, but when he sees me, he won't be looking at a reject.

He will be looking at the biggest mistake of his life.

Chapter 1

Ellie POV

I woke up before the sun could breach the horizon. The floor of the Omega quarters was frigid against my cheek, a familiar chill that seemed to seep straight into my marrow. It was a cold I had known intimately since the day my parents died in a border skirmish, leaving me an orphan at five.

I sat up, rubbing the grit of sleep from my eyes. Through the spiderweb cracks of the single window pane, the Alpha house loomed atop the hill. It stood tall and proud, bathed in the pale, ethereal blue of dawn.

Marcus lived there.

Just the thought of his name made my heart flutter in a way that felt reckless, dangerous. He was the future Alpha of the Obsidian Sand Pack—strong, golden-haired, and everything I wasn't.

I reached under my thin, lumpy mattress and pulled out my sketchbook. The edges were frayed, the paper yellowed with age. I opened it to the latest page: a charcoal drawing of the Moon Goddess, her hands outstretched, offering a blessing.

"Please," I whispered to the graphite smudges. "Let today be the day."

Today was my eighteenth birthday. In our world, eighteen isn't just a milestone; it is an awakening. It is the day the dormant wolf spirit within us claws its way to the surface. It is the day of the Shift. And most importantly, it is the day the Fated Mate bond snaps into place.

I traced the delicate lines of the Goddess's face. I nursed a secret, foolish hope that Marcus would be mine.

"Get up, Runt!"

The door banged open, hitting the wall with a violent thud. Chloe, the Beta's daughter, stood there with a sneer plastered on her perfectly made-up face, flanked by two minions who giggled behind their hands.

"Still dreaming about things you can't have?" Chloe kicked the leg of my cot, hard. "Get to the kitchens. The Alpha needs his breakfast, and you know how he hates lumpy oatmeal."

I shoved my sketchbook under the pillow, my heart jumping. "I'm going, Chloe."

"That's 'Future Beta Female' to you," she spat, inspecting her nails. "If you even survive the shift tonight. Everyone knows you have no wolf soul. You're just an empty shell."

I kept my head down and hurried past her, making myself small. Being an Omega meant I was the dust beneath their feet. I cleaned, I cooked, and I absorbed the abuse because the Pack was safety. Without the Pack, a lone wolf—a Rogue—was as good as dead.

Later that afternoon, I found myself scrubbing the stone steps of the training grounds. My hands were raw, the skin cracked and red from the icy, soapy water.

"Careful there, Ellie."

The voice was deep, smooth like velvet over gravel. I froze.

I looked up to see Marcus standing above me. The afternoon sun caught his hair, turning it into a blinding halo. He wasn't looking at me with the usual disgust, but with a casual indifference that my desperate heart mistook for kindness.

"Beta Thomas," Marcus called out to the man supervising the drills. "Make sure she gets a break before tonight. We don't want her fainting during the ceremony."

"Yes, Alpha," Thomas replied instantly.

Marcus glanced at me one last time, a flicker of something unreadable in his eyes, before striding away. My heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped bird. He had noticed me. He had protected me.

"Don't get your hopes up," Chloe hissed as she walked by, deliberately kicking over my bucket. Dirty water soaked my knees. "He's just worried you'll embarrass the Pack with your weakness."

I didn't care. I held onto that small moment like a lifeline.