Rejected But Claimed By The Alpha King

Harper Alvarado POV:

"To the brave warriors of the Terrell Pack! Tonight, we drink to a glorious victory!"

Alpha Fletcher Terrell’s booming voice echoed through the grand banquet hall. Hundreds of wolves raised their goblets high, their deafening cheers threatening to tear down the stone walls.

Fletcher raised his goblet, his harsh, battle-worn gaze suddenly softening into something incredibly tender. "But above all else, tonight I must express my deepest, most profound gratitude to one extraordinary woman. Without her unwavering support in my darkest hours, without her being the anchor to my soul, I could never have returned triumphant."

I sat at the head table in the Luna's seat, looking at the husband who had finally returned after a year at the border. A rare, fragile wave of warmth instantly bloomed in the freezing, exhausted depths of my heart.

For the entire year he was gone, I had nearly hollowed out my entire dowry just to keep his bankrupt Pack from starving. I had stayed awake day and night, coughing up blood from sheer exhaustion, just to drag his dying mother back from the gates of hell. He saw it, I thought, my eyes growing hot with unshed tears. He finally understood my sacrifices.

Yet, Fletcher didn't even glance in my direction.

He reached out his large, calloused hand and tightly intertwined his fingers with the hand of a tall, auburn-haired female warrior. Darla Hutchinson.

Fletcher pulled her forcefully into his arms, their bodies pressed intimately together. He looked down at her, his eyes burning with a raw, naked passion and devotion I had never seen before. Darla smirked triumphantly, leaning her head against his hard armored shoulder in a blatantly possessive, sickeningly intimate display of claiming.

The fragile smile on my face instantly froze. It felt as if a cruel, heavy sledgehammer had just smashed directly into my chest, suffocating me where I sat.

Fletcher raised their intertwined hands high, and the roaring hall instantly fell dead silent. Then, he turned his head to look down at me. The tenderness in his eyes had vanished completely, replaced by the suffocating, freezing aura of an Alpha.

"Harper," his voice was stripped of all emotion, ringing out coldly under the watchful eyes of the entire Pack. "Hand over the Luna's mark. Surrender the ancestral silver ring of the Terrell Pack."

Crash.

The delicate porcelain teacup slipped from my trembling fingers, shattering into jagged shards on the floor.

"Darla is my True Mate," Fletcher declared loudly, completely ignoring the shattered porcelain at my feet. "From today on, she is the Luna of this Pack, and you will step down to be my concubine."

I sat frozen in my chair, the blood draining entirely from my face. "A concubine?" My voice trembled violently, thick with disbelief and surging grievance. "Fletcher, we are husband and wife, bound under the witness of the Moon Goddess. Have you forgotten the vow you made to me before you left? You swore I would be your only Luna, forever."

"Stop being so utterly delusional, Harper!" Fletcher sneered, his lips curling into an arc of sheer disgust.

"Let's lay all the cards on the table," he mocked, his voice dripping with venom. "The only reason you were able to wear that ring in the first place was because you used your family's wealth and power to shamelessly force my hand! But what are you now? The great House Alvarado is nothing but a dead, rotting graveyard!"

Cruel whispers and gasps erupted from the banquet tables. My fingernails dug so hard into my palms that they drew blood.

My father and brothers had died in battle years ago, and shortly after, my mother and the entire household of the old, the weak, the women, and the children were brutally slaughtered by enemy spies! Simply because my father and brothers posed such a massive threat to the enemy nation, their very name struck terror even after their deaths. Enemy forces infiltrated my home and annihilated my entire bloodline! Every single person was hacked with seventy-two sword strikes. Even my third brother's newborn son was butchered and dismembered so horribly his tiny body wasn't left intact.