Marrying Her Alpha

Ch. 4: Rejected

Not one but fifteen. At that moment, being on stage with the mark of the moon on my forehead while all those people refused to accept me as their luna, I felt ridiculous.

Even if someone had thought up a plan for months to humiliate me, I don't think it would have gone as well as Kilma's move. I felt so out of place as the looks of pity and disgust fell on me, the only thing I wanted to do was run away and lock myself in the mansion forever.

What had I done that made me so unworthy of being the luna? I started to look for each of my possible mistakes and repeated them over and over again in my mind. The more I thought about it, the more ashamed I became.

They probably thought I was weak, maybe even a danger to their pack. Was there anything I could do to change that?

And then there was Almec. He had worked so hard to regain the respect of the pack members and I was ruining everything. For a second I felt unworthy of being next to him, he looked so strong and proud on stage that there was no way I fit in with him. So I took a step back, trying to hide in the shadows.

Almec grabbed my hand and brought me back next to him, pressing the side of my body to his. My desire to complain vanished when he squeezed my hand and gave me a quick, small smile.

"May I ask what are the reasons why you object?" Almec asked, looking directly at Kilma.

Something told me that if it weren't for the rest of the people present at the ceremony, he would have already attacked the warrior.

"Do we need one?" Kilma asked, smiling.

"If you are against Valentina, I imagine you must have a reason, I would like to know what it is."

"Yes, I want to know too," Adira supported Almec. "If you can't explain it to us I'm going to assume you're doing it because your fragile ego was hurt."

"I can't believe none of you can see it," Kilma shouted, approaching the stage. He stood in front of me and pointed his finger at me. "She doesn't belong here, she's not one of us, and nothing can assure me that she won't betray us just to save herself."

"Boy, you're too paranoid," said Adira. "You can't do a scandal every time someone from the outside comes to the pack. We're not isolated anymore, you have to get used to it."

"Those who want to come visit the pack can do so but we are not going to give them power like you want to do with her." Kilma turned to look at the crowd as he spoke to them. "I've said it before, she doesn't know our traditions, she doesn't know what we had to go through, and she has no reason to be loyal to our pack."

"And I told you before that traditions can be learned." Almec looked down at him with hatred. "In this pack we care about the opinions of all our members but in your case I find it difficult to take your choice seriously. What about the others? Why did you raise your hands?"

"She brought the hunters to our pack," a woman responded. "I lost my mate because of that. If she had never come to our pack he would still be alive. There was no need to turn the hunters against us."

"Are you listening to the nonsense you're saying?" Myra jumped to defend me, the owl that she had on her shoulder opened its wings angrily. "The hunters were going to come looking for us one day or another. Didn't anyone tell you that they had a factory full of a new poison they had created to exterminate us?"

"I can't believe they're so deluded," an old man next to Myra murmured. "They can't trust her but they do trust the hunters."

"Why don't you speak louder, old man?" one of Kilma's followers joined the discussion. "Tell me to my face what you think of me. You are the idiots for believing that her good girl act, surely she just wants to have power. She had barely arrived at the pack and was already living with our alpha."