Rejected By The Alpha, Claimed By The Royal General

I sealed my rare White Wolf aura and royal identity for three years to repay Alpha Silas for saving my life, secretly building his impoverished pack into prosperity.

But instead of gratitude, he brought his mistress Elara to our bedroom, forcing me to sign an Omega downgrade contract.

"She has earned her place by my side in the Capital. Not you," Silas announced coldly.

When I tried to leave, he crushed my hand under his heavy boot. To solidify her position, Elara poisoned me with wolfsbane, and Silas tortured my face with a silver scourge to extract a false confession of a secret lover. Locked in a silver-wired cage on the carriage ride to the Capital, I bled out and lost the pup I had secretly been carrying. Silas and his mother merely watched with cold indifference.

"It is merely a Rogue's bastard pup. It deserves to die," Elara sneered.

I gave them everything, using my clandestine royal connections to feed their starving pack, yet they treated me like disposable refuse and killed my unborn child just to elevate a thief.

When Silas dragged me before the Lycan King and Queen to publicly execute my supposed lover-who turned out to be the Royal Army's top General and my true fated mate-I finally let my black velvet hood fall.

It was time for them to realize the "Omega slave" they had tortured was actually the kingdom's eldest Princess.

Chapter 1

Serena POV

The heavy oak doors of the Shadowfang Pack castle were closed tight against the night.

I stood in the center of my stone bedroom. The fire in the hearth had dwindled to a bed of sullen embers.

Alpha Silas stood before me. His scent, once a comforting redolence of pine, now carried the sour tang of unearned authority. Beside him stood Elara, a Beta female. Her perfume, a cloying sweetness of rose, seemed to suck the very air from the room, leaving my stomach in a tight knot.

"Elara accompanies me to the Lycan Queen's birthday ball next week," Silas announced, his voice possessing the chill and heft of a blacksmith's hammer.

I stared at him. I was his legal wife. For three years, I had sealed my White Wolf aura, a living shroud over my true identity, to settle the debt I owed him. He had pulled me from the jaws of a Rogue pack after I fled my home, and I had foolishly believed this pack, built on my hidden strength, could become a sanctuary. I had been young and headstrong then-I had quarreled bitterly with my parents over a political betrothal they had arranged without my consent. In my fury, I had run away, vowing never to return. Pride had kept me silent for three years. Pride, and shame.

"Elara has managed the pack lands to perfection," Silas continued, the words clipped and precise. "She has earned her place by my side in the Capital. Not you."

A band of iron seemed to tighten around my chest. I had leveraged my clandestine royal connections to drag this impoverished pack into prosperity; Elara had merely affixed her name to my achievements.

Before I could form a reply, the bedroom door creaked open. Elder Mother entered. She was Silas's mother, a venerated elder of the pack.

"Serena is a barren weight," Elder Mother sneered, her eyes raking over me with an undisguised revulsion, as though I were a piece of spoiled meat. "She cannot even grant you a strong pup. Elara is the true dam of this pack." As she spoke, she thrust a cup of bitter-smelling tea into my hands. "Here. A tonic for your frailty. Elara brewed it with her own hands."

My hand fluttered instinctively towards my lower abdomen, a place of secret terror and hope. I had missed my second cycle. I had been searching for the precise moment to tell Silas, but Elara's jealousy was a palpable, dangerous thing. The acrid scent of wolfsbane-a poison to our kind-curled up from the cup. They did not merely think me weak; they were actively trying to render me barren. My secret felt less like a hope and more like a death sentence. I had washed her feet and prepared her meals for three years. Now, she was casting me aside like refuse.

Silas pulled a piece of worn parchment from his coat. He cast it upon the wooden table.

"Sign this," Silas ordered. "It is an Omega Downgrade Contract."

In our werewolf society, a wolf's bloodline and their social rank were two separate things. An Alpha was born with Alpha blood, an Omega with Omega blood-that could never be changed. But within a pack, the Alpha held absolute legal authority. He could elevate a lowborn wolf to a position of honor, or strip his own Luna of her title and reduce her to the lowest rung of the pack hierarchy. The contract did not change what flowed in my veins. It simply declared that, by pack law, I was no longer his queen. I was chattel.

"You mean to strip me of my station as Luna?" I asked, my voice a thin, wavering thread. "You would make me a slave?"

"It is the station you have earned," Elara whispered, a cruel curve to her lips.

I looked at the man who had rescued me from Rogues three years prior. I had muted my rare White Wolf bloodline to repay his act of mercy. Now, I saw only a covetous stranger.

A strange, hollow calm settled in my bones. I picked up the jagged iron pen, its point slicing a dark furrow across my thumb until blood welled up, and pressed the crimson print onto the parchment.

Silas snatched the paper away, a flicker of triumph in his eyes.

An hour later, a small cloth bag held the entirety of my remaining life. Hire a carriage, return to the Royal Capital, find my parents-the Lycan King and Queen. The thoughts were a tangled knot in my mind, urging my stiff limbs toward the door. Pride had kept me away for three years. Now, only desperation remained.

I walked toward the door, but Silas suddenly materialized in my path.

"And where do you presume to be going?" Silas growled, his gaze falling to my bag. "Do you intend to follow us to the ball? You are nothing but a pathetic Omega now!"

He seized my bag and threw it violently against the stone floor. My few garments spilled out in a sad heap.

I did not offer a retort. I calmly knelt, the stone like a slab of ice against my knees, to gather my belongings.

Silas let out a hiss of air. He raised his heavy leather boot. He brought it down with deliberate force upon my hand.

A ragged gasp was torn from my throat. A bolt of white-hot agony shot up my arm as I heard the sickening, muffled crunch of bone giving way.

Silas stepped back. For a fleeting second, a mask of feigned guilt crossed his face.

"You forced my hand," Silas muttered. "Stay here and heal. I will bring you a trinket from the Capital."

I cradled my ruined hand against my chest. I kept my head bowed and nodded. Submission was my only shield.

I waited until the stroke of midnight.