The Ashwood Family Saga - Book cover

The Ashwood Family Saga

Jessica Bailey

Chapter 2

AMELIE

“I, Amelie Ashwood, reject you, Tate Cozad, as my mate. I REJECT YOU!” I yelled, using up the last bit of my strength.

I pressed the silver blade, stained with my blood, to my mate mark. The pain was like having my heart torn out and being hit by a bus at the same time.

New beginnings aren’t always bright and shiny. The physical pain was unbearable, but my mind was clear.

“I did it. I’m free.” I collapsed, naked, bloody, and alone, but free. After ten years, I was finally free.

I’d just done the unthinkable. I’d completed the rejection ritual, marking myself as a mate rejecter, an outcast in my community.

I didn’t just reject my mate, but my old pack too. My entire identity was gone. I was now scarred, no longer marked.

Now, I bore the black scar created by the silver blade, and I’d rejected the mate the Goddess had made just for me. The cursed life of a Scarred One was my future.

The sense of loss was overwhelming. Was this the price I had to pay for my freedom from the mate bond?

When I woke up, a wave of mixed emotions washed over me. The physical pain had lessened. Now, it was time for my broken heart to finally let it all out.

Not only was I a Scarred One, but I’d lost the ability to shift. My wolf, Inari, was still there, just weak.

We both knew what the full consequences of the rejection ritual would be and what it would do to us physically. But we didn’t care. We needed to be free.

I pulled myself up off the damp cave floor. I couldn’t stand yet, and I was barely sitting up.

I’d left my father’s pack to join my mate’s pack. I’d built a life for myself and my mate. I’d had a small shop where I made and sold my jewelry designs, but that was gone now—more like stolen.

I’d paid the rejection price to pack Alpha Mason to leave. It was hard, but I didn’t regret it. I’d figure it out somehow.

I got up from the cold cave floor, my strength slowly returning, and put on the clothes I’d prepared for myself.

The strap of my bra dug into my fresh wound. I hadn’t yet looked at the hideous damage that I’d have to live with for the rest of my life.

I was now marked as a rejector, a home wrecker, a bringer of misfortune. I didn’t care. My now ex-mate wouldn’t feel any of the pain and suffering I did, and his mate mark would fade away.

It would be a lonely life of judgment for me now. That’s why most mated pairs stayed together even if things were terrible. We wolves are a social species, craving a pack and family.

I wanted those things too, but not the pack I had or the life I was leading.

As I finished getting dressed, I thought about what would be next for me. I didn’t have much going for me. I was broke, having lost my business. I wasn’t young; I was thirty now.

I was marked as a rejector. What I’d just done was rare. Rejecting a mate itself wasn’t rare. It happened, but it was usually done before mating and marking. After marking, it rarely happened.

Growing up, there was an old woman who lived on the edge of town who bore the rejector mark. We were all scared that she would come into our rooms at night and curse or eat us.

I was to live my life like her now. On the outskirts. Alone. Well, at least it would be peaceful. I could garden, my second favorite thing to do.

I could still work on my jewelry and start an apothecary business. I’d have to hide that I was the owner, as no one would dare buy goods handled by a Scarred One.

Before completing the rejection ritual, I’d been added back to my father’s pack. It helped lessen the pain that the mate rejection ritual caused.

I looked down at my shoulder to see my deep green ash tree mark. It gave me some strength to keep going forward.

My one saving grace was that I was the eldest daughter of the Ashwood Pack alpha, the largest pack in the northern Midwest, one of the most influential in North America.

I didn’t have much else. My father loved my siblings and me. I was an oddity in the werewolf community. I was the alpha’s eldest daughter born before my parents found their mated pair.

My mother, Ann, was the daughter of my grandfather’s beta. My parents grew up together and thought they would be mated. But they weren’t a fated mate pair.

I was raised in my father’s pack but also accepted by my mother’s pack. Her mate, Alpha Logan of the Black Hills Pack, didn’t want to raise another alpha’s child.

He didn’t hate me. He loved me. He just didn’t want another alpha in his business. Having me in the pack would complicate things. So, I was left with my father and his mate, Celeste.

Most pups are not children of desire but children of destiny. In my mother’s pack, I was seen as a mistake, something that shouldn’t have been born.

Life was better on the surface in my father’s pack. No one dared say what they were thinking to my face. Instead, I was politely ignored. My stepmother was an exception.

She loved me as if I was her pup and treated me as such. She never allowed others to treat me differently. As I grew, I worked to earn the respect of the pack elders, which made life easier.

My younger siblings, bright and happy, were showered with love and care every day. I envied that, but I couldn’t deny spoiling them myself.

The youngest was the heir, James. He and I were thirteen years apart in age. My sister Hope and I were eleven years apart. I loved every minute of it. To them, I was just their sister.

The luna had complicated pregnancies and lost many pups. Of course, there were whispers that I was to blame, as I was a curse. It was a common belief that the pups died because of me.

My father and stepmother didn’t believe in the old tales and ran the Ashwood Pack with more progressive views.

Honestly, my father, Alpha John, was more of a businessman than a warrior. His luna was the same. They fought with their brains.

I found my now-ex-mate when I was twenty, which was a few years later than most she-wolves, but I was excited.

I was born against the odds, and I never thought I’d find a mate. But when I did, it felt like a stamp of approval from the universe. I was meant to exist! The Goddess had crafted a mate just for me!

He was older, which wasn’t unusual. Males often found their mates in their midtwenties, while females usually found theirs before they turned nineteen.

I was nearly twenty-one when I found mine. He was tall and lean, not the typical hulking mass that most male wolves are. He was an artist, just like me, smart and passionate.

His dark brown curls tumbled to his shoulders. His features were sharp and defined, with high cheekbones.

His eyes reminded me of a winter sky after a snowfall—pale blue with a crispness that stole your breath away.

“Mine!” my wolf cried out. “Mate, what’s your name?”

“Tate. And what’s yours, my mate?” he asked, leaning in for our first kiss, unable to resist any longer.

“Amelie.” I barely managed to whisper my name before his lips claimed mine. It was pure bliss.

His passion and skill were incredible. The slightest touch from him would send me spiraling into realms of pleasure I’d never even imagined.

I envisioned a future with him, growing old together, raising a family, living a simple, ordinary life with my fated mate. But those days of bliss didn’t last.

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