A Rejected Wolf and a Court of Ash (Eden and Azriel) novel Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Eden

My biggest mistake was being born.

If my mother had ended my life the second the pack doctor placed me on top of her chest, I might have been reborn as something else.

But she didn’t end me.

My mother took me home–a daughter who came from a man she didn’t love. I’m the product of her deepest nightmares. since my father forced himself upon her. I can’t remember my mother ever hugging or acknowledging me as hers.

It’s a miracle I survived the first years with her drinking at every opportunity she could get. If there was a parent meeting at the kindergarten, she drank. When the pack doctors did their yearly checkups on the young werewolves, she wore sunglasses to hide the fact her eyes were red from staying up all night with her lover–the bottle.

Now that I’m older, I’m the one taking care of her. It’s a love–hate relationship since she tends to get abusive when she drinks. She pulls my hair, throws my stuff, and more than once, she has yelled at me that I’m a mistake. Last week she threw away my makeup since she didn’t want her daughter ‘looking like a slut, and when I tried to save my mascara from the trash can, she clawed at my face.

“What do you think you’re doing?!” she yelled at me until I had no other choice but to retreat to my room.

She is a bad mother, and I don’t want to live with her anymore. I just need her and the pack until I’ve graduated. A packless wolf would go mad and turn rogue, especially a weak omega like me. But if I find my mate at 18, the two of us would count as a pack all on our own.

I could leave this hellhole behind with someone who actually loved me.

That’s my dream since the Valentine pack would force me to marry a man I don’t love if I stay. Omega werewolves are the only wolves who can have children without being impregnated by their fated mate, but until I turn 18, I don’t expect the pack elders to knock on our door.

I hope they never will. Marrying a man just to carry his children isn’t a future I want either.

What I want is freedom.

I put on my shoes in the hallway, not even surprised that my mother didn’t join me for breakfast. She never does, and I don’t mind it…too much. It makes me sad that my mother doesn’t care about me, but after surviving through so much abuse, you stop caring at some point.

You grow a thicker skin to protect your heart and act as if everything is okay. If you smile enough, maybe that smile will one day be the truth.

Maybe one day you won’t have to pretend.

Snow is circling down from the gray sky when I walk down the street. Elvira is waiting for me by the corner dressed in her beige oversized hands–me–down coat.

“There you are!” she exclaims with a big smile. She is an omega like me and my one and only friend.

I shuffle my feet through the snow faster, pretending like my socks aren’t wet already. “Good morning to you too!”

“Slept good?”

“Like a princess….you know, like the poor Cinderella kind…”

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10:19 Mon, 23 Jun

Chapter 1

Elvira laughs and the pain from having an unloving mother immediately dissolves. Life is easier when you have a friend. and Elvira and I go way back.

The Valentine pack only has two young omegas and that happens to be me and Elvira. We are both 17–year old shor Swedish girls–a match made in heaven if you ask me.

The only thing Elvira has that I don’t have is a big, loving family. They don’t care that she is an omega, even if it gets them in trouble with the Alpha sometimes for bringing her to pack hunts. The Fagerlof family believes blood runs thicker than the pack bond. Sometimes, I like to pretend I am one of them: blonde, blue–eyed, and surrounded by siblings

But I’m not.

I’m Eden Felicity, the freckled nerd with unruly red hair, acne from hell, and two different colored eyes–green and brown -to add to my imperfections. It’s terrible. Only a person who has had acne can understand how self–conscious and ugly I feel every day I look in the mirror. Not even foundation can save you when it makes you look like one of those ice creame with chocolate dragged over sprinkled nuts…

“I hope Logan is still sick at home,” Elvira says in a low voice when we get closer to the gymnasium. “He has been particularly cocky and mean now that his father has announced he is going to take over as the Alpha of the Valentine pack”

The idea of Logan being the Alpha makes both of us shudder in our winter coats. Logan Valentine has been my bully since middle school. When he found out Elvira and I share the same initials–e and f–he started calling us Elf and Elf, but Elvira isn’t one of his usual victims.

I am.

I don’t know why Logan loves to bully me. All I know is that he is the devil, and it terrifies me how everyone is blind to it Anyone with a lick of sense should be able to see it, but sadly, my c classmates at Winston Fate seem to lack even that. They swarm around him, worshipping him like he is the god on campus. It makes me shudder. Logan has twisted people into puppets who adore him when they should be running the other way.

Perhaps beauty and wealth are enough to make people fools.

I cast my eyes down on the snow when we pass Paris Moonsong, Logan’s girlfriend. She is smoking a cigarette, and I hear her whisper to her friends, “Gosh, Elf number one is sooo unlucky, Look at her. Not only is she an omega and short as hell, but she also suffers from acne. So fucking disgusting. Doesn’t she clean her skin?”

My heart aches as we walk for the doors, pausing–like everybody else when a white Audi rolls up to the parking lot. Some people have parents rich enough to pay for their child’s driver’s license the second they turn 18.

My mother would never.

Logan Valentine, however, is the wealthiest person I know. As the future Alpha, he is friends with everyone and I watch as his closest friends jump out of the car,

I know them by name since they all are pack members: Hilda Lahti with her rich brown skin and expensive winter jacket Her makeup is always on point, and she is already putting on more lipstick. Then there are the two huge twins who protect Logan as if they were already his betas, Joakim and Axel Henriksson. They are rough–housing in the snow like two young

pups.

“We should probably leave before they see you,” Elvira mumbles, knowing Logan loves to make me his early–morning victim. If he doesn’t give me a rude comment about my acne, he will ask me if I’ve caught my first deer yet, then pretend to just remember that I can’t shape–shift.

He makes attending Winston Fate unbearable.

Elvira and I hurry inside, but we don’t get rid of our coats inside our lockers fast enough. Joakim and Axel have their black lockers close to mine. Sweat gathers on my skin. The twins are huge and my heart stops when Axel kicks the locker with a loud sigh.

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10:19 Mon, 23 Jun

Chapter 1

“Great! I forgot we had homework…” he growls before his dark eyes land on mine. A smirk spreads on his lips. “Hey Elf, you’re smart, right? Hand over your homework.”

I clutch the papers behind my back. “Huh? N–no, I need to turn these-

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