The Wolfless They Rejected

Ellenrie P.O.V

Three days. The fever burned. I was too weak to rise. No one in my family noticed.

I finally dragged myself to the kitchen and found half a loaf of stale bread. Before I could touch it, a hand slapped it away. "You shameless thief!"

It was my sister, Selene. She stood there in her evening gown, glaring down at me. “You should ask for permission before taking anything here.”

My heart twisted sharply. “This is my home too…” My voice came out hoarse from fever.

Selene snorted coldly. “Home? I’m the real daughter. You’re just a shameless wolfless.” She leaned closer. “Being a rouge is your destiny.”

The taste of blood filled my throat. By law, a wolfless would be cast out upon adulthood as a rogue. Cut off from the Pack's protection. For a female rogue, starvation wasn’t the only threat. There were the violent male rogues too.

Most werewolves begin to feel their wolf awake around sixteen. By the eve of their eighteenth birthday, it's shamefully few who remain wolfless. And I probably was the most pitiful one of them all.

Five days. That was all I had left before adulthood.

I didn’t want to argue. I just wanted to leave. But then my eyes locked onto what she was holding in her hand. My breath caught.

She clutched a frail wooden box. My box. The only thing left that held scraps of my dignity, meager savings and a few tarnished medals from the days when I was still celebrated as the pride of the clan.

“No, Selene, give it back to me!” My voice cracked, raw and nearly gone.

“Yours?” she hissed. Her fingers tangled in my hair, yanking my head back until my neck strained painfully. Her eyes, sharp as blades, burned with pure hatred. “You stole my life for over a decade, Ellenrie. Everything you had should be mine. You’re nothing but a parasite raised on this family’s pity.”

“No… I never—”

My protest was cut short by the heavy thud of footsteps echoing down the hall. In an instant, Selene released me, dropped my box to the floor where it shattered, ripped her own dress at the shoulder, and threw herself down dramatically.

“Ahh! It hurts … Ellenrie, why you shove me like that? I only wanted to see your medals, but why you got so angry!” Her voice dripped with false innocence, thick with theatrics.

She burst into sobs, wailing loud enough to convince anyone she’d just survived some brutal assault.

The door slammed open. My two brothers stormed in, breath ragged. The warmth they once gave me evaporated, replaced by protective glares aimed only at Selene.

“Selene!” My eldest brother, Jaxon dropped to his knees, wrapping her shoulders with fierce protectiveness.

Menwhile, my other brother Heidrich loomed over me. He didn’t say a word. He just snatched the medal from my hand, the very one I'd just saved from Selene's grip.

I never expected Heidrich to use the kind of savage force he'd reserve for an enemy, not on me. And I was already teetering from a brutal fever.

Crack!

I hit to the ground so hard the world went dark at the edges. I hadn't eaten in days. My limbs wouldn't obey. I could only crumble back to the floor, choking on dust from the cold wooden boards.

“You’ve got no shame,” Heidrich growled, his voice low and dangerous. “You didn't get your wolf, and now you act like some kind of monster? For worthless junk like this, you'd treat your own sister this way? I don't know what twisted you into someone capable of this. We raised you better!”

I shook my head, reaching out weakly, desperate to explain.

“Heidrich, please, listen…I didn’t touch her, she threw herself down—” My voice rasped, fading.

“Enough!” Heidrich’s roar carried the authority of the Alpha, crushing the air from my chest. “Don’t you dare lie again.”

In the corner, Selene sobbed harder in Jaxon’s arms. She pointed at the shattered remains of my box, her finger trembling. “It’s my fault. I only wanted to talk, but she suddenly called me a thief who stole her place.”

Jaxon’s gaze cut deeper than any slap. “She’s the real thief, Selene. She’s been living in a place that was never hers for far too long.”

His words ripped my heart open. Had Jaxon forgotten? When Selene first came back, he had cupped my face so gently. "Ellenrie, little wolf. Don't be worried, adopted or blood, you'll always be our irreplaceable little sister."

Tears blurred my vision. "No… I could never say that…"

“Ellenrie, why do you keep lying?!” Selene’s voice broke, she buried her tear-streaked face against Jaxon’s chest, her words trembling between sobs.

“You even said that even without a wolf, our brothers would love you more than me. You pushed me down and added they’d never trust me with anything. Isn’t that what you said?!”

I shook my head, my face pale as death at her lies.

“No…you need listen to me…” My whisper barely carried.

I could never be cruel enough to hurt someone my family had longed for. She was sister to me too. Didn’t she know that? Didn’t she see I wanted to protect her just like Jaxon and Heidrich did? Why did she hate me so much?

“Argh!”

I cried out as Heidrich gripped my jaw, forcing me to meet his cold stare. “Look at you, so brazen, so ungrateful. We gave you a roof, food, treated you like family. And this is how you repay us? By hurting our real sister who suffered for years out there?”

The pressure in my chest slid up into my throat, not from his grip, but from the emptiness gnawing at my soul. Parasite. Freeloader. That’s what they branded me now that Selene had returned six months ago.

Tears spilled down my cheeks. “No, Heidrich… Selene was lying—”

Smack!

My head snapped sideways. A piercing ring filled my ears, drowning out every sound. My cheek burned raw, blood trickling from my mouth.

Heidrich stood over me, his eyes were cold.

“Stop the act. You’re just jealous because Selene’s birthday will be celebrated grandly, while you’re nothing. Face it, Ellenrie, there’ll never be a party for a wolfless like you. Your very presence insults Moon Goddess.”

His words gutted me. I never imagined Heidrich, the brother who once spoiled me more than anyone, would say something so cruel.

As his curse hung in the air, Selene darted forward, clutching the arm of the broad man with the eyepatch. Her sobs grew louder, drawing Heidrich and Jaxon’s attention.

“Brothers, please forgive Ellenrie,” she pleaded between broken breaths. “She’s just stressed. She knows if her wolf doesn’t awaken by next month, she’ll have to leave the Pack. Don’t blame her, brother, I’m fine, even if my shoulder hurts so badly…”

Heidrich fussed over her shoulder, though she was perfectly fine. Meanwhile, I bled, my cheek torn, my lips split. Yet they worried only for her.

Selene glanced at me from behind Heidrich’s arm. For a fleeting second, her sobs ceased, and her lips curled into a razor-thin smile. A victorious look that told me I’d already lost.

Then, heavy footsteps echoed again. Alpha Gerald Houff appeared at the doorway, his presence suffocating the room.

“What’s going on here?” His voice was cold.

Selene wasted no time. She ran to him, trembling, her voice breaking. “Father … Ellenrie shoved me to the ground.”

Alpha Gerald’s eyes locked on me, flat and merciless. The warmth he once gave me was gone, replaced only by hatred and bitter disappointment.

“Ellenrie, you’d better know your place. The only reason you’re in this house is because you happen to share a birthday with my real daughter. You should be grateful to your true benefactor Selene, instead of making me regret ever taking you in.”

No. Not Father too…

“No, Father, I—”

“Don’t call me that!” His voice thundered. “In five days, we’ll celebrate Selene’s birthday. The entire clan will gather to honor her. You will stay in your room and not taint the ceremony with your presence.”

Alpha Gerald's words made my eyes sting with tears I refused to shed.

Once, he adored me, praised everything I did, couldn’t stand to be apart from me. But now… now he looked at me like I was something filthy. He didn't even bother to ask why I was the only one crumpled on the floor.

I tried to reach for the medal—the one Alpha Gerald himself had once pinned on me with pride—now lying on the floorboards between us.

But He didn't spare me a single glance. He strode right past me to check on Selene. I could only watch, helpless, as his boot came down on the medal.

My heart clenched with a pain sharper than any blow. "Father, that was the first medal you ever gave me…"

"Enough!" Alpha Gerald spat on the floor beside me. "Don't you dare use the past to guilt us. We've already shown more mercy to a shameless wolfless like you than you deserve."

"I regret the day we ever took you in."