Alpha's Rejected becomes the Lycan's Obsession

The more the man spoke, the more Tessy couldn’t shake the feeling that she had heard his voice somewhere before. It curled around the edges of her memory, clawing at a faint echo she couldn’t quite reach.

Yet no matter how hard she searched her mind, it refused to yield an answer. The voice felt oddly familiar, like a half-remembered melody heard in a dream, but the face?

His face didn’t ring a bell at all. She was sure she would have remembered it. There was no forgetting a face like that—part of it grotesquely maimed, leaving behind a patchwork of scarred skin and hollowness where a cheek should have been. It was the kind of face that haunted nightmares. And if she had seen it before, she would have woken up screaming. She would’ve remembered.

"Do you like my face?" the man asked suddenly, his voice slicing through her thoughts like a jagged blade as if he had been reading her mind.

Tessy blinked, startled.

"It’s a masterpiece, isn’t it?" he continued, his eyes dancing with something cruel. Amusement, mockery, madness, it was hard to tell.

Tessy didn’t respond. She didn’t feel the need to.

She didn’t like his face. In fact, she hated it. Every fiber of her being recoiled at the sight of it. It made her skin crawl. Her stomach turned. But she kept her expression impassive. Although he repulsed her to the core, she wasn’t going to admit it to his face.

"It’s your dear husband’s handiwork," the man added, his voice dipping into something darker, his eyes turning colder.

Tessy’s heart skipped a beat. Her breath caught as her gaze flicked once more to the disfigured half of his face. Her lips parted slightly in shock, though she masked it quickly.

"He did this to me." The man pointed to the missing patch of flesh, his fingers trembling slightly, and Tessy caught the flicker of rage in his eyes. His voice had dropped to a guttural snarl, every word vibrating with venom.

"You expect me to believe that without proof?" Tessy asked sharply, trying to stand her ground. She narrowed her eyes, resisting the urge to take a step back as the chill of unease slid down her spine.

Then she heard a snap. A sharp crack from behind her. The sound of dried branches breaking beneath a foot made her head turn instantly. She glanced over her shoulder, instincts spiking. But it was only the man who had dragged her here. He was standing a few paces away now, arms crossed, his stance oddly stiff. He looked extremely uncomfortable and Tessy couldn’t determine why.

She didn’t have time to dwell on it.

"You want proof?" the half-faced man rasped, the corner of his mouth twitching upward. His voice held a sinister drip, like a leaking faucet in a silent house.

"I’ll give you proof."

With a snap of his fingers, two figures emerged from the veil of darkness behind him. They stepped out like phantoms, shadows given flesh.

One was a woman, tall and slender, with jet black hair that fell straight past her shoulders like a waterfall of ink. Her skin was pale, unnaturally so, and her smile spread far too wide across her face, giving her the look of a porcelain doll cracked in all the wrong places.

The other was a man. His hair, as black as night, brushed his shoulders. His eyes were empty and as black as night. As if light refused to touch them.

Tessy’s stomach dropped. Her limbs stiffened.

Cold sweat broke out across her back and gathered at her temples.

"Come closer for your proof, Tessy," the woman said, her voice strangely sharp.

There was a screeching edge to it, like nails on rusted metal. The sound clawed its way into Tessy’s ears, making her wince and twist away slightly. Her stomach turned again.

Tessy didn’t budge. "Why do I have to come to you for it?" she asked, her tone wary, her body tense. "Show it to me. I can see it from here."

Something about the entire setup screamed trap. Every step forward would be a mistake, she could feel it in her bones.

Before the woman could respond, the man behind her—the one who dragged her into this godforsaken place—suddenly spoke, his voice tight.

"He is here. We can’t afford to waste any more time."

Tessy barely had time to process what he meant before he shoved her forward roughly, without hesitation.

"Hey!" she snapped, stumbling several steps ahead.

She barely managed to regain her balance. Her shoes crunched against the dead leaves and brittle twigs that littered the forest floor.

"What is wrong with you?" she barked, turning to glare at him. However, instead of responding to her query, he shoved her again, even harder than the last time.

The force sent her crashing to the ground. Her knees hit first, jarring through her body. Her palms scraped against something coarse and sandy. She landed hard, right in the middle of where they clearly wanted her to be.

"What the hell is wrong with you?!" she screamed again, scrambling to her feet.

But he was already moving.

Tessy watched, her eyes wide as he pulled something from inside his coat. She realized it was a small leather pouch. He opened it and poured out a fine, pale powder, sprinkling it on the ground in a deliberate line, muttering words in a language Tessy didn’t understand.

The words didn’t sound like anything humans should be speaking.

And when she heard that, her mind took her back to her dream. It was the same language they were speaking in the dream that the man was speaking right at that moment.

Then it hit her. The voice of the half faced man called Jedidiah. He was the leader that was about to stab her in the dream.

By the time he finished with the powder and the chants, he stepped back, away from the circle.

Tessy tried to follow, her instincts screaming at her to move, to run, but when she reached the edge where the powder line had been drawn, her body slammed into something. An invisible wall.

She jerked backward, stumbling.

Her brows knitted. "Why can’t I move? What is going on? What did you do?" Her voice was rising now, panic creeping into her chest, curling its fingers around her throat.

She tried to turn to the others, in search of answers, but what she got was a sudden sharp pain right before she could completely turn around. A sting at the side of her neck so quick she barely registered it. She had been injected.

She spun around in time to see the black-haired woman stepping away, already pulling out a second pouch.

She was repeating the man’s earlier action—spreading powder in a precise line, closing a full circle around Tessy, her lips moving rapidly, chanting.

But by then, nothing mattered anymore except for what Tessy was feeling inside of her.

The substance injected into her was already making itself known.

It started as a warmth, deep in her chest, like the ember of a flame. But it didn’t stop there.

The warmth grew hotter, spreading like wildfire through her veins, curling through her limbs, seeping into her bones. Heat pooled under her skin. Her breaths grew shallow.

She clenched her fists. "What did you do to me?" she shouted, her voice cracking.

Then the warmth graduated into a burn, like she had been thrown into a furnace.

Tessy let out a scream, raw and guttural, staggering back until she slammed into the invisible barrier again.

She clawed at the air, at the ground, tried anything to escape, but she couldn’t. She was trapped.

Her attackers stood at a distance now, all four of them gathered together, watching silently. Observing her like she was an experiment.

"What are you doing to me?!" she screamed at them. Her voice was hoarse, desperate. "Let me out of this place! I can’t breathe!"

They didn’t respond, neither did they move to help. They only watched silently.

The heat inside her grew unbearable. Her body felt like it was boiling from within, her skin burning from the inside out.

Sweat poured down her face and neck, soaking her clothes. Gasping, she tore at her top layer, yanking it off in a frantic attempt to relieve the heat.

But it didn’t help.

As if the heat torture was not enough, an intense pain came next, a bolt of agony straight to her skull.

It dropped her to her knees, then traveled all the way to her stomach.

Tessy screamed again, louder than before. Her hands clutched her abdomen, her nails digging into her skin. The pain was unrelenting. It ate away at her from the inside.

"What do you want from me?!" she sobbed, kneeling in the dirt, tears blurring her vision as the pain refused to ease.

And as the last thread of strength left her body, Tessy knew she should’ve listened. She should’ve turned back. That voice that urged her to go... it had tried to save her.

But she hadn’t listened.