"Hi, yes you aren't dreaming, it's the chubby Kelly," I say inwardly as I see the unhappy face expression of Jason who is disheartened. 

The guests laugh at us. They call our couple all sort of names. "The prince charming and the pancakes' eater Kelly" is one I can sadly remember."

"I, Jason Bentley of the South pack, reject you Kelly Thompson as my mate and the Luna Queen," he declared fiercely.

***
Kelly Thompson, an eighteen-year-old curvaceous and wolfless she-wolf, has been quietly admiring Jason Bentley, the heir apparent to the throne of the dominant South pack, for a number of years.

Unfortunately for Kelly, she doesn't get the same attention in return from Alpha heir Jason, as the handsome daughter of his old father's Gammas, Betty Nord, is already the love of the pack's future Alpha. But, the plump Kelly has an advantage over the skinny Betty because of a strong vow made by Jason's father, the Alpha King Don Bentley, that his son will marry the daughter of his Betas who gave their lives two years ago in a fight against the North pack's fiercest adversaries in order to preserve the life of the Alpha heir.

But clearly, nothing goes as smoothly as Kelly imagines.

The Rejected Curvy Luna Queen

The Weaver’s needle gleams in the fractured light of the desert, her silhouette a blade against the bleeding horizon. Eden staggers at my side, his breaths shallow and human, his scars replaced by raw, pink flesh that weeps where the storm once lived. The venom thrums in my veins, no longer a separate entity but a chorus—*my* chorus—whispering of power and paradoxes. It hungers to answer the Weaver’s challenge. I do not. 


“You’ve outgrown your cage,” the Weaver croons, her voice a serrated melody. “But cages are all you know, aren’t they? Daughter. *Experiment*. *Failure*.” 


The venom flexes, my skin crackling with stormlight. “You don’t get to name me anymore.” 


Her laughter is a shiver down the spine of the world. *“I don’t have to. You’ll name yourself when the venom burns through what’s left of your humanity.”* 


A sandstorm erupts, swallowing her form. When it clears, the desert is gone. 
