"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 hand from the portal isn’t a hand—it’s a *consequence*. 


Obsidian claws scrape the earth, each groove hissing with Voidspire static. The figure that emerges is a funhouse mirror of me: my bone structure warped into something lupine, her skin a patchwork of lesions and shifting fractal light. Her voice is a serrated purr. **“Little sister. You’ve been busy.”** 


Ravel’s gun barks, the bullet disintegrating inches from the woman’s chest. She laughs, the sound peeling layers from the air, revealing glimpses of a void where her organs should be. 


**“Cute,”** she croons. **“But guns won’t save you from what’s coming.”** 


The static in me writhes, Lyra’s fractal patterns flaring as they recognize the woman’s DNA. *Nyx. First of the Shattered Harbingers. The Verse’s failed prototype.* 


Nyx tilts her head, her claws elongating. **“You’ve met Lyra, I see. Did she tell you how she begged when they unwove her? How she screamed your name?”** 


The sister