"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

It bites with heat that warps the air into liquid hallucinations and nights so cold the stars crackle like static. Sand stretches in every direction, a sea of gold and rust, its dunes sculpted into razor-backed ridges by winds that sing in a language of grit and decay. We trek west, following the ghost of a Primal Verse transmission Veyd pulled from his fried tablet—a garbled distress signal, coordinates smeared like blood. The hunger walks ahead, its stag-form flickering between corporeal and spectral, hooves leaving no prints. It hasn’t spoken since the tundra. I’m not sure it can anymore. 


Veyd’s thermal cloak is fraying, his gloves crusted with blisters. **“Signal’s coming from a sinkhole. Two klicks.”** He coughs sand. **“If it’s another Verse tomb, I’m voting we skip the tour.”** 


The desert