"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 Altar is not a monument—it’s a *presence*. 


Black stone spirals into the heavens, its surface etched with glyphs that squirm like insects under the eye. The air tastes of burnt copper and forgotten graves, and the ground beneath our feet writhes with roots of living shadow. Dyre walks ahead, Oblivion’s sigil glowing like a bruise on his chest, his steps leaving no prints. Eden trails behind, his stormlit eye dimmed, the absence of the Oblivion seed leaving his right hand skeletal and charred. Jara keeps her knife drawn, her gaze darting to the horizon where the sky bleeds into a bruise-colored void. 


**“This is where the Verse first opened the wound,”** Dyre says, pressing his palm to the Altar. The glyphs flare crimson, humming a discordant hymn. **“They thought Oblivion was a tool. A weapon. But it’s a *mouth*. And it’s starving.”** 


Jara spits. **“You brought us here to feed it?”** 
