All Chapters of Rejected by the Beta: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

The howl that interrupts my thoughts a second later is enough to jumpstart my legs back into action. The pitch and timbre of a howl can mean a lot of things, and that howl sends a shiver down my spine and a spring into my step, because it means only one thing: I’m being hunted.I vault forward down the path for a few yards before I realize how completely idiotic it is for me to keep following the path. I mean, that’s like trying to break out of jail by making a run for the front door.So I veer off the worn path and between two trees. I hear something, a rapid rustling that’s way too close for comfort. My pursuer is gaining on me.My brain is in overdrive as I keep running, my survival instincts kicking. Movement, to my right. More rustling. Another pursuer. My heartbeat doubles. My lungs burn, but I can’t stop. This can’t be how it ends for me.The next howl is closer, so close it sounds like an alarm blaring in my own head. I crash through the woods, painfully aware that I’m

Goddess, he’s even more gorgeous than I remembered. It’s almost difficult to look at him, but I also can’t look away. I lean toward the sill, my fingers meeting glass and reminding me I closed the window after I took a shower. I unlatch it and sit on the sill, opening my mouth and hoping that an elegant greeting with emerge from my lips. My mate wasn’t exactly smiling before — now that I look closer, I see that his is a face more suited to scowling than smiling — but after my “hi?” he’s now outright frowning, his dark eyes glaring so harshly at me I can feel it in my chest. Even frowning he’s beautiful, his cheekbones so sharp they’d make a sculptor weep.I open my mouth to try again, to ask him why he’s here, but just as I start to speak, he bolts, racing toward our fence and leaping over it in one smooth stride. He shifts as soon as he hits the ground on the other side, his grey and silver fur dappled with moonlight. I track him as he races off through the trees, leaning dang

“How was work?” Ben asks as soon as I get home. I’m rushing because it’s already 5:30 and I don’t want to be late meeting James. “Fine! Good!” I yell back at him over my shoulder as I take the stairs two at a time. I don’t know if we’re meeting in human or wolf form, so I err on the side of caution and put on the cutest outfit I can find at short notice: black tights, a black velvet dress, heavy silver boots and a leather jacket. Washing my face and reapplying my makeup takes a few minutes, and after some swipes of my hairbrush, I think I look as presentable as I’m going to get without a shower.Checking my phone for the time, I see it’s 5:50. I need to head to the woods if I’m going to make it on time. Ben is still engrossed in the video game he was playing when I got home, so I pat him on the head, tell him I’ll be home later and leave, thankful that he was too distracted to ask me where I’m going. I hardly ever have plans on a Saturday night so it wouldn’t be out of the questio

I do not want to be here. I want to be curled up in bed, replaying my run with James from a week ago. Instead, I’m at Sharon’s for a “girls’ night.” Which is supposed to include gossiping about boys. But the boy I want to gossip about has to be kept a secret. Ugh. “Can you get me some mugs from the cabinet?” Sharon asks. I reach up and grab three from the shelf in front of me and hand them to Sharon. Just as she starts to pour the spiced hot cider she’s made, I hear the front door open.“It’s me! And I have cake!” The voice belongs to Lisa, a waitress Sharon and I used to work with at the diner until she left to start her own bakery. She races into the kitchen and wraps me in a hug before doing the same with Sharon. “It’s so good to see you both! I feel like it’s been forever since we last hung out,” she says as she takes off her jacket and throws it on a nearby chair.“I know! We’ve all been working so much,” Sharon says as she hands me a mug of cider and shepherds us

“Izzy! Go home!” Clyde says, clapping me on the shoulder and taking my order pad out of my hands. “What? Why? Are you firing me? Is this about the coffee filters? I had no idea the box was going to fall apart like that, and I swear only ten of them were damaged. The rest are totally fine!” My words come out on a rushed exhale of anxious breath and my heart is beating so fast that for a second my vision goes blurry.It’s been a rough week. On Monday I messed up an order of burgers for a table of vegans who looked like they wanted to forgo their pacifist leanings and kill me with their butterknives when I put meat in front of them. Wednesday, I dropped a box of two hundred coffee filters all over the kitchen floor, which thankfully I had cleaned an hour before, so most were saved due to lack of dust and grime. And today I broke not one, not two, but four mugs in a thirty-minute period while filling coffees.To say I’m a wreck would be an understatement, and to declare me a crap w