Rejected

The first book in the Shadow Beast Shifters trilogy is set in a world where wolf shifters live in secretive packs among humans, governed by the Shadow Beast, the dark deity who created their kind. All shifters undergo their first transformation at age 22, under the winter solstice full moon.

Mera Callahan, a 22-year-old wolf shifter, lives as an outcast in the Torma pack, the most powerful American shifter pack, located in a small California town. Ten years earlier, her father, Lockhart Callahan, challenged and was killed by Alpha Victor Wolfe, the pack leader, reducing Mera and her mother, Lucinda, who has an alcohol addiction, to the pack's lowest status. Mera endures daily violence from Torin Wolfe, Victor's son and the future alpha; Sisily Longeran, the dominant female of Mera's year; and Jaxson Heathcliffe, the pack's future second-in-command, who was once like a brother to Mera before her father's death forced him to cut ties. Having learned that resistance only intensifies the abuse, Mera adopts feigned indifference as a survival strategy.

Mera's only friend is Simone, the daughter of pack enforcers, and her only refuge is her job at a bookshop run by Dannie, a formerly unaffiliated shifter who joined the pack a decade ago and serves as Mera's surrogate mother. After another brutal day, Mera resolves to flee Torma despite Simone's tearful warnings that shifting without an alpha's guidance could be fatal.

Two weeks later, Mera is living under the alias Lucy Jones in Hood River, Oregon, working as a waitress. When her boss mentions someone from California came asking about her, Mera races to retrieve her cash but is ambushed by Torin, Jaxson, and another wolf. She stabs Torin, but Jaxson shifts and catches her, biting her throat until she blacks out.

Mera wakes in the torture chambers beneath the Torma pack house. She headbutts Glendra, the alpha's mate, unconscious and escapes briefly before Jaxson catches her. Alpha Victor tells Mera he will bind her permanently to Torma after her shift, and when she defies him, he punches her and threatens sexual violence. Dannie visits Mera's cell with a healing drink.

On the solstice, Mera endures the agonizing first shift, emerging as a red and white wolf. She unexpectedly regains human awareness almost immediately, a phenomenon that normally takes several shifts. Instead of escaping, she spends hours playing with Jaxson's wolf in a bittersweet echo of their childhood bond, missing her chance to run.

As the wolves return, Mera's wolf senses her true mate and sprints forward uncontrollably: The mate is Torin. Sisily attacks Mera, and Mera fights back viciously. Victor freezes both wolves with his alpha command, a supernatural compulsion that forces obedience. Torin tells his father to banish Mera and declares he will sever the bond. The rejection causes soul-deep agony, and Mera's wolf releases a howl that knocks every nearby shifter to the ground. When Victor orders her killed, Mera's wolf taps into an unknown power. Her vision doubles over, revealing shadowy figures and a dark tree from another plane. She touches one of the shadow entities, triggering a shockwave that knocks the entire pack unconscious.

Mera tries to flee but is recaptured and chained in Torin's room, where he forces her to watch him have sex with Sisily to further sever the mate bond. Mera refuses to show pain, mocking them. In desperation, she sarcastically calls out to the Shadow Beast, and the room plunges into darkness.

The Shadow Beast emerges from a portal of shimmering mist: impossibly tall with raven curls, flame-colored eyes, bronze skin, glowing tattoos, and tendrils of inky smoke. He tells Mera she touched the Shadow Realm and demands an explanation. When she lies, he throws her over his shoulder. Torin and Victor argue that Torin's fated-mate claim under shifter law prevents Shadow from taking Mera, but Mera announces that Torin rejected her, voiding his claim. Shadow kills Victor with his flames and vanishes with Mera.

Shadow carries Mera through a long white hallway connecting Earth to other worlds and into his private domain: an enormous gothic library. He gives her two choices: death, or remaining under his control while she helps him understand how she touched the Shadow Realm and recapture the creatures she accidentally released. Beyond Shadow's lair, Mera discovers the Library of Knowledge, a vast space filled with beings from multiple worlds. Gaster, a goblin concierge, explains the Solaris System: 10 worlds connected through doorways in the library, including Faerie, the Shadow Realm, and the birthplaces of shifters and vampires.

Mera gradually builds relationships. She names Shadow's smoky companion Inky and befriends a transcendent, one of the angel-like beings of Honor Meadows, whom she nicknames Angel. Angel is a powerful winged warrior who bonds Mera into her family line through a ritual called treasora. Shadow introduces Mera to his five trusted friends, including the fae prince Len, the desert deity Reece, and the vampire master Lucien. Mera refuses to cower before any of them. During their hunts for escaped shadow creatures, Shadow reveals that the white hallway contains doors to afterlives and that he escorted Mera's father to his. Mera begs to visit her father, but Shadow says the living cannot speak with the dead.

Shadow forces Mera to attempt opening the sealed Shadow Realm door, but its blocking spell nearly consumes her soul before Shadow pulls her back. He confides the truth: He was born as the Shadow Realm's true heir, but his family conspired against him, stole his crown, and barred the door with an unbreakable spell. He has been exiled for thousands of years and believes Mera can act as a conduit to reopen access. During a stay in Faerie, the convergence of its five moons triggers a magical fertility spell that would kill Mera without Shadow's intimate intervention, deepening their complicated bond. Mera realizes she can now touch Shadow without pain, a change that developed gradually.

Shadow tracks creatures to Torma, where Mera discovers she can command lower-level shadow creatures, a power she hides from Shadow. Torin ambushes Mera and forcibly kisses her to reactivate the mate bond; she bites through his lip and fights him off. Shadow arrives in fury, threatening to destroy all shifters if Torin touches Mera again. Back at the library, Torin and Jaxson ambush Shadow using morrow powder, a substance that incapacitates him, and drag Mera to Torma. Mera reunites tearfully with Simone, who reveals the pack imprisoned Dannie and her cell was covered in blood. Jaxson tells Mera her mother died from accumulated abuse during Mera's absence.

From a hidden platform at a secret enforcer meeting, Mera and Simone overhear Dean Heathcliffe, Jaxson's father, reveal that the pack obtained the morrow powder from Dannie, then tortured and killed her. The pack activated the substance using a virgin sacrifice and Dannie's magic, permanently blocking Shadow and the library portal. Mera's vision doubles over and fire erupts across her body. Shadow bursts in with Reece and Lucien. Mera steps off the platform, landing amid flames that mirror Shadow's own. As their eyes meet, Mera recognizes that Shadow concealed the truth about Dannie's fate, making him her enemy as much as the pack. The novel ends with Mera poised as a flame-wreathed threat that Shadow never saw coming.