What do you do when you catch your sister with your mate?
That was exactly how I felt ... standing frozen in the doorway of the library, watching my half-sister riding the man I was betrothed to.
I should have known Draven wasn’t someone who could be trusted.
It was the Mating Festival of Morvaine. Every year, betrothed mates were expected to complete their mate bond during the festival ... a sacred tradition that had stood longer than any living wolf could remember.
I had never been a love person. Never loved, never been loved. I had been rejected more times than I cared to count, treated as though I didn’t exist. Every eye, every celebration, every drop of attention always found its way to Astrid ... my sister from another mother.
I found my solace in the kingdom’s library. Between the towering shelves, surrounded by old parchment and the smell of worn leather, I felt something close to peace. That day, Cipher ... the head librarian ... had sent me to retrieve a developmental science textbook from the far end of the hall.
The Mating Festival was in full swing outside, and I was in here, reading.
My plan had been simple ... go out later in the evening to meet my mate. Or better still, he could come find me himself.
That was before everything fell apart.
I heard the sounds first. A soft, breathless moan that didn’t belong anywhere near a library. My steps slowed as I neared the door at the end of the corridor ... half open, the light beyond it dim and warm.
Then I saw them.
Astrid. And Draven.
She was riding him ... my mate ... like he belonged to her. Both of them bare, skin flushed, so lost in each other that the rest of the world had ceased to exist. Her voice floated out in hushed, urgent sounds. "Yes ... yes, Draven ... ah ... more, more, please."
I stood there. Frozen.
It felt like lightning had cracked through the centre of me. My eyes refused to believe what they were seeing, even as every detail burned itself into my memory.
The book slipped from my hands.
It hit the floor with a sharp sound ... loud enough to shatter the silence. Loud enough to drag two people back from wherever they had gone.
"Who’s there?"
Draven’s voice came out sharp and cold. I didn’t wait for anything else. I turned and ran.
His footsteps followed. Heavy. Fast. I could hear him behind me as I ducked around shelves, pressing into corners, making myself small in the dark spaces between the stacks. He called out as he searched.
"I’ll find you. You can’t keep running from me."
I stayed still. I stayed silent. And then a blow landed at the back of my skull.
I spun around ... and received another one.
It was Astrid. She had come around the other way.
"Here she is," she said, grabbing me. "It’s Selene."
Draven appeared from between the shelves, fully dressed now. He crossed the space between us in a few long strides and crouched down in front of me, bringing his face level with mine. His eyes were steady. Calculating.
"So it’s you," he said.
He already knew what was at stake. Being caught breaking the rules of mating was no small thing ... it was a violation that could cost him everything.
"I know what you saw." His voice dropped low. "I love your sister. And what you just witnessed was..." He let the sentence hang, then looked me dead in the eye. "You didn’t see anything. Do you understand me?"
I nodded.
I couldn’t find words. I was too afraid of what he would do if I tried.
"We should kill her," Astrid said, her voice flat and certain. "We can’t risk this getting out."
My eyes went wide. The world tilted under me. They were going to kill me ... and no one would know. The entire pack was outside, lost in the festival. Cipher was too far away. There was no one who would hear me.
"I won’t say anything," I whispered. "Please ... I promise."
Astrid’s palm cracked across my cheek before I finished the sentence.
"Shut up."
Draven glanced at her, then back at me. Something shifted in his expression ... not mercy. Something colder. Calculation. "I don’t think she has a loud mouth," he said slowly. "But I can’t just leave her."
Then ... sound. From the back of the library.
Footsteps. The dragging scrape of a mop bucket.
Zane.
He appeared from around the corner, thin and unremarkable in his worn cleaning uniform. His eyes took in the scene in an instant ... Astrid gripping my arm, Draven looming over me, the fear written all over my face.
He grabbed the mop handle and swung it without hesitation.
"Leave her alone."
His voice cracked on the last word. He was terrified ... I could see it in the way his hands trembled ... but he didn’t step back.
Zane had never been anything more to me than a quiet presence in the library. He cleaned. He glanced at me sometimes. He always said hello first, and I always replied. That was the whole of what I knew about him.
I hadn’t known he would die for me.
Draven looked at him. Just looked at him, the way a wolf looks at something it doesn’t consider a threat. Then, slowly, he turned to face him.
Zane bolted.
He didn’t make it three steps.
Draven reached into his jacket, drew the pistol, screwed on the silencer with practiced ease, and fired once.
The sound was barely anything ... a soft, muffled crack.
Zane dropped to the floor and didn’t move again.
I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t look away. The blood spreading beneath him seemed unreal, too dark, too much ... and the silence that followed was the worst thing I had ever heard.
He just looked at me. He always looked at me. He said hello first.
Draven turned the gun toward me.
I squeezed my eyes shut. The prayer formed somewhere inside me, not in words but in desperation ... moon goddess, please. In my next life, let me know love. Let me know what it feels like to matter. Let my mother still be alive. Let me have a childhood where someone sees me.
Something hard connected with the side of my head.
Then nothing.
When I opened my eyes, I didn’t know how much time had passed.
There was blood on my shirt. A gun in my hand. And a ring of people standing around me, staring.
"She’s awake," a she-wolf said.
Hands grabbed me and yanked me upright before I could speak.
A soldier stepped forward, expression hard. "You are under arrest for the murder of Zane, library cleaner of the Bloodmoon Pack."
The cuffs snapped around my wrists.
I looked around the room ... at the overturned shelf, at Zane’s body covered now with a cloth, at the blood I was supposed to have spilled. Draven was gone. Astrid was gone. The festival had ended while I was unconscious, and the world had rearranged itself neatly against me.
Cipher watched from across the room as they led me away. His face was unreadable, but his eyes followed me all the way to the door. I saw what lived in them.
Pity.
They took me to the holding counter to await trial. I sat there alone for a long time before I heard the doors open.
My parents.
Caden and Lyra Ironheart walked in side by side. Ever since my birth mother died, my father had never once called me daughter ... not in public, not in private, not even in the moments when I had stood before him begging for it with my silence. I simply existed inside his house.
My father sat down across from me. The look on his face said everything before he opened his mouth ... it said he had already decided.
My stepmother didn’t look at me at all. "They said you killed someone," she said, arranging her hands in her lap. "You know what punishment follows."
"I didn’t kill anyone. I was ..."
"Don’t." My father’s voice cut through mine like a blade. "This is not the time to start defending yourself."
"You see what happens when you refuse to stay home?" my stepmother said. "You brought this on yourself."
I looked at them both ... really looked at them ... and felt the last small hope I had been carrying dissolve.
Even now, the thought wasn’t I need them to believe me. The thought was: why did I ever think they would?
"You have disgraced the Ironheart name," my father said.
The tears came without warning. They broke through every wall I had spent years building, and I couldn’t stop them.
My parents stood, straightened their clothes, and left.
The council chamber was full when they brought me in.
Alpha Roran of the Bloodmoon Pack presided over the trial with the elders ranged behind him. He was not a cruel man ... everyone knew he had no taste for cruelty ... but he had never once let justice bend, and there was nowhere for it to bend in my favor now.
A biometric scanner captured my face. My identity was logged. Evidence was presented ... blood-stained clothes, the weapon, my proximity to the body.
"This she-wolf," Roran said, his voice filling the chamber, "stands accused of the murder of Zane, cleaner of the Bloodmoon library. The evidence is clear."
The crowd stirred.
"She is found guilty ... and by the power vested in me as Alpha of this pack, I hereby sentence her to ..."
"You will not be sentencing her to anything."
The voice fell over the chamber like a stone dropped into still water.
Sharp. Unhurried. Absolute.
Every head turned.
He stood at the back of the chamber, framed by the entrance, his presence alone enough to silence a room full of wolves. He was tall, broad-shouldered, dressed in the dark colors of the Winterwood Pack. His jaw was set. His eyes were fixed on me.
Lucian Thornveil.
Alpha King of the Winterwood Pack.
"Hold your judgement, Alpha," he said, stepping forward. "I have something to say."