Tear the Alpha's Vow

The band was midway through a cheerful tune when the side door banged open and a guard rushed in, pale and sweating. Diana's hand stopped halfway to her wine. Beside her, her father—Beta Charles—gave a small nod to calm the nearby guests. The hall quieted at once. The guard's voice cracked. “Alpha—Miss Victoria is on the suspension bridge. She climbed the railing. She says she'll jump unless you go." Every head turned to Nicholas. For a second, his face went stark. The stem of his wineglass snapped against the table as his hand jerked; red splashed across the linen. A few guests gasped. He set the broken glass down, drew a breath, and the moment of raw alarm vanished like a coin palmed out of sight. Nicholas stood. His suit was dark, his expression steady again. “It's our wedding," he said, voice even. “No one turns it into a show." The guard swallowed. “Alpha, she's shaking. The wind is—" Nicholas cut him off with a small lift of his hand. “Post men along the bank. Keep the path clear. If she's bluffing, it ends there. If she isn't…" He glanced toward the doors, then back at the full room and the elders seated near the dais. “We do not let demands run this pack." A buzz rolled through the hall. Someone near the cake whispered, “Firm. That's an Alpha." Another guest said, “Hard choice, but he has a Luna to honor." Two elder matrons nodded to each other. “He loves his bride," one murmured. “He won't be tugged by dramatics." A young warrior added louder than he meant to, “Responsible man. He'll hold the line." Eyes drifted to Diana—admiring, sympathetic, a little envious. A group of girls near the musicians sighed as if they were watching a scene from a story they wanted for themselves. “Lucky Luna," one said. “He's completely devoted." Diana kept a pleasant curve to her mouth. She even lifted a napkin to help Nicholas dab the spilled wine from his fingers. Inside, she laughed once, silently, the kind of laugh that doesn't touch the face. Only she knew this script had been spoken before. Nicholas gestured to the guard. “Go." The man nodded and ran. Simon, the steward, hurried in with a fresh glass and a cloth. Nicholas accepted both, calm restored, and addressed the room. “Please—enjoy the meal. The river has taken worse noise than this. We won't feed it with ours." Someone near the head table called out, “Say the line again, Alpha—about our Luna." Nicholas didn't miss a beat. “Our Luna is our north," he said. “Tonight is for her." A wave of warm approval swung back to Diana like heat from an open oven. Beta Charles stood and clasped Nicholas's shoulder once. “Order first," he said. “It's right." Diana touched her father's sleeve. He gave her a quick, proud look that filled nearby guests with more talk—about her steady upbringing, about the good match, about how the Alpha and the Beta's house would guide the pack for years. Praise wrapped the moment in neat paper. Diana let it. She knew what was under the paper. The band picked up the tune again. Servers moved. Toasts resumed. It looked like a wedding that had hit a bump and ridden over it without spilling anyone's drink. That was exactly the picture Nicholas wanted. He sat, the calm center of a room that studied him for cues, and he gave them none but normalcy. He leaned toward her. “I'm sorry for the interruption." “It wasn't you," she said. He searched her face for judgment and seemed relieved to find none. “Good. Tonight is ours." “Of course," Diana said, and clinked her new glass lightly to his. Guests relaxed further. Someone at the far table laughed too loudly at a joke. The tension snapped and curled like ribbon. No one here knew Diana had already watched this scene play out in another life. No one knew the next beats either. In that life, after the guard's report, the room had tried to pretend the river didn't exist. Then came the scream from the gorge, then the rush of footsteps, then the hard, ugly silence that follows water. Victoria had jumped. Sympathy had rushed to Nicholas like moths to a porch light. He had been gentle, and the world had named the gentleness goodness. Two years later, when accusations landed on Beta Charles, that same gentleness had become a steady, cold blade. A server poured champagne. “To the first dance," she said, bright as the glass in her hand. Diana stood with Nicholas when the steward called for a toast. He raised his glass to the elders, to the pack, to a future with clearer seasons and safer borders. People nodded at the right words in the right order. Diana smiled at the right places. She felt the band's rhythm through the floorboards. She could count down to midnight and name each detail that would still look perfect then. “Luna," one of the matrons said as she passed, “you've married a man who knows his duty and his heart. You're blessed." “Thank you," Diana said. The word left her mouth as evenly as a coin leaves a banker's hand. The music changed. A cousin shouted that the cake was too beautiful to cut. The chef pretended to disagree. Children ran, were caught, and laughed anyway. It was all very normal, and it would have convinced anyone who hadn't already learned what normal can hide. Nicholas kept the conversation light. He asked her if the sleeves were comfortable, if the shoes were hurting, if the food was to her liking. He played the attentive groom, and he was good at it. He had always been good at whatever a room needed from him. Diana watched him from a half-inch farther back than she had the first time she lived this day. She answered simply. “The sleeves are fine." “The shoes are fine." “The food is fine." She did not volunteer the extra sweetness people add when they're trying to earn safety. Someone started the chant for a kiss. Nicholas obliged with a quick, careful brush of his mouth to hers. The hall erupted in cheers. The band added a flourish. He smiled down at her like a promise. Around them, envy curled like smoke. Only she did not breathe it in. A few minutes later, a junior warrior slipped in to whisper to the steward. The steward glanced at Nicholas and then shook his head—no message was carried to the head table. That, too, matched the old scene: news kept away so the room could keep pretending. Diana's gaze went soft, not with romance, but with memory. It unfolded with the clarity of numbers on a page: The south gate at dawn. Heavy boots outside the house. A rap on the door that made the glasses on the sideboard chime. Men in the Alpha's colors stepping into the foyer like they had practiced it. The captain reading from a paper he did not deserve to hold. “By order of the Alpha…" Her mother's hand slipped into her father's. That was the last gentle thing in the room. Diana had moved, fast enough to trip on the rug. “There's a mistake," she said. “Nicholas will fix it. I'll go to him now." The captain didn't look at her. “Beta Charles is to be taken into custody for questioning." “For what?" her father asked, voice calm in the way a good man's voice stays calm in front of his child. The captain named a charge Diana had never thought could be attached to their family. The words sounded like rusted metal dropped onto a clean table. Diana stepped between her father and the men. “You won't touch him." She didn't know what she meant to do next. She just knew she had to slow the scene down long enough for Nicholas to appear and stop it. That was how it worked, she believed. She said, “I'm the Luna." “Not relevant," one of the guards muttered. Her mother squeezed her shoulder. “We will explain this," her mother said. “Fetch Nicholas." Diana turned to run to the door, and two men moved at once. One blocked her with a forearm across her path—not cruel, just solid. The other reached for her father's wrists. Her mother pleaded for decency; the captain told her to step aside. The house, polished and bright, watched like a polite stranger. Diana shoved the blocking arm with both hands. “Move." She got as far as the threshold before a hard palm to her shoulder spun her off-balance. She fell. The floor knocked the breath from her. “Careful," someone said, bored. “She's the Luna." She scrambled up, dizzy, and then froze as the door opened again. More guards. More papers. Her father's hands were bound. Her mother was pulled away from him with a mechanical efficiency that had no malice and no mercy. Diana tried to push through the bodies. A boot slid her back without looking at her face. “Stop," she said. “You can't do this. I'll speak to him." The captain nodded to the men at the stairs. “Take them." “Stop!" she said, louder now. “I'll speak to the Alpha. He'll—" The nearest guard finally met her eyes. His were flat with fatigue. “It's the Alpha's order," he said, voice as cold and simple as a key turning in a lock. Everything after that became noise: leather creaking, rope scratching, her mother saying her name, her father telling her to breathe. She shouted something; she didn't remember the words as soon as she made them. The door wrenched open and swallowed her parents. The captain signed a line on a clipboard. The house went back to being a house. That was where memory ended, clean as a cut. Now, back in the hall, a server jostled a tray and apologized to Diana with a quick, nervous smile. The bandleader lifted his bow for the first dance. Someone called for more champagne. The guard who had brought the bridge news stood near the exit, eyes on the floor. Nicholas touched Diana's back lightly, the contact barely there. “Ready?" he asked, meaning the dance, the night, the life. “Ready," she said, and stepped with him into the center of the room.