You Have 30days To Reject Me

Isolde's POV "Thirty days." Kastor's voice echoed through the council hall before I'd even reached my seat. I stopped walking. Forty pairs of eyes turned toward me, and not one of them belonged to a friend. "Would you like to repeat that," I said, "or should I guess what you mean?" "You heard me." He stood at the head of the hall in his ceremonial coat, the silver Thornwood crest stitched across the collar catching the torchlight. "The council has reached a decision. Selene Voss is my true mate. The bond confirmed itself two nights ago." Somewhere behind me, a pack member shifted their weight, and the floorboard groaned under it. Nobody else made a sound. "Congratulations," I said. My voice came out steadier than I expected. "I assume that's not why you called this session." "You have thirty days." Kastor said it like a line he'd rehearsed in a mirror, which he probably had. "To accept formal rejection. Or I mark you myself, and you remain Luna in title only while Selene takes the mate bond publicly." "How generous." I folded my hands in front of me so no one would see them shake. "And which of those did the council decide sounds more dignified?" "Isolde…" "No, I want to hear it. Say rejection out loud, Kastor. You've managed everything else tonight without flinching." His jaw worked, but nothing came out. His right hand clenched at his side until the knuckles went white, and he still wouldn't look at me. His storm-grey eyes stayed fixed on the crest of his coat instead, like if he stared hard enough it will answer for him. "The choice gives you dignity," Ezra said instead, from his seat at Kastor's right. Kastor's father had never once in three years looked at me without doing the math on what I cost the pack. Tonight he looked almost pleased. "A choice, Isolde. I'd advise you show gratitude that one was offered at all." "And if I refuse both?" "You can't." He said it simply, like explaining rules to a child. "There is no version of tonight where you keep him." I looked past Ezra, past the rows of pack members already leaning toward each other to whisper, and found Kastor's eyes again. For three years, I'd learned the shape of every silence he kept. I knew what it meant when he clenched his hand at his side and said nothing. I knew what it meant when his throat moved like he was swallowing words he wasn't allowed to say. I waited for him to say one of them now but he didn't. "Thirty days," I repeated. "Starting when?" "Tonight." Ezra again, already turning toward the council scribe, already treating me like a line item that had been resolved. "The council thanks you for your composure, Luna. It will be remembered." Luna. He said the word like it already belonged to someone else. I didn't wait to be dismissed. I turned and walked out of that hall with my spine straight and my hands folded, past pack members who wouldn't meet my eyes, past the heavy doors that someone shut behind me a beat too fast, like they were afraid I'd change my mind and come back screaming. I didn't stop walking until I reached the east corridor, where the torches burned low and there was no one left to perform for. I pressed my palm against the stone and breathed. Everyone had known this was coming. Selene Voss's name had been showing up in council letters for six months. Kastor had started coming home smelling like her territory weeks ago. I had told myself I was ready for it. I had practiced calm reactions in the mirror the same way he had clearly practiced his little speech. None of that mattered now, because none of it accounted for the thing currently unraveling every plan I'd made in my head. I hadn't bled in seven weeks. I'd told myself it was stress. Pack politics did strange things to a wolf's cycle, and God knew I had enough stress to explain a dozen missed ones. But three mornings ago the smell of roasted venison had turned my stomach, venison I'd eaten twice a week for three years without complaint, and something had settled low and certain in me that had nothing to do with fear of the council. "Isolde." I knew the voice before I turned. Mira. The pack's junior healer, and one of maybe three people left in Thornwood territory who still looked at me like a person instead of a political liability. "You heard," I said. "Everyone heard. I think they heard it in the next territory over." She came to stand beside me, not touching, just present. "Thirty days is cruel even for Ezra." "He didn't pick thirty because it was kind." "Isolde." Her voice dropped. "What do you need?" I turned to face her fully. Mira was younger than me by a few years, sharp-eyed, with the kind of steady hands pack members trusted with things they wouldn't tell their own mates. "I need you to not repeat what I'm about to say. Not to the council. Not to Kastor. Not to anyone." Something in her posture sharpened. "Okay." "I think I'm pregnant." The corridor went quiet enough that I could hear the council hall doors open somewhere behind us, Ezra's voice rising once in something that sounded like satisfaction. Mira didn't move for a second. Then she reached out and pressed two fingers to my wrist, checking my pulse with the kind of clinical calm that told me she was already working the problem instead of reacting to it. "How late?" "Seven weeks." "And you're telling me now, in a hallway, thirty seconds after Kastor gave you a countdown to disappear?" "I'm telling you now because I need to know exactly what I'm dealing with before I decide what to do about any of this." She didn't ask if it was Kastor's. There was no one else it could have been in three years of a marriage that had gone cold in every way except the one that apparently mattered most to my biology. She just held my wrist a second longer, like she was buying herself time to think. "Come to my office," she said. "Now, before anyone else settles in for the night and starts noticing who's awake and who isn't. I can confirm it properly there." "And if it's true?" Mira's silence lasted one beat too long for my comfort. "Mira." "There are already rumors," she said, lower now, glancing once down the corridor toward the sound of the dispersing council. "About how fast Kastor and Selene's bond was confirmed. About timing that doesn't sit right if you look closely enough. I don't know anything for certain yet. But if this is true, you cannot let anyone find out before you've decided what you're going to do with it. Not Ezra. Not Selene. Especially not Selene." Something cold slid down through my chest, the kind of feeling I'd learned to trust from years of reading rooms before they turned on me. "What do you mean, especially not Selene?" "I mean be careful who learns what, and when." She glanced over her shoulder once, then took my arm. "Follow me. Quickly, before anyone else comes through this corridor." I fell into step beside her without another word, my hand still pressed against my stomach, my mind already working faster than my feet. Behind us, faint but unmistakable, I could still hear Kastor's voice through the hall doors, low and even, already discussing logistics with his father like I was a problem that had already been solved.