Rebel Reborn

Chapter Three: Choreography

REBEL

The door opened again without the courtesy of a knock.

The man who entered first was large — barrel-chested, broad-shouldered, with the kind of face that had probably been handsome twenty years ago. Now it had settled into something harder and more territorial. He moved through the room like he owned it, which I supposed he did.

It was the Alpha. Lily’s adoptive father. Gryphon.

Behind him came the mother, all anxious energy and expensive perfume, and behind her—

Eva. The lost daughter that had been recently, miraculously found and returned.

She had her mother’s coloring — ash blonde hair, pale skin — but her father’s features, which had not translated as elegantly to a feminine face. There was something slightly off-center about her prettiness, like a picture hung not-quite straight. She moved differently from both parents. Carefully, with small, measured movements. She had a studied softness that my eye read as performance.

Like a choreographed ballet.

I stored that observation and kept my face neutral.

“Lily, how could you do such a thing?” The mother’s voice was a practiced wail. “Thank heavens your brother found you before anyone else saw. What would people say?”

I looked at her. She had not asked if I was in pain. She had not asked what had brought me to the rafters with a rope or whether I needed anything, or how I was feeling now. She had walked into a room where her daughter had nearly died and her first instinct was the social consequences.

My adoptive father’s face was a study in controlled irritation. “Really, Lily, you must stop acting out and trying to draw attention to yourself. I know these last few weeks have been tumultuous with your sister’s return, but there is no need for such theatrics.” He said the word theatrics the way men said it when they meant inconvenience. “Eva has returned to us, and it is a joyous occasion. We are not disowning you. You are still our daughter.”

The words had the quality of a statement prepared in advance. Reasonable. Measured. Entirely beside the point.

“Yes, sister.” Eva’s voice was soft, almost musical, with a warmth in it that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Please don’t be jealous. You will always hold a special place in our parents’ hearts.” A small pause, perfectly timed. “And as for Adrian — please don’t blame him. He is as shocked and confused as everyone right now.”

Her lips curved at the edges. Just slightly. Just enough.

I said nothing. I just watched and took the measure of this Alpha family.

I was a spectator here, unencumbered by Lily’s twenty years of longing for these people’s approval. I could see them clearly in a way the original Lily never could have — a mother performing grief without feeling it, the father performing reassurance without meaning it, Eva performing concern while her eyes stayed sharp and taunting above that careful smile.

“Try to be good,” the mother pleaded. I wondered, as I suspected the original Lily had wondered many times, when she had ever been bad.

I rubbed my raw neck slowly, letting them watch me do it. “We certainly wouldn’t want anyone to think the Alpha shows favoritism amongst his four children,” I said quietly.

The silence that followed had a texture to it.

My father’s eyes narrowed slightly. He wasn’t sure what he’d just heard — whether it was the traumatized girl being difficult, or something else entirely. He hadn’t decided yet.

My eldest brother had not yet made an appearance. Stephen was the heir. The one child the Alpha truly invested in. The rest of us — Tristan with his omega mother, me with my absent bloodline, and apparently even Eva, for all the fuss being made over her return — were mere furniture. Present. Occasionally in the way.

They left as abruptly as they’d arrived, without asking once whether I was really okay, without a single question about the bruising on my neck or the state of my mind or whether I had eaten or slept or what I might need going forward.

Eva paused in the doorway.

She turned back, and for a moment her expression was unreadable — something menacing moved behind her eyes. Then the soft smile returned, practiced and precise.

“If I were you,” she said pleasantly, “I’d be so humiliated I’d never come out of my room again.”

She slipped away into the hallway.

The silence she left behind had a different quality than the one before. Heavier. More honest.

Beside me, Tamara was trembling. Her face had gone red from the effort of containing her fury — genuine and unperformed, the kind that came from years of watching someone you loved be diminished by people who should have known better.

“That woman,” she said, her voice tight and low, “is bad.”

I looked at the empty doorway for a moment.

“Yes,” I agreed. “She is.”

I leaned back against the pillows and stared at the canopy and let the shape of this family settle around me like a blueprint. The Alpha who looked through people. The Luna who loved selectively and loudly. The heir no one had introduced me to yet. The bastard son who saved lives no one thanked him for saving. The returned daughter with her careful smile and her sharp eyes.

I was sure there were more pieces I hadn’t discovered yet.

I closed my eyes. My neck burned. My throbbing head was full of someone else’s half-remembered grief.

One thing at a time, I told myself.

“Tamara,” I called out. Immediately I felt her close to my bedside, even though my eyes were still closed.

“Yes, Miss Lily?”

“Please help me get out of this hideous wedding dress.”