The Rejected Omega is the Moon Goddess's Heir

Chapter 7

Nash's pov

I stepped through the ballroom doors, it was too bright and loud, a gathering I'd have skipped without a second thought if a treaty didn't hang on my showing up and playing along.

My eyes swept the room on instinct, marking the exits before I bothered looking for faces, and that's when I spotted him near the head table, a woman planted at his side who carried herself like she already owned the place. She had a red dress on and looked to be the center of attention.

"This is her?" I nodded toward the woman without waiting for an introduction. "The daughter marrying into Red Moon?"

Cody stepped in front of her before she could answer, his jaw tight. "No. Edith already has a mate." He said it apologetically, "The one marrying into your family is my third daughter. Chloe."

Edith's mouth curved, amused by a joke only she was in on. "Chloe's the one you're paired with, Alpha Nash. She must still be getting ready. Preparing herself properly takes longer for some of us." She smoothed her skirt, unhurried. "I'll go fetch her."

She left before I could ask anything else, and I stood there next to Cody in a silence he didn't seem interested in filling, my collar already too tight for a room this warm. I turned the wine glass someone had pressed into my hand without drinking from it.

I hadn't wanted to be here at all. I'd wanted to be out searching, but a contract was a contract, and Wylie had made her point about the alliance clearly enough that I couldn't ignore it, however much I wanted to.

Chloe's pov

Edith shoved my door open without knocking and grabbed my wrist hard enough to bruise the bruise already sitting there from two nights ago.

"Out. Now." She hauled me toward the hall before I'd even found my footing, her nails digging in through my sleeve.

I yanked my arm free. "I can walk by myself."

She let go, but she stayed close behind me the whole way down the corridor, her voice pitched low enough that only I could hear it. "Don't embarrass this pack tonight. Go see your fiancé and act like the honor isn't wasted on you."

I didn't answer her. I kept walking, my heels sinking into the runner, my pulse climbing with every step closer to the ballroom doors, until it opened up in front of me all at once, gold light and too many eyes, and there he was.

He stood taller than every other wolf in the room, broad through the shoulders in a way that made the space around him feel smaller, dark hair pushed back from a face that belonged to someone far less dangerous than the stories claimed.

My feet stopped moving on their own. I stood there in the doorway, frozen, my heart slamming against my ribs, while he crossed the floor toward me without any of the menace I'd braced for. The crowd parted around him immediately.

"Are you the youngest daughter meant to marry me?"

I breathed deeply, one slow pull of air that did nothing to steady the pounding in my chest. "I'm not the youngest. I'm the third."

"Third, fourth." He shrugged, unbothered. "Doesn't change why we're both standing here."

I didn't know what to say to that, so I said nothing. Up close, he smelled like chocolate and cinnamon, it made me calm down.

"Are you prepared to become Luna of the Red Moon pack?" he asked bluntly.

"No." The second the words left my lips, I bit my lips. "Who would be prepared for a marriage they found out about a week ago?"

The corner of his mouth pulled, close to a smile. "Fair enough. Since that's the case, let's make it official and move on."

I stared at him, trying to find the monster everyone in Twilight had warned me about somewhere in that face, and I couldn't. He wasn't gentle. He looked at me like a task he intended to finish efficiently and get back to whatever mattered more to him.

But there was no cruelty in it, no hunger for a reaction, nothing that matched the stories I'd grown up hearing about the Red Moon Alpha who killed wolves for looking at him wrong. If anything, he seemed as tired of this ballroom as I was, his eyes flicking once toward the doors like he was already counting the minutes until he could leave.

He caught my scent when he leaned in to say more, and for half a second his whole expression shifted, "Shall we?" he asked, offering his arm like this was any ordinary transaction between strangers.