The Queen They Left For Dead

The moon ceremony was supposed to be sacred. Five years ago, under this same moon, Damian pulled me against him in front of the whole pack and said the bond words like he meant them. His hands were shaking. I remember that. I used to think it was romantic, a big Alpha like him shaking just from touching me. I was wrong about a lot of things back then. Tonight I stood in that same clearing and none of it felt sacred. It felt like a courtroom. Like I was already guilty and just waiting to hear the sentence. "Kneel," Damian said. I looked at him properly for the first time in months. I used to know every line of his face. Now I just saw a stranger wearing it. I gave him five years. My body. My loyalty. A son who reaches for another woman when he falls down, because she's the one who's always there now, not me. "Kneel," he said again. No warmth in it this time. Just an order. Vera stood next to him in furs that used to be mine. Her chin was up, proud, the way I used to hold mine before I learned pride wasn't allowed here. "She's the true princess," Damian said, loud enough for everyone. "Not you. She was always meant to stand here." Someone behind me gasped. I didn't turn around to see who. I felt calm. Too calm. Like I was watching this happen to somebody else. "Then let her have it," I said. Something crossed his face. Not quite guilt. Not enough to stop him, whatever it was. "The ceremony needs a blood offering," he said. "One bond closes. Another opens." I understood right before Vera's claws came out. I thought about him tracing shapes on my palm in bed, both of us pretending the feud outside didn't exist. I thought about my son's laugh. I thought I should have run three months ago, the night I felt the bond between us go quiet and told nobody, because some stupid part of me still hoped it could be fixed. Vera's hand closed around my throat. "You should have stayed weeping," she said, low, just for me. "Weeping women don't fight back." I looked past her at Damian. He didn't look away. Good. Let him watch. The moon just sat there. It didn't care either way. The last thing I felt was the ground under my back, and something strange waking up underneath my ribs, right where the bond used to be. I woke up to moonlight. Different moon. Colder. I was in the same clearing, except it wasn't the same. Older trees. No pack. No Damian. No wound on my throat. I touched my neck. Nothing there. I checked again, expecting to find where the cut should be. Still nothing. I sat up. The forest was too quiet, like it was waiting to see what I'd do next. I reached for the bond in my chest, out of habit more than anything. It wasn't there. Not quiet. Gone. Like a room that isn't there anymore because the house burned down around it. Something else was there instead. New. Old, somehow, at the same time. Patient, like it had been waiting a long time for me to finally notice it. I put my hand flat on the ground. The ground didn't do anything dramatic. It just felt right, the way putting a key in the right lock feels right. I didn't know what I was yet. But I knew, the way you just know things sometimes, that the woman who apologized for taking up space in that pack, the one who cried in bathrooms so nobody would hear her. she was actually dead now. Whatever woke up in that clearing wasn't her. He's going to wish he let me stay dead, I thought, and got up off the ground.