You Wanted Me Too Late, Alpha

0006: Walking Out Alone

ANNA'S POV

The weekly elders' dinner was not something I had been invited to in six years. I found out about it the way I found out about most things in this house — by staying still in rooms where people forgot I was there.

The senior elders of Blue Moon Pack convened every third Thursday in the formal dining room. Luca always attended. His Luna, in theory, should have sat beside him. No one had ever told me so. I had never asked.

At half past seven, Luca appeared at the door of the small sitting room where I'd settled with a book I wasn't reading.

"The elders' dinner is in thirty minutes."

I looked up. "I know."

He paused. "You should come."

Two words. No performance in them. No warmth yet, either. Nothing else showed. Six years overdue, offered now because he'd given his word.

I closed the book. "Ten minutes."

I chose the dress carefully. Deep water blue — the color a woman wears to be read as an equal, not as decoration. I put my hair up. Checked the mirror once. Calm looked back at me. Ready looked back at me.

At eight we walked the corridor together. A servant paused mid-step. A junior pack member flattened himself against the wall to let us pass, eyes wide. Six years of invisibility ended in a single doorway.

The dining room went quiet in sections, near to far, faces rearranging themselves for company. Seven elders at the long table. Beta Logan's eyes reached mine before anyone else's did, and he gave one careful nod. I didn't know what it meant. I was glad for it anyway.

Luca pulled out my chair.

I hadn't predicted that. It was clean, unhesitating, decided somewhere before we'd entered the room. I sat. He sat beside me.

Elder Cain — eldest, broadest, oldest claim on that seat — looked at me across the white linen.

"Luna." Just the title. Nothing behind it.

"Elder Cain." I gave him the same, and looked at my fork.

The table moved through border disputes, supply routes. I said nothing, because tonight wasn't that kind of night. Six years of ledgers and conversations held in rooms where people forgot I was listening had taught me more about this pack than anyone at that table suspected.

Then the door opened and Felicia came in.

Gray dress. Hair down. She knew this room — that was clear from the doorway, the ease of someone who'd been walking into it since before I existed to this pack. She landed her laugh in exactly the right place. Two elders greeted her before she'd crossed half the floor.

"Luca," she said. It came out easy, like his name lived in her mouth rent-free.

I didn't turn to look at him. At the edge of my vision his shoulders shifted — a fraction, toward her voice — and caught themselves half a second later. He was smooth about it. I still saw it.

I reached for my water glass.

She took the seat at the far end. Not beside him. Directly in his line of sight.

Midway through the second course, Cain set down his fork.

"I'll be honest, Luna." He let the pause run long. "Six years without you at this table. One might question whether tonight represents genuine interest in pack affairs, or whether it's simply a feature of the current—" He let that sit too. "—arrangement."

The table went still.

I opened my mouth. Luca got there first.

"She wasn't invited."

Quiet. To his plate. Then he set the fork down and looked at Cain straight on.

"She wasn't invited for six years. That's not a reflection of her interest in this pack. That's a failure of this table, and mine."

Cain's jaw worked once. He said nothing more. Two elders found the tablecloth suddenly interesting. One looked at me.

I looked at my plate. My hands stayed flat against my thighs under the linen. I made them stay there.

Dessert came. The talk resumed, careful now, on safer ground. Felicia had gone quiet since Luca spoke. I could feel her watching from the far end of the table. Every time I glanced up, she was looking somewhere else.

She rose before the last plates cleared. Crossed to Luca's end with her wine glass and stopped behind his shoulder — not beside him. Behind.

"You look tired." She reached out, brushed something from his collar. Lint. Nothing. A gesture practiced enough to still believe it had the right.

He didn't step back. He didn't step toward her either. He stayed exactly where he was, and that was its own answer.

His hand closed against the tablecloth. He didn't move.

Drop it, I thought. Drop the glass.

She said something quiet. He answered. She smiled and went back to her seat.

I set my water glass down too carefully.

The elders filed out in pairs. Logan paused beside me on his way, held my gaze a moment — something careful in it, older than sympathy — and moved on without a word.

Luca stood. I stood.

"We should go."

We started for the door.

Felicia's breath caught sharp. Her heel skidded on the stone. Her hand flew to her temple, the color dropping out of her face all at once, and her knees went.

She grabbed the table edge. She would have gone down if Luca hadn't already crossed the three steps between them, his arm around her waist, pulling her up before the floor could take her. Her head dropped to his shoulder. Her fingers found his shirt and twisted in.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, I don't know what—the room just—"

Cain was on his feet. Two others moved in.

I was at the door.

Three feet behind me he held her, her hand still fisted in his shirt, her eyes half-closed. Voices layered over each other. Bodies shifted toward the crisis.

No one's eyes came to the doorway.

"Cain. Get the healer."

He went.

I stood in my deep water blue dress with my hair pinned up and my hands at my sides, and the room was full of people, and not one of them found me.

Felicia's eyes opened.

She found me across the elders, the table, twelve feet of stone floor — found me specifically — and for less than a second, her mouth curved.

Then she pressed back into his chest and her face went soft again.

"Anna—"

He didn't finish it. My name, reaching for something that never arrived. Felicia made a small sound against his shoulder and his attention went back to her, all of it, at once.

I turned and walked out.

The corridor was cold and empty. My footsteps rang on the stone. I kept my head up and my hands at my sides. I did not go fast. I hadn't run from anything in this house in six years, and I wasn't starting on the floor Felicia had just claimed for herself.

Behind me, through the open door — his voice.

"I'll stay with her until the healer arrives."

I stopped.

She'd said something to me earlier, over his shoulder, before I knew what it meant.

You always return to what's familiar.

I put my hand flat against the wall. Cold stone, steady under my palm.

I did not go back.