Second Chance for the Discarded Luna

Chapter Four

I stood at the window of the guest house long before the sun had fully cleared the ridge, looking out at what used to be my garden. The soil was still torn up in ragged patches where the roses had been, dark and raw against the pale morning light. She had taken my mate. She had taken my bed. Now she had taken the garden too.

No. I straightened my shoulders and made myself breathe slow through the ache in my chest. She had not taken my title. Whatever else Marcus stripped from me, I was still Luna of this pack, blessed by the Moon Goddess herself, and no amount of hibiscus was going to change the blood in my veins.

I left the window and made my way toward the main kitchen, telling myself a cup of tea might settle the storm still turning over in my stomach.

She was already there.

Lyra stood by the hearth in a thin nightgown that did nothing to cover her, the fabric slipping off one shoulder, baring more skin than any decent wolf would show in a shared kitchen at this hour. I nearly turned around and walked back out. Then I saw it.

The mark. Fresh, dark, unmistakable, sitting right at the curve of her neck where a mate bite belonged.

The words left me before I had decided to speak them. "Did he mark you?"

She turned slowly, deliberately, tilting her head so the wound caught the firelight and I couldn't pretend not to see it clearly. "Yes." Her smile was slow and satisfied, savoring every second of my face. "He said I was irresistible. Gave it to me himself last night."

Something in me went very quiet and very still, the way the forest goes quiet right before a storm breaks.

"Don't be deceived," I said, though I wasn't entirely sure whether I was warning her or warning myself.

She laughed, low and pleased with herself, and took a step closer, close enough that I could smell him on her skin, the smoke and cedar scent that used to belong to me alone.

I turned away. If I stayed facing her one second longer I was going to do something I couldn't take back, tear into her the way every instinct in my body was screaming at me to, and whatever satisfaction that might have given me in the moment would have cost me everything I still had left to fight with. My father raised me better than to let rage make my choices for me. So I turned my back on her and reached for the kettle instead, forcing my hands to stay steady around the handle.

That was when I heard it.

A sharp gasp, then the sound of something heavy hitting the stone floor.

I spun around and Lyra was on the ground, curled on her side with both hands pressed hard against her stomach, her face twisted in pain, a low moan tearing out of her that didn't sound performed at all. For one frozen second I just stood there, kettle still in my hand, trying to make sense of what I was looking at.

I hadn't touched her. I hadn't come anywhere near her.

"Someone help her," I heard myself say, though my voice sounded strange and far away even to my own ears.

Footsteps thundered down the hall before I'd finished the sentence, fast, heavy, the kind of run that only comes from a wolf hearing his mate in distress even through stone walls. Marcus burst through the kitchen doorway, chest heaving, and his eyes went straight to Lyra crumpled on the floor before they snapped up to find me standing over her with the kettle still trembling in my grip.

"What have you done," he said.

It wasn't a question. It came out flat and certain, already a verdict, already a sentence passed before I had said a single word in my own defense. I watched his eyes move from my face to my hands to the kettle and back again, watched him build an entire story in the space of three seconds, and none of the story had room in it for the truth.

"I didn't touch her," I said. "Marcus, I swear on the Moon Goddess herself, I did not lay a hand on her."

He wasn't listening. He was already on his knees beside Lyra, gathering her against his chest, murmuring to her in the same soft voice he used to use on me back when he still thought I was worth being gentle with. She let out another moan, softer this time, and buried her face against his shoulder like she was too fragile to even hold her own head up.

"She was fine a moment ago," I said, and I hated how thin my own voice sounded, how much it sounded like pleading. "I turned my back to make tea. I heard her fall. That's all I know."

"You've hated her since the day she walked through those gates," Marcus said, not even looking at me now, all his attention fixed on the woman in his arms. "Everyone in this pack heard what you said to her yesterday in the garden. You threatened her."

"I did not threaten her." My hands had curled into fists at my sides without my permission. "I told her the truth about herself. There's a difference."

"Get out," he said.

Two words. Flat, final, exactly the same tone he'd used the night he stood in the courtyard and gave me his two impossible choices. I looked down at Lyra, at the careful way her eyes were shut, at the strange stillness in her face that didn't quite match the sounds she was still making, low and rhythmic, almost too even to be real pain.

Something about it didn't sit right. But I had no proof, no witness, nothing but a feeling crawling up the back of my neck, and Marcus wasn't in any state to hear it even if I found the words.

"Fine," I said, and my voice came out steadier than I had any right to feel. "I'll go. But when the truth comes out, Marcus, and it will, I want you to remember this moment. I want you to remember that you chose her word over three years of mine without even asking me what happened."

He didn't answer. He was already carrying her out of the kitchen, cradling her like something precious and breakable, and I stood alone by the cold hearth with the kettle still clutched in my hand, listening to his footsteps fade down the hall and understanding, with a bitter kind of clarity, that I had just lost whatever ground I had left to stand on in this pack.