Second Chance for the Discarded Luna

Chapter Seven

The gates of Ravenspire closed behind us with a sound I felt in my chest more than I heard with my ears, deep and final, like something in me finally allowed itself to unclench after three years of holding its breath.

Word had clearly traveled faster than we had. The courtyard was already full by the time our horses slowed, guards and stewards and half the household staff gathered along the steps, and at the center of them, standing perfectly still in a way that told me he'd been standing there since Kellan first sent word, was my father.

The Alpha King did not run to greet anyone. He never had, not even when I was a child scraping my knees on the training grounds. But something in the way he watched me dismount, the way his jaw tightened when I finally stepped into the torchlight and he saw my face clearly for the first time in three years, told me he had already guessed most of what happened before I said a single word.

"Elena." My name in his mouth carried none of its usual formality.

"Father." My voice cracked on the single syllable, and that was apparently all it took, because he closed the distance between us in three long strides and pulled me into an embrace that smelled exactly like I remembered, cedar and old parchment and something underneath it that was simply him.

"I should have gone myself the moment Kellan sent word," he said against the top of my head. "I should never have let you stay in that pack as long as I did."

"You didn't know," I said, though the words felt hollow even as I said them, because some part of me suspected he had known more than he'd ever told me.

He pulled back to look at me properly, hands still gripping my shoulders, and whatever he saw in my face made something harden behind his eyes. "We'll speak of everything," he said. "Tonight, if you're able. Tomorrow, if you're not. But first you're going to eat something and sleep in a bed that isn't shaking with every step of a horse, and no one in this kingdom is going to demand a single thing from you until you've had both."

I hadn't realized how badly I needed permission to simply stop until he gave it to me. My legs nearly buckled right there in the courtyard, exhaustion finally catching up to three days of travel and two nights of no real sleep, and Kellan was at my side in an instant, one arm sliding around my waist before I could fully register I was swaying.

"I've got her," he told our father, and together they walked me up the steps and through halls I hadn't seen in three years, past portraits and tapestries that felt both achingly familiar and strangely foreign, like visiting a dream I'd had a long time ago.

My old room had been kept exactly as I left it.

I stood in the doorway for a long moment, staring at the bed with its pale blue coverlet, the small writing desk by the window where I used to compose letters home that never once mentioned how tired I was of pretending, the shelf of books I'd read a dozen times each as a girl. Someone had kept fresh flowers in the vase on the windowsill. I didn't ask who. I suspected I already knew.

"You don't have to talk about any of it tonight," Kellan said quietly, lingering in the doorway while a maid I didn't recognize helped draw a bath. "But I'm not leaving this hallway until you're asleep, so don't try to convince me otherwise."

I managed something close to a laugh, thin and worn but real. "Some things haven't changed."

"Some things shouldn't," he said, and there was an edge under the words that told me exactly how close his temper still was to the surface, even now, even with me safely home.

The bath helped more than I expected. I sank into the water and let it draw the road dust and the smell of Blackthorn out of my skin, scrubbing at my arms harder than necessary, as though I could wash away the memory of that courtyard along with the dirt. When I finally climbed into my old bed, sheets soft and cool against skin that had grown used to sleeping half-alert for months, I thought I might lie awake replaying every insult Marcus had thrown at me.

Instead I slept, deep and dreamless, for the first time in longer than I could remember.

I woke to sunlight slanting through the window and the quiet murmur of voices in the hallway outside my door. For a disoriented moment I thought I was still at Blackthorn, and my whole body tensed before the familiar shape of my old room settled back into place around me and the tension drained back out.

Kellan was in the small sitting room adjoining my chambers when I finally emerged, a plate of untouched breakfast in front of him, clearly having been sitting there for some time.

"You look like you actually slept," he said, relief plain in his voice.

"I did." I sat across from him, and for the first time since the courtyard at Blackthorn, hunger actually registered as something worth acting on. I reached for a piece of bread and realized my hands had stopped shaking sometime in the night. "Where's Father?"

"Meeting with the council. Word of what happened at Blackthorn is already spreading, and not the version you'd want spreading." His jaw tightened. "He's deciding how much of the truth to release and how much to hold back until he's spoken with you properly."

"I don't want a war fought over this," I said again, the same thing I'd told him on the ride home, and I meant it just as much now in the daylight as I had in the dark.

"That's not entirely your decision to make anymore," Kellan said, not unkindly, but firmly. "You're not just my sister who got hurt by a bad marriage, Elena. You're a princess of this kingdom, and what Blackthorn did to you is an insult to the crown. Father has to respond to that, whether you want a war or not."

I set down the bread, appetite souring slightly. "And what does responding look like?"

"Diplomatically, for now." He softened, seeing something in my face. "He's not marching an army to Blackthorn's gates, if that's what you're afraid of. Not yet. But he's not going to let this go unanswered either. You're too important for that."

I wanted to tell him I didn't feel important. I felt tired, and raw, and unmoored in a way three years of careful discipline hadn't prepared me for, standing in a home that still fit around me like an old coat but no longer quite matched the person I'd become inside it.

There was a knock at the door before I could find a way to say any of that. A young woman I didn't recognize stepped in and bowed, deference in every line of her posture.

"Your Highness. Healer Talia asks if you'd be willing to see her this morning. Your father requested it."

Kellan's eyes flicked to mine, something careful in his expression, and I understood in that instant that he already suspected part of what I hadn't told him yet, the thing I'd been carrying quietly since the night everything fell apart, the thing that made the road home feel even heavier than the humiliation itself.

"Tell her I'll come," I said, and my voice came out steadier than I expected, even as something in my chest tightened at the thought of what that appointment might confirm.

Kellan didn't press me for details. He simply reached across the table and squeezed my hand once, the way he used to when we were children and one of us was about to face something the other couldn't fix.

"Whatever it is," he said quietly, "you're not facing it alone this time."

I believed him. For the first time in three years, I actually believed someone meant that.