BLOOD BEFORE THE BOND

Liora's POV The dress was the right choice. I had stood in front of the mirror for longer than I would ever admit, turning slightly left, then right, checking the way the blue fabric caught the light. It was fitted but not trying too hard. My hair was pinned up with two strands loose at the front, the way Kaius once mentioned he liked it, casually, like he hadn't meant to say it out loud. I have remembered it ever since. I smoothed the front of the dress one final time and told myself to stop fussing. “Ma'am, the council members have arrived.” Philip's voice came from the doorway. He had worked in the main house long enough to have seen everything twice, and he delivered information with the same steady calm whether he was announcing dinner or a fire. “Thank you, Philip.” I turned away from the mirror. “Do I look alright?” He considered me for a moment with the particular honesty of someone who had nothing to gain from flattery. “You look beautiful, Ma'am. The Alpha will be pleased.” The warmth that moved through my chest at that word was something I still wasn't entirely used to. Beautiful. In the breeder quarters, the vocabulary used by women ran along different lines: fertile, viable, suitable. Beauty was not a quality anyone there was permitted to have. It implied personhood, and personhood was inconvenient. That was before Kaius. “Thank you, Philip,” I said, picking up the small clutch I had set out earlier. “I'll head down now.” The main hall was already busy when I reached it, staff moving with the particularly focused energy of people preparing for something important. Extra chairs had been brought out. The good silverware was laid. Word had gone around that several council members were traveling back with the Alpha, which explained the formality, the low hum of anticipation running through the house like a current. I had been counting the days since Kaius left. Four of them, marked quietly in my head each morning the way I used to count meals in the breeder's quarters, the only clock I had ever been allowed. Four days felt like a long time when you were used to him being in the same building, when you had gotten used to the particular weight of knowing someone was nearby even when you couldn't see them. I positioned myself near the front entrance. I wanted to be the first thing he saw when he walked through the door. I wanted him to see the dress and the way I had done my hair and know, without me having to say it, that I had thought about him every single day he was gone. I heard the cars before I saw anything. Then the doors opened. Kaius walked in, and the room reorganized itself around him the way it always did, conversations pausing, backs straightening, the instinctive response of a pack to their Alpha's presence. He was exactly as I remembered, broad-shouldered, unhurried, the kind of authority that didn't need to announce itself. I started to smile. Started to step forward. Then I saw her hand in his. She was walking right beside him, fingers laced through his like it was the most natural arrangement in the world. Dark hair, deep red gown, the effortless beauty of someone who had never once in her life been made to feel like she didn't belong in a room. She was saying something to him, leaning slightly, and he was listening with his head tilted toward her in the way he used to tilt it toward me. My feet stopped. It doesn't mean anything, I told myself. She could be someone from the council. Someone he was escorting in out of courtesy. There is an explanation that makes sense, and you are going to hear it in about thirty seconds, so stop. But his fingers were laced through hers. Not formal. Not polite. The same way he had held my hand. I made myself walk toward them anyway, because standing at the back guessing was a kind of cowardice I refused to give in to. "Kaius,” I said. He turned. For one fraction of a second, something moved across his face recognition, or something older than that and then it was gone, smoothed over so quickly I almost convinced myself I had imagined it. "Liora." His voice was even. Unbothered. "Take her bag and keep it somewhere safe." Then he turned back to the council member on his left and continued his conversation, and the woman beside him held her bag out to the side without looking at me, and I took it, because my hands moved before my mind had any say in the matter. I stood there holding a stranger's bag while the man who had told me he loved me four days ago walked past me without a backward glance. Four days ago, he had held my face in both his hands and said it clearly, like he meant it, like it was simply true. I had replayed it every morning since he left. I had gotten dressed tonight because of it. Philip appeared at my elbow after a while and gently took the bag from my hands. He didn't say anything. He didn't need to. “They're calling everyone to the main hall," he said quietly. I followed the crowd because I didn't know what else to do with myself. Someone pressed a glass of wine into my hand on the way in. I held it without drinking. The hall filled quickly, pack members and council elders pressing together, the air thick with whispered speculation about why they'd all been called in so suddenly. I found a spot near the back, far enough from the front that I could see everything without being particularly visible myself. Kaius and the woman stood up at the front beside Elder Mauve. Elder Mauve, who always looked like the most reasonable person in any room. Elder Mauve, who spoke softly and smiled warmly and had been running this pack from behind the Alpha's chair for longer than most of the wolves here had been alive. She raised one hand and the room went quiet. “Tonight, we celebrate something this pack has waited generations for.” Her voice carried easily, warm and certain, the voice of someone delivering wonderful news. “Our Alpha has found his fated mate.” The floor disappeared from under me. “This is Selene," Elder Mauve continued, gesturing toward the woman at Kaius's side. “She will stand beside our Alpha as his true mate, and in time, as your Luna.” The room erupted. Applause, cheering, people grabbing each other's arms with wide delighted smiles. The sound hit me like something physical. I stood completely still in the middle of it, the noise going distant and muffled, like I had sunk to the bottom of something deep and the world above the surface was carrying on without me. Kaius put his arm around Selene's waist. She smiled up at him. The crowd clapped louder. The glass slipped from my fingers. It shattered against the stone floor, the sound cutting clean and sharp through the noise of the room, and for one terrible second the applause stuttered and died. Every head turned. I stood at the back of the hall, alone, wine spreading dark across the hem of my blue dress, broken glass scattered around my feet. Every single person in that room was looking at me the pack members, the council elders, Elder Mauve with her warm unreadable smile. And Kaius. He was looking at me too, for the first time all evening. Really looking, the way he hadn't looked at me since before he left. His expression was unreadable, controlled in the way he controlled everything, but his jaw was tight and his hand had gone still at Selene's waist. I held his gaze for exactly three seconds. Then I heard it, from somewhere in the crowd, a woman's voice, low and amused, not quite bothering to whisper. “She actually thought she deserved to be his Luna. How pathetic.” Laughter, quiet and scattered, moved through the nearest cluster of wolves like a small wave. I did not look to see who had said it. I bent down, picked up the largest piece of broken glass from the floor, set it carefully on the nearest table, and walked out of the hall with my back straight and my face completely still. It was only when I reached the corridor and heard the doors close behind me that I let myself press one hand flat against my stomach. The missed cycle. The tenderness I had been explaining away for two weeks. The way certain smells had started turning my stomach in the mornings. I had been trying very hard not to think about what it meant. Standing alone in that corridor, with the sound of the pack celebrating his fated mate coming through the walls, I thought about it clearly for the first time. If I was carrying his child, Kaius didn't know. And from the look on Elder Mauve's face when the glass broke, that careful, calculating stillness behind her smile I had a feeling that if she found out before I understood what I was dealing with, the choice of what happened next would stop being mine. I needed to find out exactly what had happened at that gathering.