I Was His Luna Until He Forgot Me

THE WOMAN WHO SHOULDN'T EXIST

CHAPTER FOUR

THE WOMAN WHO SHOULDN'T EXIST

ELARA VAYNE

Lyra Morcant looked at me the way you look at a mistake someone made years ago and never bothered to fix, like I was a piece of shit...

"The Vorath bloodline produces one heir per generation," she said, loud enough for the whole courtyard to hear. "One carrier. One set of powers. One queen. I am that heir. I've carried the bloodline knowledge since I was a child. I trained for it. I sacrificed for it." Her eyes dropped to the mark on my arm and stayed there. "And then you appear from nowhere with that seal, like it's owed to you."

"I didn't ask for it," I said.

"Nobody ever does. That's not the point." She stepped closer, four feet away, and I didn't step back. "You're an orphan with no lineage, no training, no idea what you're carrying. The seal shouldn't have chosen you. Couldn't have, by every rule of how it works." She studied my face. "Which means either the rules are wrong, or something was done to you that shouldn't have been."

"I've been asking what was done to me my whole life," I said. "If you have answers, I'm listening."

Something flickered behind her eyes, not respect, but close to it.

Kael stepped between us.

"Not the time," he said.

"Kael." Her voice softened on his name, just slightly. I caught it and filed it away. "You know what a dual seal means. Two Vorath carriers existing at once destabilizes the bloodline and the power it holds. That's not political. It's physical."

"The texts were written by people who didn't fully understand what they were describing."

"They've been right about everything else." She held his gaze a moment, then dropped a measured degree. "Not here. Not now."

She looked back at me, something neither warm nor cruel, just direct.

"The bloodline will resolve this whether we intervene or not. It always has." She turned and walked back through the gate without hurrying. Every eye in the yard followed her until she was gone.

For a moment Kael didn't move. He was looking at the gate she'd walked through like he was deciding something.

"She's not wrong," he said quietly, more to himself than to me. "About the dual seal."

"Is that dangerous? For me?"

"I don't know yet." He turned back to me. "That's the honest answer, and it's the only one I have right now."

The courtyard settled back into motion. Kael stood beside me, quiet.

"How do you know her," I said.

"She's been an ally of this court for nearly two years."

"That's not what I asked."

He looked at me steadily. "She helped me through the early part of my transition. She filled in gaps about what I'd become."

"What gaps?"

"How to function in a body that wanted blood instead of food. How to read this court without getting killed in the first month. Things wolves don't need to know."

"Because she understands hybrid blood."

"Yes."

"And because she knew you before. When you were still a wolf."

"That's not relevant to your situation."

"It's relevant to mine. Kael, what actually happened in the Blackveil Swamp? Not the version where you're the noble Alpha protecting me. The real one. I've carried the accusation of your death for eight months while you've been standing alive in this castle. You owe me more than a cold room and a message about tasting."

Something crossed his face, real pain, gone fast.

"Go back to your room," he said quietly.

"Kael."

"Elara." My name, in his voice, for the first time since I'd arrived. It stopped me cold. "I'll tell you what I can, when I can. Not tonight. Not in a courtyard."

I went back anyway. Not because he told me to because hearing my name in his voice had done something to me I wasn't ready to manage in public.

Back in my room I lay on the bed and stared at the mark on my arm. It had faded to a softer grey, but the pattern was still there, elbow to wrist.

Something Lyra had said before she left was sitting with me now. She'd said the bloodline would resolve this. She'd also said, in the same breath, that Kael hadn't died protecting me. That the choice had never been about me.

My door opened without a knock.

Lyra stood in the doorway, hair pulled back now, looking at me with a directness that was almost a relief after a full day of people managing what I was allowed to see.

"I'm not here to continue the courtyard conversation," she said. "I'm here because you deserve the truth before Kael decides which version of it you're permitted to have." She stepped in and let the door close. "Are you willing to listen?"

I sat up. "Talk."

She crossed her arms. "Elara. Your mate didn't go into the Blackveil Swamp to protect you. He didn't die for you. Whatever you've been told, it wasn't about your life or your safety. The choice he made was entirely his own." She paused. "You deserve to know that before you spend another day grieving something that didn't happen the way you think."