Chapter Nine: Another Chosen
506 Words
Evelyn — POV
The silence that is initiated is devastating as compared to the laughter.
It clogs my shoulders and my chest, such that I must remember how to breathe. Tristan takes a different stance, bending his body opposite my direction, opposite what I was, and towards people.
“There is another,” he says.
The words are simple. Clean. Final.
An expectant wave is passing through the hall. I see each eye undergo scrutiny and look elsewhere in search of an answer before it is said. My heart is beating at my bosom, each stroke is broken, gnarled.
My mate is chosen, Tristan goes on.
Chosen.
The Word burns.
I don’t look away from him. I can’t. Hopefully, part of me is that this will be one of such cruelties that have been pushed to the extreme where somebody, anyone will stop it. To remind him of a promise which he made. Of what this night ought to have been.
He doesn’t hesitate.
“Lena.”
The name lands like a strike.
It is louder among people this time; this approval is heard murmuring through them. There is acceptance on faces, and after, acquainted faces smile. Of course. In them they may possess a sense that in me has lacked.
I cannot see because I taste the humiliation, and I can taste the humiliation, which is bitter and metallic in my tongue. I have heard the name, whistled at admiration, called after with envy. Lena of the Silver Fang line. Strong. Proven. Everything that the future Luna is expected to be.
Everything I am not.
Tristan is scanning the crowd, finding her with his eyes, as if he is trying to locate her, and when he does, something makes his face come alive. It’s subtle, but I see it. Even minor changes in him have never escaped my attention.
I was never meant to be a spoilt boy.
I will not stick to a failure, as I say, and I say this as the temperature of my voice is even, fell very well on the other side of the hall. “The pack deserves strength. Certainty.”
The language becomes embedded in my blood, is smothering and stale. I shrink, become smaller with each passing second, I think that the spot where I stand narrows down and pushes me away a bit at a time.
there I am with my shaved symbols, which no longer belong to me, my future which has been flung naked in the presence of my entire ancient interrogators.
Tristan is now as distant as ever, and the distance between us is still farther increased. It’s not dramatic. Neither is it mean that the eyes of Lena are beginning to get.
It’s worse.
It’s indifferent.
And as the attention of the audience had shifted, and a kind of murmur had passed into an open observation, I happened, to my astonishment, to see that something was:
I am no longer the bride.
I am the mistake that everybody was waiting to rectify.
- Writer
