The Moon Goddess Gave Me Two Alpha's.

"I reject you," Kael said, "as my mate, my Luna, and my partner in this life." Two hundred wolves heard it and not one of them made a sound and I stood at that altar in my ceremonial gown. I felt the bond tear out of my chest like something structural being removed, like a wall coming out of a house mid storm. The sound I made was humiliating and animalistic and I could not stop it because some pain is bigger than dignity and this was that kind of pain. I thought about the dress. I don't know why that was the thing my brain went to in that moment, standing there coming apart in front of everyone I had ever known. But it did, it went straight to that morning, to Lyra (my sister) hands on the back of my gown, to the sound of the fabric tearing, to her face when she looked at me afterward, that almost smile, that we will see about that. I understood standing at that altar with my bond bleeding out of me that the dress was never an accident and this night was never going to go any other way. And that’s because Lyra had decided a long time ago how it ended and I had spent my whole life being too busy loving her to notice. "You betrayed your clan," he said. I actually laughed, just one short stupid sound, because my brain genuinely could not process the sentence fast enough to stop it. He held up letters. My handwriting on every page, or something so close it didn't matter, and he read from them. And I stood there and felt the cold spread from my stomach outward, slow and total, the way water fills a room. Then Lyra walked out of the crowd in her white dress, crying these perfect tears, telling everyone she had heard me on the phone with rogue lieutenants. Adding that she had been terrified, that she loved me but she loved the pack more. I stood there watching my half sister perform the saddest moment of her life and understood, finally, completely, with every part of me that had spent twenty three years refusing to understand it, that she had never loved me at all. Not even a little. "She's lying," I said, loud enough that nobody could pretend they hadn't heard it. "She tore my dress two hours ago and now she's standing there lying to your face, all of you, and you're just going to let her?" Kael looked at me the way you look at someone you've already decided on. "I reject you," he said again, “as my mate, my Luna, and my partner in this life." The bond came out of my chest like something being ripped through skin and the sound I made was humiliating. I couldn't stop it because some pain is just bigger than you are and this was that kind. My legs buckled and two warriors appeared at my sides, gripping my arms. Kael was already turning away from me before I even finished making that sound. "Take her," he said. "She'll be held." Prison, he said. That was the word. And they moved me through the trees, away from the torches and the crowd and Lyra's perfect tearstained face. I let them move me because my legs weren't really working and the dizziness had started, this heavy spreading wrongness in my blood that I was only just beginning to understand had nothing to do with heartbreak. The ceremonial wine had tasted wrong and I had drunk it anyway because I was happy. That's on me honestly. They stopped at the cliffs behind the packhouse and let go of my arms. I looked down at fifty feet of open air and black water and understood that there had never been a prison, that there was never going to be a prison. When I turned around Lyra was walking out of the trees in her white dress like she had been there the whole time. "You planned this," I said. My legs were going. I grabbed a tree and held on and looked at her face and saw it clearly for the first time in my entire life, all the way down, no warmth, no performance, just the cold patient thing that had always been living underneath all that sisterly love she had been performing at me for twenty three years. "Since the day the bond marked you instead of me," she said, walking toward me slowly, completely unbothered, like we had all the time in the world, "I knew what I had to do. It was supposed to be me, Elara. Everyone knew it was supposed to be me." I shoved her. Both hands, everything I had left, and she stumbled back two steps and her eyes went wide because Lyra had not planned for this part. Lyra had planned for me to just stand there and let it happen like I always let everything happen, and for one second I thought I could get past her, I could get back through the trees, I could fix this somehow. Then she grabbed my wrist and swung me toward the cliff edge and everything went very fast after that. The ground disappeared, the wind came up cold and loud all at once. The moon was red and enormous above me and getting smaller as I fell and I watched it shrink. The last thing I heard was Lyra's voice floating down from the edge, completely calm, like she was just finishing a thought she'd started a long time ago. "The Goddess chose the wrong sister," she said. I hit the water thinking she was right. I was wrong about that. But I had to die first to find out.