The Luna They Branded a Traitor

Chapter 5 Shadow Fang

Again, the voice said, “Don't move. Not an inch.”

I stood, frozen, my hands still pressed into the warrior’s chest, warm blood sticky between my fingers. I turned my head slowly enough to see who stood behind me.

A man appeared from the trees with tall broad shoulders, a scar cutting across his jaw, and a blade gleaming in his hand.

Behind him, warriors poured out, surrounding me on all sides until running was no longer an option my body even considered.

"She's trying to save him," said someone in the group uncertainly.

“Or finishing what she started," the scarred man said.

He never took his eyes from me.

"Get away from him. Now!”

“I didn’t do this,” I said, my voice trembling, my hands still shaking against the warrior’s wound. "I found him like that.”

“He is alive. Someone, please, has to help him.”

“Move away,” he said again, more sharply, “or I’ll move you.”

I did as I was told, slowly raising my bloodied hands into the air, my entire body shaking with exhaustion and fear. Two warriors ran past me to the man who had fallen, checking his wound, one muttering he was alive, just.

The scarred man’s eyes ran over me, cold and appraising, before they settled on the ribbon still tied around my wrist.

"Crescent moon hues," he said softly. His eyes then were completely hardened.

"You are the one. You are the one. The traitor from the marriage service.”

"I am not," I said. “I swear I'm not."

"Three days ago, the High Council issued a kill order on your head," he said.

“Every pack in Elarion has been ordered to bring you to us, dead if need be, alive if possible. You are fortunate I prefer the first option better.”

The words stung more than anything since the rejection itself. A kill order. Each pack. Now there was no place in the world that could be safe for me.

“Please,” I whispered. I only wanted to help him. I had never hurt anyone. Ever.

“Save it,” he said. Your fate is in the hands of Alpha Kael.

My wrists were chained with iron, and the metal was burning my skin just a little.

There was some wolfsbane worked into the iron, enough to weaken me but not really to hurt me. I didn't fight them because there was no fight left in me.

The trip to the Shadow Fang Pack was a mixture of blur, pain and exhaustion overtaking me, my bare feet dragging over unfamiliar ground, warriors flanking me on every side as if I might disappear into smoke if they blinked.

Nobody spoke to me. No one looked at me, but the scarred man, who kept looking back as if he thought I might bolt at any moment.

“What's your name?” Finally, I asked him, my voice raspy.

He hesitated and then replied.

"Darius, Beta of the Shadow Fang Pack."

"Darius", I said again. "Trust me. I didn't do any of this."

He said, “I don’t care what you say. I care about the evidence. And so far, everything points to you.”

The packhouse was ahead, the sky beginning to lighten, dark stone walls taller than anything Crescent Moon had ever built, banners bearing a black wolf snarling under a broken moon.

I felt my whole body go cold just looking at it, some deep instinct telling me whoever waited behind those walls would change everything.

I did not then know how true that instinct was.

They hauled me through the packhouse gates, past warriors who halted their training to gawp, past servants who whispered behind their hands. I kept my eyes forward, but my legs shivered with every step.

"Move!" Darius said, pushing me gently but firmly toward a set of massive doors at the end of the courtyard.

"The Alpha will see you now."

The doors opened into a large hall lit by torches along the stone walls. At the far end, on a raised platform, a man sat in a chair that looked more like a throne than a seat, though nothing about the way he sat suggested he needed a throne to prove his power.

He rose the moment he saw me, and the air in the room seemed to shift with him.

He was tall, taller than Ryker, with black hair cut short and eyes the color of ice over deep water. Every line of his body spoke of controlled violence, the kind that did not need to shout to command obedience.

When his eyes landed on mine, something slammed into my chest so hard I nearly stumbled.

It was not fear. It was something older, something that pulled at the broken place inside me where my bond with Ryker used to live, as if some part of me recognised this stranger before my mind could ever do so.

His eyes widened slightly, just for a heartbeat, and I saw the same shock ripple through him before his face hardened back into stone.

"This is her?" he asked, his voice low and controlled, though I heard the edge underneath it.

"Found her kneeling over one of the border scouts," Darius said. "Covered in his blood. Says she was trying to help him."

"Of course she does," the Alpha said, his eyes never leaving mine. "Every murderer has a story."

"I am not lying," I said, forcing my voice steady even as my chained hands trembled. "I found him already dying. I only tried to stop the bleeding."

"You will forgive me," he said as he stepped down from the platform and slowly closed the distance between us, "if I do not take the word of a woman whom the entire High Council has ordered to be killed on sight."

"Then ask them," I said, desperation cracking through my voice. "Ask anyone. I have no pack left to hide behind. I have nothing left to protect except the truth."

"You have my former Beta's blood on your hands somewhere in Elarion," he said, stopping close enough now that I had to tilt my head back to hold his gaze.

"My closest friend. Killed like the others. So do not speak to me about truth."

The pull between us tightened even as his words cut into me, confusing and infuriating all at once. My body wanted to lean toward him, even though my mind screamed this man thought me a murderer.

“Sorry for your loss,” I said, and I meant it, despite my fear. "But I didn't do that. I didn't do any of that."

“Alpha Kael,” Darius said carefully, “what do you want done with her?”

Kael's jaw clenched. His eyes searched mine for a long, unbearable moment, as if he were fighting something inside himself he did not want to name. At last, he said, “She stays here. Under guard until I get the truth. She won't leave my side until I know what she is exactly."

"The Council has ordered her surrender immediately," Darius said carefully.

"The Council can wait. I will not execute someone upon a half-story and a bloodied dress.”

His words brought me relief and terror, for to be his prisoner was not the same thing as to be safe.

Before anyone could say anything else, one of the warriors who had examined the wounded scout back in the clearing came bursting through the doors, breathless, holding something small and metallic in his hand.

‘Alpha Kael,’ he said. “You have to see this.”

Kael turned, his face inscrutable, and took the object from the warrior's hand. Whatever it was, I saw his face change the instant his fingers closed around it, something passing behind his eyes that felt almost like doubt.

The warrior whispered, “This was on the scout. Embedded in the wound.”

Kael's eyes slowly rose from the object to my face, something unreadable passing behind his eyes.

"That can't be. . ." he said, almost to himself.