The Luna They Branded a Traitor

Chapter 2: Branded

“Liar,” a voice called out from the crowd.

“She has been planning this for years.” Another voice said,

"She used the ceremony as cover."

“As we feasted, she let our brothers die.”

"Look at her face,” a woman whispered. “She’s not even crying. She knew it was going to happen.

Words were coming at me from every side, faster than I could catch them, faster than I could fight them.

I turned slowly, looking for one face that did not look at me as if I were a stranger in the skin of Neriah.

I said, “That is not true.” But my voice was drowned in the noise. I’ve been standing in this courtyard all night. Ask around. I never left this garden.

"How do you account for the parchment, then?" Cassian's voice rang out over the throng, icy and certain.

“Why is your handwriting on our patrol routes?”

“I don't know,” I said, my voice breaking on the last word. “I do not know what that parchment is. I just know I didn’t write that.”

"Convenient," Cassian replied. Everyone who has ever betrayed this pack says the same thing. “I don't know.” “I did not do it.”

"Because it's true," I said. Ask me anything. Where is the east border? Ask me. I have never in my life crossed past the training grounds.

But nobody asked me anything. Nobody was listening. The crowd had already decided what they thought. I could feel it in the way they stood nearer and farther from me, the way mothers took back their children a step, and the way warriors who used to nod to me in passing now looked at me as if I were something dangerous.

I looked at Ryker, because only he could prevent the worst now.

"Ryker," I whispered, as I used to say his name in private: soft, full of everything we had built together.

“Please. You know my heart. You know I would never hurt this pack.”

His jaw moved, and I saw the boy I fell in love with looking back at me for one second. Just one second. The boy who used to sneak me sweets from the kitchen. The boy who used to promise me forever under this same sky.

"I want to believe you,” he said, low enough that it felt like it was ours alone. "I want to more than you know."

"Then believe me," I whispered gently. "Just trust me.”

His throat convulsed as he gulped. Then his face closed like a door shutting.

"The first duty of an Alpha is to his pack," he said, loud enough for all to hear, not just his heart.

"What do you mean?” I asked. My whole body was numb, colder than I had any right to feel from the night air.

“No one is above the law,” Ryker said. "Not even the one who was supposed to be my Luna."

“No, Ryker. Heavens, no. Don’t do that to me."

"I have to," he replied.

He raised his hand, the same hand that had nearly touched mine minutes before, and this time it did not reach out for me. It was stretched out to the whole pack, to the ancient words that every wolf in Elarion feared more than death itself.

“Neriah Ashvale,” he said, and his voice did not shake at all.

"I refuse you as my mate!"

The air whooshed out of my lungs like I had been punched in the chest.

"I deny the tie between us!"

He went on, each word landing like a blow to my chest.

"And I free you of any claim you think you have on the Crescent Moon Pack."

Those words caused a ripping inside of me. I don't know how to describe it. It didn’t feel like heartbreak, because heartbreak is a guest in your chest.

But this was different. It tore through my ribs, my spine, the space behind my eyes – through all of me at once. My knees buckled, and I crashed hard to the stone ground, my palms scraping on the rock, and the pain continued, wave after wave, as if something inside me was being pulled out by the root.

I heard a noise coming from me that I had never heard before. It wasn’t quite a shriek, but something lower, because at that moment, something broke inside me.

Through my blurred eyes I searched for my parents. I saw them in the front of the crowd. My mother's hands were raised to her mouth, and my father's face was pale and drawn.

“Mama,” I whispered, reaching out a trembling hand to her. "Papa, Mama, please say something. Tell them you know me; tell them I’d never do such a thing!"

But neither one of them moved. "Papa," I said again, my voice cracking on his name. “You rocked me when I was a baby. You taught me how to swim. You know I could never do this.”

First my mother looked away. Then my father looked at me for a moment longer, long enough for me to see something that might have been shame, before he turned his back on me. He dragged my mother into the crowd, making it impossible for me to find them again.

I glanced back at the crowd, which was now desperate, and saw Lyanna near the edge, her hands pressed so hard against her mouth that her knuckles had turned white.

Our eyes locked, and for a moment, I thought she would push through the crowd and stand beside me like she promised she always would, from the days we were girls braiding each other's hair and swearing nothing would ever come between us.

Her lips parted, trying to speak, her voice so quiet it hardly carried past the people standing next to her. "She couldn't have done this. I’ve known her since we were kids. She would never."

“Then why is the proof in her own handwriting?!"

Someone snapped back, and Lyanna flinched as if she'd been slapped.

"Lyanna, please help me," I breathed. My hand was still outstretched to her across what now felt like an ocean of space.

She didn't say anything more. She did not come forward. She just stood there, tears streaming down her face and the silence devouring any courage she'd almost found.

I knew then, kneeling on the cold stone, my body still screaming from the broken bond, that I was quite alone. My friend had walked out on me, in front of all the people I loved.

My parents had abandoned me. Even now, my best friend had no heart to stand by me.

"Traitor!"

Someone shouted from the crowd, and this time there was more than words; there was movement.

I looked up to see a warrior break from the edge of the crowd, his eyes wild with grief for the brothers he had lost, his claws already stretching from his fingers as he charged at me.

He snarled, "She deserves to bleed like they did.”

I tried to scramble backwards, but my hands kept slipping on the blood-slicked stone; my broken body was too slow to obey me.

In a heartbeat he’d halved the distance between us, claws raised high above his head, aimed straight for my throat.

My arms shot up, preparing for the pain I knew I couldn't prevent.