Rejected Before The Pack

Chapter 6

Nobody moved. Nobody spoke. The whole clearing stood frozen around a kneeling king and a girl who had no idea what to do with her hands.

"Get up," I said, because it was the only thing I could think to say. "Please. You don't need to—"

"I've knelt for less," Kael said, rising smoothly to his feet. Up close, he was taller than Damon, his eyes a shade of gold I'd never seen on a wolf before. He looked at me like I was something he'd been afraid he'd never find. "Twenty-two years is a long time to search for someone."

"Search for me? I don't understand what any of this means."

"I know." His voice was calm, careful, the way you'd talk to someone standing near a ledge. "I'll explain everything. Just not here."

Damon stepped forward before I could answer, his composure cracking for the first time since the ceremony. "You'll explain it here. This is my territory. If you have business with someone in my pack, you'll state it plainly."

Kael turned to look at him, unhurried, and something in his expression made even Damon go still. "She isn't in your pack anymore, Alpha Blackwood. You made sure of that yourself, last night, in front of all these witnesses."

The words landed like a slap. I saw Damon's jaw tighten, saw something flash behind his eyes that looked almost like regret, though I didn't trust myself to read him right anymore. Not after last night.

Behind him, Selena had gone pale, her hand pressed to her mouth. She wasn't looking at Kael. She was looking at me, and there was something underneath her shock that looked closer to fear.

"What is she to you?" Damon asked. "Say it plainly, since you're so fond of the word."

Kael didn't hesitate. "She is the last living heir of the Lunar Bloodline. The rightful ruler of the Moon Kingdom, and every territory sworn to it." He paused, letting the words settle over the crowd like a weight. "She is my queen. And she has been in danger since the night her parents were murdered."

I felt the ground shift under that sentence in a way it hadn't shifted for anything else that night. "My parents weren't murdered. They died in an accident. Everyone told me that."

"Everyone told you a lie," Kael said, gently now, like he understood exactly how much that would cost me to hear. "I won't lay the whole truth on you standing in the mud in front of people who spent years treating you like nothing. You deserve better than that. But I need you to come with me, Aria. It isn't safe for you here anymore, and it's about to get worse."

"Worse how?"

"Whatever woke inside you last night didn't go unnoticed. Not by me. Not by others." His eyes flicked briefly toward the tree line, and something in the gesture made my skin prickle. "I'd rather explain that somewhere your enemies aren't already watching."

Ash squirmed against my chest, and I realized my arms had tightened around him without meaning to. Everything in me wanted to laugh at how absurd this was — a king, a bloodline, a murder I'd never been told about — except nothing about the last day had felt like something to laugh at.

"She's not going anywhere with a stranger," Damon said. "Whatever claim you think you have—"

"My claim is older than your pack," Kael said, and for the first time there was an edge in his voice, sharp enough to make even Ethan shift his weight. "You had your chance to protect her. You stood in front of your entire pack and threw it away."

Damon didn't answer that. I watched him not answer it, watched the muscle in his jaw jump, and some old, foolish part of me almost felt sorry for him. I crushed it before it could grow into anything.

"I need a minute," I said, loud enough that both of them turned to look at me instead of each other. "This is my life you're both talking about. I'd like to be part of the decision."

Kael inclined his head, immediate and respectful, like he'd been waiting for me to say exactly that. "Of course. Take whatever time you need."

Damon looked like he wanted to argue and knew better than to try, not with half the pack watching and his own silence from the night before still hanging in the air between us.

I looked between them — the Alpha who'd rejected me in front of everyone I'd ever known, and the king who'd knelt in the mud for a stranger he claimed to have searched twenty-two years for — and understood, with a clarity that scared me more than either of them did, that neither choice in front of me was really a choice at all.

There was a third option. The one where I decided for myself, for the first time in my life, what I wanted instead of what I was given.

"I'm not choosing anyone right now," I said. "I want the truth about my parents. All of it. And then I'll decide what happens next."

Kael's mouth curved, something close to approval. "Fair enough, my queen."

Behind him, I caught Elder Rowan watching me from the edge of the crowd, his expression unreadable, and I understood — with a strange, cold certainty — that whatever truth Kael was about to give me, Rowan already knew it too.