Chapter 5
1147 Words
Sera POV
The morning of the wedding, Redfang fortress woke up like more radiant than ever.
It was the wedding of the only heir of Redfang pack Alpha, I Seraphine Redfang.
Staff moved through every hall with quiet purpose. Long tables lined the great courtyard, dressed in crimson cloth and gold candles that burned even in daylight. Flowers I didn't know the names of came in from the eastern gardens, deep red and white, arranged in tall vases that stood like soldiers along every wall.
Outside the fortress gates, cars had been arriving since dawn.
Alphas. Lunas. Pack nobles from territories so far away some of them had travelled through the night. The names being announced at the gate were the kind of names that made history books.
And somewhere in that line of arriving cars was a silver SUV carrying a Henry, who had no idea what today really was.
I was calm and patiently waiting for his arrival and the surprise that'll will fill his face.
I sat in my dressing room while my father's stylist finished my hair and I watched myself in the mirror and I was completely, perfectly calm.
That surprised the stylist. She kept looking at my face like she was waiting for nerves to show up.
They didn't.
I was not a nervous bride.
I was a Redfang heiress.
My hair went up in a style I had never worn for Henry. Strong and clean, pulled back to show my neck and my jaw and the line of my shoulders in the crimson dress. The gold cuffs at my wrists caught the light every time I moved. My father's people had brought the Redfang family jewels — a thin gold headpiece that sat just above my forehead like a crown trying not to show off.
I let them put it on.
When they were done, I looked in the mirror for a long time.
I didn't see the pale quiet Luna from Stonecrest.
I saw my mother's daughter.
I was ready.
As I walked past the hall looking through the whole design prepared for just my wedding, I heard them before I saw them.
Jennifer's laugh has a specific sound. High and bright and just a little too loud, the way she laugh when she want a room to know she's having fun. I was standing at the top of the inner staircase when it floated up from the courtyard below.
I looked down.
Henry was in a black suit that fit him well. He had made an effort. His hair was neat and his shoes were new and he was standing straight the way he always did in rooms full of important people, trying to take up the right amount of space.
Jennifer was in white.
I noticed that. White, to another woman's wedding. A thing so bold it was almost funny.
Her dress was expensive. I could see that from here. She had spent money and time and real effort on tonight. She wanted to be seen. Wanted to arrive at this fortress and be noticed.
I watched them cross the courtyard.
Henry's step faltered just for a second before asking Jennifer, “is’nt that Sera what is she doing here.”
Then he straightened up again and kept .
They saw me from across the courtyard.
I was coming down the outer stairs when Henry turned and our eyes met.
I watched his face.
First nothing. Just the blank half-second of a man looking at something unfamiliar.
Then his face shifted just slow and confused.
He recognised me but he didn't recognise what he was seeing. His brain kept trying to put the pale quiet Luna over the top of what was standing in front of him and it didn't fit and it couldn't fit and I could see him trying.
Jennifer recovered faster.
Her eyes went up and down my dress once. Then her chin lifted and her mouth curved into the particular smile of a woman who has decided she is winning.
"Sera?" She said.
Her voice was light. Amused. She looked at Henry sideways like they were sharing a joke.
"Look at the dress," she said, not bothering to lower her voice. "Did someone invite the help?"
Henry made a sound that was almost a laugh.
"Where did you get that?" Jennifer continued, stepping forward. "It's a lot. You look like you're playing dress up."
I looked at her, I Just looked.
There was no smile on my face, No flush. No small crumbling at the edges that she was waiting for.
I looked at her the way my father looks at wolves who have made a mistake they don't yet know about.
Patient. Certain. Already past the moment she thought she was winning.
"Jennifer," I said quietly.
That was all.
Just her name. With my firm voice that didn't need to be loud to go straight to the bone.
Her smile flickered.
The great doors of the fortress opened.
Not the courtyard doors. The inner doors. The ones made of dark wood and iron that had not opened for a ceremony in eleven years, not since my mother's funeral, and the sound it made was attention catching.
Every head in the courtyard turned.
Ralph walked out.
I had seen photographs. My father had shown me one, a formal pack portrait, all sharp lines and unsmiling eyes. But photographs did not carry what this man carried.
He was tall. Broader than Henry by a measure that was not small. His suit was black on black, Nightfang colours, with a single deep crimson detail at the collar that matched my dress exactly. His face was the kind of face that had stopped apologising for itself a long time ago. Strong jaw. Dark eyes. A stillness about him that was not emptiness , it was complete control.
Every wolf in that courtyard went a little quieter.
That was what real Alpha presence felt like.
Not loud noise like Henry will make.
He walked across the courtyard and the crowd moved away for him to walk past them.
His eyes found mine immediately.
He walked straight to me.
He stopped close enough that my wolf smell his scents, it was a sweet scent and something cold and clean like rain on stone. His dark eyes moved over my face once, careful and unhurried.
Then the corner of his mouth moved. Not quite a smile just quieter than that.
Something that said there you are.
He put his hand on my waist.
Warm. Steady. Sure.
I did not flinch neither did I blush.
I stood straight and I let the courtyard see exactly who I was standing beside.
"My Queen, my Luna" Ralph said.
His voice was low. It didn't need to be anything else. In the silence of that courtyard, everyone heard it.
"Are you ready ."
- Writer
