THE LUNA THEY’LL NEVER LOVE

11: HER NEW TITLE

PHEEONA.

I didn’t sleep.

Not even close.

I lay in the center of that enormous bed and stared at the ceiling for the entire night, listening to the silence they’d left behind, and I thought about every single decision that had led me to this moment.

Every refusal. Every returned gift. Every letter I hadn’t opened.

I’d had the whole night to turn it over in my head, and by the time the first grey light started creeping through the windows, I was done reeling.

Done.

What Crowen said had hit me like a physical thing when he said it, standing over me with his hand on my chin like I was something he was inspecting rather than someone he’d just spent hours taking apart.

But I’d had the night.

And somewhere between the third and fourth hour of staring at this ceiling, the shock had finished burning off and left something quieter and considerably colder in its place.

I knew who these men were.

I’d known when I walked into that throne room and unclenched my fists and said I accept.

Knowing something and living inside it were just different things entirely, that was all.

The weight of the room sat on my chest.

I hated that I could still smell them.

All three of them, threaded into the sheets, hanging in the air of a bedroom that was supposed to be mine but currently felt like evidence of last night.

I could still feel where their hands had been. Where their mouths had been. My body remembered all of it with a specificity that my mind was desperately trying to edit, and the two of them were in direct conflict about it in a way that was deeply exhausting before the sun had even fully risen.

My wolf, for her part, had absolutely no complaints.

She was disgracefully satisfied. Settled in a way I hadn’t felt from her in over a year, curled up somewhere deep inside me and practically radiating contentment, and I resented her for it in a way that felt slightly unhinged but was entirely genuine.

The heat was gone.

Completely, blessedly, finally gone.

I should have felt relieved.

I did feel relieved, underneath everything else, in the part of me that remembered what thirty three days of deterioration felt like and never wanted to go back. But that relief was buried under several other things at the moment and wasn’t getting much air.

The knock at the connecting door to the parlour came mid morning.

Anyssa let herself in, took one look at me sitting up in bed with yesterday’s expression still on my face, and sat down in the armchair across from me with the energy of someone prepared to be angry on my behalf for as long as necessary.

I’d told her everything last night.

She’d listened with her jaw getting progressively tighter and her eyes getting progressively darker, and when I finished she’d been quiet for a long time, which with Anyssa was always more alarming than noise.

“I want to say something about them,” she said now, by way of good morning.

“Nys.”

“I’m not going to. But I want to.”

“I know.”

She looked at me carefully. “How are you actually?”

“I’m upright,” I said. “Voluntarily this time, which is new.”

She didn’t laugh. She was studying my face with the attention of someone checking for damage, cataloguing things I hadn’t said alongside the things I had. She’d been doing it since we were children. I’d never been able to hide much from her and I wasn’t going to start now.

“You’re not falling apart,” she said. It wasn’t quite a question.

“No.”

“Should I be worried about that?”

“Probably,” I said honestly.

A knock at the chamber door interrupted whatever she was going to say to that. One of the maids stepped in, composed and efficient, carrying a document case that she set on the writing desk near the window with a small incline of her head.

“From the kings, my lady. The formal wedding announcement. They asked that you review it this morning.”

She set the binder on the table before leaving.

Neither of us moved for a moment.

Then I pushed myself out of bed, crossed to the writing desk, and opened the document case.

The paper inside was heavy, the kind of heavy that announced its own importance before you’d read a single word.

The Torvain seal was pressed into the top… three interlocked marks I’d seen on every piece of correspondence they’d ever sent to Lunaris, every letter I hadn’t opened, every envoy I’d turned away at the door.

I read it.

It was thorough and precise. The kind of document that had been drafted by people who did this regularly and did it well, with no room for misinterpretation.

The date was confirmed… ten days from now, which I already knew.

The location was Ashenbane’s great hall, which I had not yet seen but which was apparently large enough to hold the assembled witnesses from the majority of Ashenbane’s territories.

Representatives from Lunaris had already been notified.

Likely two thirds of the entire realm would either be present or formally informed before the week was out.

And at the top of the document, beneath the Torvain seal, in script that was formal and absolute and completely indifferent to what had happened in this bedroom twelve hours ago…

Queen Pheeona Torvain.

I stood there and read the words over and over again.

My name. My new title. Printed and sealed and already circulated to two thirds of the werewolf realm before I’d even had the chance to wash last nights humiliation off my skin.

“Phee.” Anyssa’s voice came from somewhere to my left.

I didn’t answer immediately.

I was still looking at the document.

Queen Pheeona Torvain.

There it was. My entire future, four words, pressed into paper with a seal I hadn’t chosen, carrying a name I’d be wearing for the rest of my life because I’d said ‘I accept’ to three men who had apparently already decided exactly what accepting would and wouldn’t include.

They’d told me what I was to them hours after this document was drafted.

Nothing but a hole and a title.

And then they’d gone ahead and printed the title.

I set the document down on the desk, carefully, with both hands.

Anyssa was watching me from across the room with an expression that was equal parts fury on my behalf and concern about what I was going to do with mine once she read the letter.

The thing was, I wasn’t surprised.

That was the part I kept returning to.

I had walked into that throne room knowing who these men were.

I had signed their documents knowing who these men were.

I had accepted their offer — for Lunaris, for my people, for every reason that still stood exactly as true this morning as it had yesterday — knowing, in every way that mattered, who these men were.

The reality of it was just a different thing from the knowing.

It was more raw, more specific.

More jarring.

I closed my eyes as Crowen’s words hit me again.

Nothing but a hole and a a title.

I looked at the title Queen Pheeona Torvain one more time.

Then I looked up at Anyssa.

“I need to see the rest of this palace,” I said.

She blinked. “What?”

“I’m going to be queen of it.” I straightened, rolling my shoulders back, finding the posture my father had spent years teaching me and that my body remembered even after thirty three days of being too sick to use it. “I should know what I’m queen of.”

Anyssa looked at me for a long moment.

Then she stood up.

“Give me ten minutes to get dressed,” she said.

My mates wanted me to cower, hide away and tremble at the reality of my situation.

But they didn’t know me at all.

If they thought they were a force to be reckoned with… then they had no damn clue who they’d just publicly claimed as their new queen.