The Luna He Rejected Is The Millennium Wolf

CHAPTER SEVEN: THE DAY I STOPPED SAVING HIM

Sienna's POV

Breathing hurt. My chest wouldn't fill all the way, like something in there had shrunk while I was gone.

My eyes opened onto nothing I recognized. No ceiling. No walls. Silver stretched out in every direction, further than I could see.

My heart pounded.

A structure rose out of the gray ahead of me, steps forming one at a time out of light with no source I could find. Each step made a low sound under my feet as I got closer.

Am I dead? I got nothing back.

I stood still and checked what my body told me instead. The ache in my empty stomach. The dried copper still coating my throat. The throb where the wall had met my skull. Dead didn't feel this specific.

I moved toward the steps. Each one pushed back against me like the air itself had weight. The platform at the top glowed faint and steady. Nothing on it moved.

There you are.

The voice didn't come from any direction. It came up through the floor, through my feet, before I even registered it as sound. I spun around before I'd decided to move.

She stepped out of the silver toward me. She was white, massive, bigger than anything I'd ever seen. My breath caught, and I stumbled back two steps without meaning to.

My wolf. Or what my wolf had become while I wasn't looking.

On my eighteenth birthday I'd felt a flicker, barely anything, gone before I could hold onto it. This wasn't that. This had been growing in the dark the whole time, and no one had told me.

"Are you mine?" The question scraped out of me. "The one who's been hiding while they bled me dry?"

She didn't answer right away. Her gaze moved past me, up, toward whatever passed for sky in this place.

"You're brittle, Sienna. What's inside you would drown someone weaker. Use me now and it will break you before it fixes anything. You want justice, but you're still holding on to a man who's already given up on you."

I let the words sit.

"The Moon Goddess has a cruel sense of humor." I heard the bitterness in my own voice and didn't try to hide it. "She gives me a wolf and leaves me in a cage."

"The Goddess doesn't choose the weak. You're the last of the Millennium line. You've had what you need to break this for a while now. You just haven't used it. Your mate is already in your territory, breathing the same air you are. Don't let this pack finish you before he finds you."

"How long until he finds me?"

"That depends how long you survive waiting for him."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only one you're getting tonight."

Heat cracked through the back of my hand. The moon mark burned white, and the silver folded in on itself all at once.

The world snapped back in pieces. Mildew hit my nose first, thick and damp. Then the cold seeping through the thin mattress beneath me. Then the ache in my skull, sharp and familiar, grounding me in the room I'd woken up in.

I was back.

A door swung open somewhere close and hit stone hard. I was already sitting up before the servant's boot connected with the frame of my cot.

"Still dreaming? The new Luna expects a full court today."

She stood over me, arms crossed, eyes running a quick, dismissive sweep. Her heartbeat came fast and sharp, already annoyed.

I didn't give her one. Everything felt slower than it should have. The dust in the light from the doorway barely moved. Her voice arrived a half-second behind where it should.

"The Blood Moon Pack arrives today." She threw a bundle of rough gray fabric at me. "Be at the kitchens in ten minutes."

I caught it without looking down, then smiled at her and held her gaze.

"Thank you."

She went still. Then she left fast, her boot catching the doorframe on the way out.

I took my time getting dressed. The wool was coarse against my skin, and I let myself feel it.

When I looked in the cracked mirror, most of what looked back was familiar. Same face. Same mess of hair. Same mouth that had learned a long time ago to stay neutral.

But behind my eyes, something had changed color overnight. Silver, where brown used to be.

I stepped into the corridor and kept walking.

"There's my dear sister."

Ivy had planted herself at the turn in the hallway. Red silk. Her perfume reached me before she did. Her eyes moved over the gray fabric on my body in one slow pass, and I watched her hands before she got close enough to hide them.

They were shaking.

"You look exhausted, Sienna." Her giggle came out cracked in the middle. "But get used to the weight. You're a lowly omega now. Do you understand?"

I turned to track her, slow enough that she stepped back without deciding to. "Is that what Lucas told you? Or is that what you tell yourself when you notice he's still looking for me in every room?"

Her mouth closed. Her jaw locked down hard enough that a bead of blood formed at the corner of her lips. She didn't look away.

I walked past her, my shoulder catching hers on purpose.

Her hand found my hair before I'd made it two steps, fingers closing and yanking back hard enough to burn my scalp. She stepped in front of me, jaw set, eyes wide, breathing hard.

"You think you're still a threat," she hissed. "He was mine to take, and you let me take him, and you still won't stop letting him look for you like you're something. You're not. Not anymore."

"The mate you stole doesn't make you a Luna, Ivy." I kept my voice low enough that she had to lean in to hear it. "It makes you a thief in a red dress."

She grabbed a pair of shears off a passing maid's tray and dragged them across the front of her own gown in one hard pull. The silk ripped, loud enough that heads turned. Her eyes found mine for one cold second before she opened her mouth.

"No! Sienna, stop!"

The slap came from the left, hard, copper flooding my mouth before the sound of it finished. I held my head turned for two seconds, then brought it back slow, eyes flat.

"Sienna!"

Lucas's hand closed around my wrist, grip tight enough to feel the bones give a little. His eyes moved between the torn fabric and my split lip, back and forth, twice.

"You really think the rules don't apply to you?" His voice cracked hard across the hall. "In front of the elders, Sienna. Today of all days."

"You really think I'm the one holding the shears, Lucas?" I held his gaze without blinking. Silver moved through the brown of my eyes, and I let him see it. "Are you that desperate to believe the lie?"

"She's out of control, Lucas!" Ivy wailed.

He glanced toward the end of the hall where the elders were coming, then back to me. His hand rose.

Not a slap this time. The backhand caught me full across the face and sent me into the wall. My skull hit stone hard enough that my vision went white at the edges. Blood ran into my eye.

He took one step toward me, his jaw working, then stopped.

"Don't," I said quietly. "It's embarrassing, Lucas."

His arm dropped. I pushed off the wall, found my footing, and walked toward the kitchens. I didn't run. I didn't look back.

In the pantry I stood over a basin with my hands pressed to my face until the nausea passed. My lip had already started to swell. I pressed a wet cloth to it and made myself breathe until my hands stopped shaking.

When I finally straightened and looked through the service window, I saw them.

Morrigan stood in the far corner of the courtyard with a maid whose face I almost recognized. Her expression gave nothing away, but her hands moved fast, pressing something small and dark into the other woman's palm. Pack magic blocked the sound so I couldn't hear a word.

I picked up a tray and followed.

The ceremony had already started by the time I got to the hall. Ivy sat beside Lucas in a clean white gown, chin up, smiling like nothing had happened.

"The Blood Moon Pack is arriving." Morrigan passed me without slowing. "Ensure the wine is ready."

I moved toward the high table.

The maid from the courtyard stood beside Lucas's chair, her back half-turned to the room. One dark drop fell from her fingers into the red wine in his glass. She straightened and stepped away before anyone looked up.

Lucas reached for the glass mid-laugh, relaxed, easy with everyone around him.

My hands tightened on the tray.

Then I thought of the wall. The sound of silk tearing. The pity I'd heard in my own voice a second before he hit me.

I didn't move.

He lifted the chalice and drank, deep and unhurried, then set it back down. A line formed between his brows. His hand went briefly to his chest, pressed once, and fell away. He turned back to the conversation beside him.

No undoing it now.

For the first time, the thought of saving him didn't come.