I died loving Him. Now I'm back

Chapter Five - The Betrothal Table

Selene's POV

I didn't lower the blade. "What did you just say to me?"

"You heard me. I don't have time to explain tonight, and even if I did, you wouldn't believe me yet. Just know this. Not everyone circling you wants you dead. Some of us are actually trying to keep you alive long enough to matter."

Then he was gone, melting back into the shadow of the wall like he'd never been standing there at all.

I stood alone in the training yard, heart pounding, with about a hundred new questions crowding out all the old ones.

I didn't tell Mara. Not this time. Not the second time sat too weird in my chest to hand over before I even understood it myself.

Two days went by in a blur of fittings and rehearsed speeches. My dad kept practicing the formal words of the alliance out loud at breakfast, like saying them enough times would make them feel less hollow.

"To unity," he said, testing the phrase. "To peace between our packs."

"You've said that four times now."

"I want it to sound natural."

"It sounds like you're reciting something. Which you are."

"Helpful, Selene."

"I will try."

Theo, buttering toast beside me, didn't even look up. "For what it's worth, you both sound insane right now."

"Nobody asked you," my dad said, without any real heat behind it.

"I'm just saying. If I have to hear 'to unity, to peace' one more time before we even leave the house, I'm going to start reciting it back to both of you every time you ask me to pass the salt."

"Please don't," I said.

"No promises."

My dad actually laughed at that, and for a second the whole table felt almost normal, almost like a family getting ready for an ordinary dinner instead of whatever that actually was.

Then, way too fast, the night of the dinner showed up.

The ride over felt endless and instant at the same time. I sat across from my dad, running through everything one more time. Damon's warning. The two notes. Elias Kane's name is buried in old paperwork.

"You're quiet," my dad said.

"Just nervous."

"That's normal. I was nervous the day I married your mother too."

"Did it go away?"

"Eventually." He smiled a little, though it didn't quite reach his eyes. "Mostly."

The Vance estate looked exactly like I remembered it. Stone walls, old iron gates, windows lit up gold in the dark.

The dining hall was already half full when we got there. This time I looked everyone in the eye as I walked past. Memorizing faces.

Then I saw him.

Kellan stood near the head of the table, dressed in dark colors, wearing that same cold, controlled look I remembered from three years of marriage. When his eyes found mine across the room, I felt that same weird jolt I always used to feel.

"Selene," he said, when I reached the table, like he was testing how the name sounded out loud.

"Kellan."

"You look well."

"You sound surprised."

Something flickered across his face, gone before I could name it. "I didn't mean it like that."

"I know," I said, though I wasn't sure I did.

"How is your father finding the negotiations?" he asked, the kind of question people ask when they've run out of anything to say.

"Thorough. He reads every line twice."

"Smart man."

"He raised me, so I'd hope so."

That earned the smallest hint of a smile, there and went so fast I almost missed it, and for one strange second, I saw a flicker of the boy I used to know before the wedding turned him into someone colder.

I took my seat, and it was only once I sat down that I saw who they'd put almost right across from me.

Camille.

My whole body went cold and still, that old feeling of being hunted kicking in before I could stop it.

She gave me a polite little smile, the same one she wore the night she killed me, and I made myself smile back.

"Selene Hart," she said, testing my name the way Kellan had. "I've heard so much about you."

"All good things, I hope."

"Mostly."

There was something underneath that word I didn't like at all. I filed it away, the way I've been filing everything away lately, useful or not, until it made sense.

So I watched her. Watched her eyes, the way the note had told me to.

And almost stopped breathing.

She wasn't looking at me like a predator looks at prey. She was looking at me like you looked at a ghost. Pale under all that composure, her hand shaking just slightly around her wine glass.

Dinner went on forever, slow and formal, plates coming and going, treaty talk passed low between my dad and Kellan's advisors.

"Your father tells me you've taken an interest in the treaty negotiations," Kellan said at one point, mostly to fill the silence between us.

"Someone has to."

"That someone used to be me."

"Things change."

He studied me a beat too long after that, like he was trying to work out a math problem he couldn't quite see all the numbers for.

Near the end of the meal, an old advisor stood up to give the traditional toast. The exact one I'd heard word for word at my own wedding. Unity. Peace. Both packs are finally coming together. I lifted my glass along with everyone else, stomach twisting at how familiar it all felt, and right at that moment, glass raised, candles flickering, Camille's composure finally broke completely.

Her glass slipped and shattered on the floor.

The whole table went quiet. She stood up so fast her chair almost tipped over.

"You," she said, her voice cracking wide open, loud enough for the whole room to hear. "You're supposed to be dead. I watched you die. I felt the knife go in myself."

The room exploded into noise.

Kellan's eyes locked onto mine across the table.

Dark. Stunned. And, somehow, full of memory that shouldn't even be there.

I opened my mouth, even though I had no idea what I was about to say, and that's when I noticed Camille wasn't even looking at me anymore. Her eyes had moved past my shoulder, toward the doorway at the end of the hall, and whatever she saw there drained every last bit of color out of her face.

I turned to see what she was looking at.

A man stood just inside the entrance, calm, like the chaos happening in this room didn't bother him at all. I didn't know his face. I didn't know his name. But the whole room went quiet around him in a way that had nothing to do with Camille's confession and everything to do with him.

Camille's confession had scared everyone at that table.

Whoever this man was, he scared Camille.