Claimed by the Beastly Lycan King

CHAPTER 13: THE CHAPEL MEETING

POV: Kaelira

I told myself I was not scared.

I told myself this the whole walk to the chapel, through the dark side corridor Nessa did not know I was using, past the old garden gate that the night guard left unlatched, across the stone path that ran along the outer wall where the torches were spaced too far apart to be useful.

I told myself I was simply going to listen to an old woman and come straight back.

The ring sat inside my sleeve, pressing against my wrist with every step, and I was absolutely not scared.

The chapel was small and very old, tucked against the far edge of the palace grounds where the stone had gone dark with age, its wooden door standing slightly open with a thin line of candlelight coming through the gap.

so I pushed it open slowly.

The woman inside was small, bent at the shoulders, wrapped in a grey shawl that had seen better years, sitting in the front pew with her hands folded so tight her knuckles had gone white, and she looked up when I came in with the expression of someone who had been sitting alone in the dark for a long time hoping the person they were waiting for would actually come.

"Lady Kaelira," she said, her voice thin and careful.

"You said you knew my mother," I said, sitting down across from her, keeping the aisle between us, "start there."

She nodded quickly. "My name is Greta. I served your mother for eleven years, from before you were born until she died. I dressed her, I brought her meals, I sat with her when she was sick," her voice dropped. "I was there the whole time she was being poisoned."

The word landed quietly in the empty chapel.

"Poisoned," I said.

"Slowly," Greta said, leaning forward slightly, "not all at once, that would have been noticed. It was a little at a time, in her food, her tea, her bath oils, spread across months, so it looked like a wasting illness. I did not understand what I was seeing until it was too late to stop it."

I sat very still and asked "Who did it?"

"Someone who could not afford to let her carry a child to full term," she said. "Your mother was already with you when it started. They were trying to stop the pregnancy, when that did not work, they shifted to making sure you would never know what you were, and what blood you carried."

I thought about Lyriana in the portrait, about my own hands glowing silver in the dark, about every person in my life who had told me I was nothing but a weak omega with no value.

"They knew about the Luna bloodline," I said.

"They knew exactly what it meant," Greta said. "A child born from that line carrying a Lycan King's bond would produce power that nobody in this kingdom could challenge. They could not allow that, so they took your mother, and they buried what she was, and they made sure you grew up believing you were worthless so you would never look too closely at yourself."

My hands were very still in my lap. "Greta," I said quietly." Who ordered it?"

She looked at me, looked at the candle between us, then looked back at me with the expression of someone taking a breath before jumping from a very high place.

"It was"

Then the chapel window exploded inward.

It was not the glass, the whole frame, splintering apart, and something came through the dark so fast that I couldn't understand what had happened until Greta made a sound that was not a word, a short, broken exhale, and lurched forward off the pew.

I caught her before she hit the floor.

The arrow was buried in her chest, just below her left shoulder, and I pressed both hands around it uselessly, her shawl already dark and wet. "Greta, Greta, look at me, stay with me," I shouted.

Then her eyes found my face. Her mouth moved slowly.

"Who was it?" I said. "Tell me, please, just the name, just say the name."

Her lips shaped something, the beginning of a word, but only air came out.

"Greta," I said, louder. Both my hands were pressing harder, my own hands shaking so badly I could barely keep pressure on the wound. "Please, just the name," I said, crying.

Then her hand came up and closed around my wrist, weakly, her fingers barely gripping, and she looked at me with something that was not quite fear and not quite peace, and somewhere in between, her mouth tried once more.

But nothing came out. Then her hand dropped.

I stayed there on the chapel floor, holding her for a moment that felt much longer than it was, the candle between the pews flickering in the cold air coming through the broken window, and the name she had been about to say was still sitting somewhere in the room like smoke, present and unreachable.

My hands were shaking too badly to think straight.

I reached into my sleeve and found the ring, then crushed it between my fingers so hard the metal bit into my palm, pressing until I felt it give, and then I held the broken pieces in my fist and breathed.

Ronan would feel it. I said

Wherever he was riding in the dark, he would feel it.

The question was how long it would take him to get here and whether that would be fast enough for whatever was about to happen next.

I laid Greta down gently, pressed her shawl over the wound even though I knew it made no difference now, and stood up slowly.

The chapel was quiet, though, then I looked up.

Every window, all four of them, had shadows moving outside them, dark shapes passing slowly across the glass. It was not hurrying, not calling out, just moving in a careful, wide circle around the building like people who already knew there was nowhere left for me to run.