Chapter 4: The woman in red

*Isabella*

I disobeyed him.

Kael told me to stay upstairs. Locked me in. But when I heard that woman's voice call him "my love," something silver and jealous snapped inside my chest.

I climbed out the bedroom window. Barefoot, in the red dress, Kael's fur cloak still around my shoulders dragging in snow, I crept along the balcony to look down into the great hall.

And I saw her.

She was everything I was not. Tall, silver-white hair to her waist, ice-blue eyes, wearing a red dress exactly like mine but designer, expensive, clean. Not a sacrifice dress. A Luna dress. And she was hugging Kael.

My Kael. The Beast.

"Kael, you left me to die," she cried, tears perfect. "Five years ago, when you shifted and your beast scratched me, everyone thought I died. I was healing in the North. I came back for you."

Kael stood stiff. He did not hug her back. His gold eyes were cold.

"You did not die. You ran. You left me thinking I killed my Luna. You made me wear this curse for five years."

Selene's perfect face twisted. "And you replaced me with a human? In my red dress? Wearing your fur?" She looked up and her eyes found me on the balcony. In red. In his fur.

Her smile was venom.

"Oh. Look what the forest dragged in. The sacrifice. You know he kills every girl in red, sweetie? He killed me too. Almost."

I stepped into the hall before I could stop myself. Barefoot, red dress dirty, but his fur glowing faintly silver around me.

Kael moved. So fast I barely saw. One second he was beside her, next he was in front of me, his huge body blocking me from her, growling.

"Don't speak to her. Don't look at her. Don't breathe near her," he snarled at Selene. "She wears my beast skin and lives. She touched silver and lives. What did you ever do, Selene, except bleed and run?"

Selene gasped. "You are choosing a wolfless human over me? Your true Luna?"

"She is my true Luna. My wolf howled mate for her. He never howled for you."

The huge gray wolf walked in then, and went straight to me, not Selene. It put its head under my hand in the red dress, and I scratched behind its ear. It purred.

Selene screamed. "That wolf hated me! He tried to bite me!"

"Because he knew you were not his Luna," Kael said quietly. "He knows. Beasts know."

Selene looked at me, at the fur glowing silver on my shoulders, at the wolf loving me.

Her face went from jealous to murderous.

"Silver White," she whispered. "You... you are Silver White, aren't you, little human? That's why the fur does not burn you."

The whole hall went silent. Silver White. The extinct wolf.

Kael's grip on me tightened. "She is mine. And if you tell anyone what you think she is, Selene, I will finish what my beast started five years ago."

Upstairs, in his bedroom, he threw me on the bed again, breathing hard, gold eyes wild.

"You should not have come down in that red dress," he whispered, crawling over me, his fur cloak falling over both of us like a tent, caging me. "Do you know what you do to me when you disobey me in red? My beast wants to mark you so no one ever looks at you in red again."