CHAPTER 3 THE STEPSISTER'S CROWN

I didn't leave. That was, I think, the first genuine mistake of the day — standing frozen on the steps with the wand still visible in my hand, watching attendants swarm forward with a second coronation gown that had clearly been waiting in the wings the entire time.

They'd known. Someone had known long before I walked through those doors.

Seraphina crossed to the throne with the unhurried grace of a woman who had rehearsed this exact walk in front of a mirror more times than she would ever admit. Pale gold pooled at her feet. Diamonds settled at her throat. And then — my mother's crown, lowered onto her head by hands that did not shake.

The Moon Temple elders began their rites again, word for word, as though they hadn't spoken every one of them over me not twenty minutes earlier.

I stood on the steps and could not make my legs remember how to move.

My wolf was awake now — fully, furiously awake — and she wanted things my body wasn't equipped to give her. To run. To fight. To do anything at all besides stand here and watch the man I had trusted for three years press his mouth to my stepsister's forehead.

The kiss barely touched her skin.

His eyes found mine over the crown of her head.

For one unguarded instant I saw it again — the same confusion I'd caught when he first understood about the babies. He hadn't planned this either. Someone had built this whole morning without consulting either of the people meant to be living inside it.

That should have comforted me.

It didn't.

Seraphina turned to face the room, and there was none of the trembling modesty tradition demanded of a new Luna. She looked, instead, like a woman reclaiming property that had always technically been hers.

"I accept the bond of House Blackthorn." Her voice rang clean off the marble. "I accept the honor of Luna. I swear to protect this realm, and the Alpha King who has chosen me."

Chosen.

The word went into me like something thrown.

I pushed past the attendants and made for the smaller doors at the rear of the chamber, the ones that let out into the palace's working corridors. No one stopped me. Perhaps they were too stunned. Perhaps, on some level, they understood that if I stayed in that room one minute longer, I would do something no amount of careful diplomacy could later smooth over.

My hand wouldn't stop shaking.

The wand was still in it, proof of everything I'd just lost, clutched so tightly the plastic had begun to bite.

I made it as far as the outer corridor before his voice caught up to me.

"Elara. Wait."

I turned. He'd followed — abandoned the ceremony, abandoned his newly minted mate, still standing in front of five hundred witnesses without him. His composure had come apart at the seams; the careful uniform, the careful king, both slightly undone.

"Explain," he said.

"Explain what, exactly? I was pregnant. You rejected me for my stepsister. I chose to walk before you could make it official. I'd have thought that part was self-explanatory."

He flinched, which told me something. I filed it away.

"I didn't know about Seraphina."

"But you knew about the babies. Or you knew enough that someone thought it worth engineering my public rejection before I had the chance to tell you myself."

"We need to keep this quiet." Urgency had crept into his voice, sharpening it. "A Luna carrying royal heirs cannot be allowed to—"

"Cannot be allowed to what?" I cut across him. "Walk away? Breathe air that isn't scheduled? Exist somewhere outside your plans for five consecutive minutes?"

"Cannot be allowed to die, Elara." That stopped me. "If this reaches the wrong ears — if House Ashgrave understands what you're carrying—"

The name went through me like ice water. Lady Octavia Ashgrave. The elegant physician who ran half the medical infrastructure in the Glass Quarter and had told me, with such gentle certainty, that I would never be able to give Darius children.

"Why," I said carefully, "would Lady Ashgrave care what I'm carrying?"

His face answered before his mouth had the chance to catch up.

Someone knew. Someone important knew, and whatever they knew had already made my pregnancy dangerous in ways I hadn't begun to understand.

"I can protect you." His hand reached for mine. "But you need to come back inside. Accept the bond publicly, at least in name, or—"

"They're not legally yours anymore. I rejected the claim. Whatever I'm carrying belongs to me."

"That will make you a target."

The words sat between us, heavy enough to have their own gravity.

I thought of Mara's clinic tucked into the western district, the locked rooms, the careful discretion around exactly which women came through those doors and why. I thought of medical files I'd glimpsed over the years, stamped with names I recognized from every one of the five Houses.

"I need to leave," I said.

"Not alone. Let me send guards, let me—"

"No." I turned away from him for what I already understood would be the last time in a long while. "You've sent quite enough already."

I walked deeper into the palace's working corridors, and behind me, Darius called my name exactly once more before the silence swallowed it.

I didn't look back to see what his face was doing.