Chapter Three

Lyra’s Pov

I heard the words. I understood them. I simply could not make them real inside my head.

Someone near the back dropped a goblet, the sound hitting hard across the hall.

My aunt gasped loudly in shock.

“This can't be true..” Elder Marrow sputtered.

My eyes instinctively turned to Selene abd her face was blood red.

Cassian stared at Kael like he had gone mad.

Only Alpha Magnus found his voice first. "You cannot be serious."

"I do not make jokes in public." Kael blurted.

I finally stepped back on instinct. "What?"

Kael continued.

"A one-year contract marriage under Nightfang law. In return, Black Hollow receives military protection along the eastern border, immediate suspension of its current war debt, free herbs from Nightfang and the signed alliance you begged for."

My uncle's mouth opened in shock, then shut.

He had not denied begging for the alliance because that would have been another lie too easy to expose.

The elders started speaking at once.

"This is outrageous."

"A disgraced woman cannot be traded into Nightfang."

"It would shame both packs."

"It would solve the problem."

That last one came from my aunt.

I looked at her.

She did not look ashamed.

Kael let them speak until the noise becane too much, then he spoke over all of them with one flat command.

"Silence.”

The hall went silent immediately.

Cassian moved first this time, stepping in front of me as if the right had just returned to him.

"No." He thundered.

Every head turned towards the both of us.

He faced Kael with more courage than he had shown for me all night, which would have been laughable if it did not make my stomach churn.

"You don't get to take her because you feel you have the power" Cassian thundered.

“She belongs to Black Hollow and here she shall remaining"

My stomach twisted in horror.

Kael's gaze dropped to the space Cassian had placed himself in. "Belongs?"

Cassian swallowed, but held his ground. "She is the Luna here."

"Was she?" Kael asked.

"Then why is she being accused without intruct evidence and all you did was defend the crowd against her?"

Cassian's face hardened. "You know nothing about this."

"I know enough to spot a coward when I see one." He retorted.

His eyes flicked once to Selene, then to Magnus. Then back to Cassian.

Cassian boliled with rage.

"You better watch your tongue."

The guards with Kael lunged towards him immediately in annoyance but Kael stopped them.

They must had been taken off by his audacity.

Kael looked almost bored. "Or what?"

Cassian's hand curled into a fist. For a second I truly thought he might lunge towards Kael and I almost wished he would. At least then everyone would see how courageous he was.

Instead he turned toward me, grabbing my wrist.

"Lyra, say something. You can't agree to this."

I stared at his hand on me in uttter disgust.

Hours ago I might have broken at his voice. I might have searched his face to defend me while I was being accused but something had died in me the moment he stepped away and called me a liar.

The thing looking at him now was not the girl who had loved him.

I pulled my hand free.

He tightened his hold again.

"Lyra," he said more urgently, lower now. "Don't do this out of anger. Nightfang is not a refuge. Kael Draven will ruin you."

I let out a raw laugh.

"You already did that for free."

A murmur rushed through the hall.

Cassian's expression cracked. "I was trying to protect the pack."

"No," I said. "You were trying to protect yourself."

His grip loosened just enough for me to wrench away.

I took two steps back from him so everyone could see the distance. My voice shook when I spoke again.

"You stood there and watched them bury me."

"Lyra, listen to me." He begged.

"No. You listen." I thundered.

The ballroom had gone so still that my own breathing sounded loud.

I lifted my chin and looked straight at the man I had once planned to stand beside for the rest of my life.

The mate bond pulsed.

It struck low in my chest, hot and violent, the same way it had first awakened on my eighteenth birthday when Cassian touched my wrist under moonlight and I had thought fate itself had binded us together.

I had spent years protecting that bond because I couldn't wait to the day he would announce us at the right time.

Now the bond felt rotten.

I looked at him and saw not my mate, but a coward wearing my memories like stolen clothes.

Cassian must have felt it too, because his face shifted. His hand half lifted toward me.

“Lyra,” he said, and this time his voice was not loud. It was urgent. “Do not do anything rash.”

The bond twisted again, and with it came every swallowed betrayal, every lie I had excused, every moment I had made myself smaller so he could be comfortable. I was done shrinking for him.

So I said the one thing no one in Black Hollow expected me to say.

"Before this pack, before the elders, before the Blood Moon itself, I reject you Cassian Thorne as my mate or future Alpha of this pack.”

The room froze.

I could feel the shock of it ripple through the wolves around us. A fated bond was not broken lightly and never had it been known that a woman broke the bond first.

“I denounce every bond between the both of us." I blurted.

Cassian’s face went pale.

“You are no mate of mine," I continued.

“I reject your claim, your touch, and your place in my future. Whatever the Moon Goddess intended, you have made yourself unworthy of it.”

Pain tore through me at once.

It ripped across my ribs and into my throat like a blade of fire. My knees almost buckled. Gasps of shock broke out around me.

And somewhere to my left, I heard Selene whisper a curse.

Kael signalled the crowd to remain silent and then he turned to me.

“What do you say, Lyra?”

Alpha Magnus spread his hands. "If she agrees, Black Hollow has no objection."

My head snapped toward him.

“No objection?”

My family had not even waited for a minute before selling me out.

Kael's gaze never left mine.

"I did not ask Black Hollow, I asked her."

He stepped closer.

The distance between us closed, and the room seemed to shrink around the force of him.

He smelled like snow, smoke and herbs

His pale eyes searched my face like he expected to find a yes but was disappointed not to have seen.

"I am offering you a contract, Lyra Vale," he said quietly.

"One year. You take my name, my protection and my authority."

His voice lowered further.

"In return, you will come to Nightfang tonight. You will obey Nightfang law. You will stand beside me as Luna.”

“There would be nothing more except that.”

I should have refused.

Any sensible woman would have.

This man was cold, terrifying, and so clearly hiding something that only a fool would agree to be his Luna.

But behind me stood the pack that had accused me falsely and spat on my face.

In front of me stood a wolf who had at least asked whether I was guilty before deciding my fate.

Selene found her voice at last. "This is insane. She is accused of treachery, she can't be Luna"

Kael looked at her. "Then consider this your gain. I am taking your scandal off your hands."

Her jaw tightened.

My uncle glanced around the hall and I saw what was clearky wrritten in his eyes.

Calculation. Relief. Greed.

He would agree to anything if it preserved the alliance and removed the embarrassment of the pack's debt.

Cassian looked like he had been gutted. He turned once more to Magnus. "You can't allow this."

Alpha Magnus's face settled into false regret. "The Alpha of Nightfang has made a lawful offer."

Cassian stared at him in disbelief.

Kael extended his hand to me.

It was not a romantic gesture. It looked like the final line in a bargain that could still become a threat.

"Choose," he said.

My heart hammered.

I looked at Cassian, at Selene, at my aunt's eager disgust, at my uncle's convenient calm. Then I looked back at Kael.

If I stayed, they would bury me alive.

If I left with him, I might be walking into a darker cage.

But cages had doors but graves did not.

"I have one condition," I said.

Several elders groaned immediately.

Kael's expression did not shift. "Speak."

I drew in a slow breath. "If I take your offer, I walk out of here tonight as your equal in contract. Not as a purchased property"

“And your words remain the same; no strings attached.”

Something unreadable flickered in his eyes.

Then he nodded once. "Done."

That answer came too fast.

It should have warned me more than it did.

Elder Marrow sputtered, "This cannot be completed without records, witnesses and ceremonial authority."

Kael reached into his coat and withdrew a folded document sealed in black wax.

A murmur moved through the room.

"I came prepared to sign an alliance," he said. "

The document was carried to the platform, then the elders were back down as revisions were barked, scratched, and added in a rush.

The elders argued over clauses.

Alpha Magnus added more clauses that were beneficial to him.

He did not even try to protect me in the contract.

Kael accepted all of them.

I watched keenly as I was being bargained for like a piece of clothing.

That told me more than anything else tonight.

When the document was finally placed before me on a silver tray, my hands were steady.

I read enough to know the danger ahead of me was real.

One year of public marriage.

In return, Black Hollow received Debt relief and territorial protection.

Kael took the pen from my hand, signed beneath my name, and pressed his seal into the wax without hesitation. Then one of his men stepped forward with a narrow black box.

Obsidian.

The ring inside it was dark as midnight, set with a thin silver line that caught the firelight like a blade.

I should have felt fear when he took my hand.

Instead I felt the whole room watching, waiting to see whether I would tremble.

I didn't.

Kael slid the ring onto my finger.

It fit perfectly.

The sight of that seemed to disturb him for the briefest second, though he masked it before anyone else could notice. Then he bent his head just enough for only me to hear him.

“I want you as my Luna.”

“What do you want." he murmured.

His thumb pressed once against the inside of my wrist, directly over my pulse.

"I want them ruined."

He lifted his gaze to mine.

“Then ,let us give each other both."