Chapter 6:Two Choices

Then I looked back eventually and he said "What happened to you tonight,isa "was not a reflection of your worth." His voice was quiet and  Steady.  "Whatever that Alpha told himself to justify it was about his weakness. His limitations. Not yours

"The moon doesn't make mistakes."

I stood in the dark between the trees and let those words move through me.

Because the moon hadn't made a mistake tonight.

She had made two choices.

One had broken me open.

One was standing behind me right now.

And I was not ready for any of this for what was waking up inside me or what Storm had just done or what the word two meant or the way Selene was pressing her nose toward Kael like a compass finding north.

I was not ready.

But the moon, apparently, did not care.

"Thank you," I said. "For not walking away."

A beat of quiet.

"Anytime," he said.

And he meant it. I could feel that he meant it not as a pleasantry but as a promise.

So I  walked into the forest.

I did not look back.

But Selene did.

She looked back the entire way home and I pretended I couldn't feel it.

The pack grounds were just beginning to show the first grey light of dawn when I stepped out of the Ashwood.

I stopped at the tree line and just breathed for a moment.

The pack was quiet still. Smoke started to rise from the kitchen longhouse. A few early birds moving between buildings. The ordinary sounds of a morning that had no idea the night before it had shattered someone.

Are you ready? Selene asked.

No, I said honestly.

Me neither, she admitted. And that Selene admitting she wasn't ready was so unlike her that it steadied me somehow. If even she was off-balance then off-balance was allowed. Off-balance was okay.

Together then, I said.

Together, she agreed.

I stepped out of the trees.

Sera  was sitting on the stone wall outside the eastern longhouse with her arms folded and eyes red. The expression on her face cycling rapidly between furious and relieved as she spotted me like she couldn't decide which one to land on.

She was off the wall before I had taken three steps.

"Lyra Ashveil." Her voice was dangerously controlled. "I have been sitting on that wall since midnight. My entire backside has gone numb. Where have you been?"

"I'm okay," I said.

"You keep saying that like it answers the question."

"Sera

She pulled me into a hug so fierce it knocked the breath out of me. I grabbed her back and held on and pressed my face into her shoulder and smelled the familiar warm scent of her, the one that had meant to save my entire life and felt something in my chest loosen.

Just slightly.

Just enough.

"He's going to make an announcement this morning," she said against my hair. Her voice had dropped. 

. "Damien. They're saying he called a pack meeting for sunrise." She pulled back and held my face in both hands and looked at me the way only mia looked at me like she was reading something behind my eyes that other people couldn't see. "You don't have to go. Lyra, you do not have to stand there and watch that."

I held her gaze.

"Something happened in the forest last night," I said quietly.

Her eyes went sharp immediately. "What kind of something?"

"I met someone."

She blinked. "In the Ashwood? Past midnight?" A pause. "Who?"

Before I could answer the pack bell rang.

Three long deep strikes rolling across the grounds. The sound that meant the Alpha was calling his people.

Sera 's hands tightened on my face.

"Don't go," she said. "Lyra, please. You don't owe him an audience

"Sera " I reached up and covered her hands with mine. Squeezed. "I'm not going for him."

She searched my face.

I don't know what she saw there. Something different from last night maybe. Something that hadn't been there before I walked into that forest and sat in the dark with a stranger who didn't walk away.

She let out a slow breath.

"Okay," she said quietly. "Okay." She laced her fingers through mine. "Then I'm coming with you."

I looked at my best friend.

At her red-rimmed eyes and her stubbornly set jaw and the way she was already squaring her shoulders like she was going into battle.

She kind of was.

So was I.

"Yeah," I said. "Okay."

And we walked toward the sound of the bell together.

My head was up.

My shoulders were back.

And somewhere in the Ashwood behind me, I was certain bone-deep, Selene also was certain that Kael Dawnridge was still standing in the dark between the trees.

Still there.

Watching me walk back into the world.