Chapter 7: The Announcement

The courtyard was already full by the time Sera and I got there.

Every wolf in the Ironveil Pack, warriors, omegas, elders, mothers with babies balanced on their hips, all of them packed into the main courtyard with their breath coming out in small white clouds. The great pack hall at one end, the elder lodge at the other, and in the middle, the raised stone platform where the Alpha addressed his people.

I had stood in this crowd a hundred times.

Always at the back. Always invisible.

Today felt different.

People moved when they saw me coming Not out of respect More like they didn't want to be too close, like whatever had happened to me last night was something they could catch if they stood near enough. I watched the small shifts, the shuffled feet, the turned shoulders, eyes that found somewhere else to be the moment they almost met mine, and I felt Selene stir low in my chest.

Let them move. Her voice was quieter than usual. We never needed their closeness anyway.

I kept walking.

Sera's hand was locked in mine and she was squeezing so hard my fingers had gone numb and I was grateful for every bit of it. Grateful for something real to hold onto.

We found a spot near the middle of the crowd. I don't know why I chose the middle. Stubbornness, maybe. Some part of me that refused to slink to the back where the unwanted people stood. Some piece of last night still sitting in my chest like a coal that hadn't gone out yet. Kael's voice, low and certain. It was about his weakness. Not your worth.

I stood in the middle and I waited.

He's close, Selene said. I can smell him already.

A second later I smelled it too.

Cedar. Cold iron.

My chest pulled tight on its own, the way it always did, the ghost of the broken bond flaring dull and aching like an old bruise someone had just pressed a thumb into. I breathed through it carefully. In through my nose. Out through my mouth. I was not going to fall apart in front of this pack. I had decided that before I even walked out of the forest this morning.

Rex is restless. Selene's voice shifted, something careful in it now. Damien's wolf. He's been pushing since last night, Lyra. Hard.

I didn't know what to do with that so I said nothing.

Damien walked onto the platform.

He looked exactly the same.

That was the thing I hadn't prepared for. Some stupid part of me had expected him to look different. Guilty, maybe. Tired. Something. Some visible evidence that rejecting your fated mate in front of hundreds of wolves and walking away without flinching had cost him anything at all.

But he looked exactly the same.

Tall and composed and coldly authoritative, his grey-green eyes moving across the crowd with the calm of a man who had never once lost sleep over a decision he'd made. Dark clothes. Jaw set. Shoulders straight.

Alpha Damien Voss, unbothered and untouched.

I hated him a little for that.

A little, Selene said, dry as bone. Sure.

Beside me Sera made a sound under her breath that wasn't fit for mixed company.

Nadia Storme stepped up onto the platform a moment later.

Of course she did.

Pale blue dress that probably cost more than everything I owned put together. Dark hair pinned up perfectly. She looked rested and beautiful and completely at ease, like last night had been a lovely evening she was still glowing from. She tucked her hand into the crook of Damien's arm like it already belonged there.

Something twisted in my stomach. Sharp and stupid and unwanted.

Don't. Selene's voice came fast, almost sharp. He doesn't deserve one more second of your pain. Not one, Lyra.

I breathed in slowly.

She was right.

Damien raised one hand and the crowd went silent. Just like that, no effort, no raised voice, just the automatic surrender of a pack to its Alpha.

"Last night was the Blood Moon Ceremony." His voice carried easily, smooth and controlled, giving nothing away. "Our pack grew stronger. Bonds were formed. We are grateful to the moon for her blessing."

He paused. Nadia smiled at the crowd.

"Today I have an additional announcement." His eyes moved steadily across the gathered wolves. "Nadia Storme, daughter of Alpha Coran Storme of the southern territory, has agreed to become Luna of the Ironveil Pack. Our union will take place at the next full moon."

The crowd erupted.

Cheering. Applause, howls going up from somewhere near the front and spreading outward like something catching fire. The sound of a pack genuinely pleased with its Alpha's choices.

Sera's grip on my hand went brutal. Nearly gasped.

"Lyra," she said through her teeth.

"I'm okay."

"You don't have to"

"I'm okay, Sera."

I was watching Nadia.

The way she smiled. Composed and careful and just slightly too satisfied, like someone who had won a long game and was being gracious about it. Her eyes moved across the celebrating crowd slowly, and then, deliberately, they found mine.

She looked at me for exactly three seconds.

Then she looked away.

Like I was nothing. Like I was already forgotten, already filed somewhere she didn't need to think about anymore.

And that, more than the rejection, more than the announcement, more than any of it, was what made something cold settle into the center of my chest and harden there.

I was not nothing.

I was not forgotten.

She was going to find that out.

I was already turning to leave when it happened.

Damien's eyes found me.

I don't know how. The courtyard was packed, hundreds of wolves pressed shoulder to shoulder, and I was near the middle, and he was on a platform at the front. But his gaze moved through that crowd like it already knew where it was going and it landed on my face and it stopped.

Just stopped.

Everything else kept moving. The crowd was still cheering, Nadia was still smiling, the elders were nodding. All of it kept going.

But Damien Voss was completely still and he was looking straight at me.

Rex, Selene breathed. Something had shifted and I felt it Lyra that's Rex

I felt it before she finished.

A crack in the air between us. Like something giving way under pressure it had been holding back too long. Damien's composure splintered, just for a second, just at the edges, and what came through that crack was not cold authority.

It was pain.

Raw and sudden and real enough that it nearly knocked the breath out of me. Rex was in agony. And Damien was standing there controlled and unbothered and holding his wolf together by sheer willpower and it was costing him everything his face wasn't showing.

Good, I thought.

I held his gaze.

I didn't look away. Didn't drop my eyes the way an omega was supposed to when an Alpha looked at her. I stood in the middle of that crowd in my dirty clothes with my scraped knuckles and my swollen eyes and I looked straight back at Damien Voss and I let him see it.

I was still standing.

I had not broken and was never going to break for him.