Chapter Four

Chapter Four

POV: Kael Dravon

I stood in the ceremonial circle with Zara's hand in mine and told myself this was the right decision. The only decision. I was the High Alpha of the Seven Packs and High Alphas do not kneel for anyone, not even the woman the Moon Goddess herself decided was mine.

The elder spoke the binding words and somewhere behind me the crowd murmured and I was grateful I could not make out the specific words because whoever was foolish enough to bring up what happened in that clearing three days ago would not live to bring it up twice.

"You may mark your Luna," the elder said.

I looked at Zara. She looked back at me with that gracious composed face that had made her the most untroubling name on my council's list and I leaned forward and pressed the mark into her neck and felt absolutely nothing, and that was fine, that was exactly fine, because I had not chosen her to feel something. I had chosen her because she would never make me kneel.

Pack Dravon bowed around us. I turned away before the echo of it settled.

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She found me in the private chamber an hour after the ceremony ended. I was still in my formal clothes, sitting with a cup I had not touched, staring at nothing in particular and doing a very poor job of not thinking about things I had decided not to think about.

"You have not eaten anything since this morning," Zara said, settling into the chair across from mine like she had been sitting in that chair her entire life.

"I am aware of what I have and have not eaten," I said.

"I am only saying that even ruthless men need to eat, Kael."

"What I need," I said, setting the cup down with more force than was strictly necessary, "is for you to understand what this arrangement is before you start believing it is something else. You are my Luna. You are for this pack. You will stand beside me in every formal capacity this position requires and I will give you the respect that position deserves. That is everything I am offering you and I need you to be certain of that right now."

She was quiet for a moment, her dark eyes moving over my face with an assessment that I did not particularly appreciate.

"She said just one word to you," Zara said quietly. "Didn't she."

Every muscle in my body went still.

"You will not," I said, and my voice dropped into that register that made experienced warriors reassess their decisions, "speak about things that do not concern you."

"I am your Luna," she said, completely unbothered in a way that was starting to irritate me beyond reason. "Everything about you concerns me now."

"Then concern yourself with your duties and leave the rest alone."

She stood. Smoothed the front of her dress. Looked at me with something that sat uncomfortably close to pity and said, "Whatever pride made you walk across that clearing and say what you said to her is sitting in this room with us right now, Kael. I just thought you should know that."

Then she walked out and the door closed behind her and I sat alone in the silence she left and I hated that she was not entirely wrong, which made me hate everything about the last three days even more than I already did.

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I sat there thinking about the suppressant compound I had obtained before Sera's ceremony, the formula the dark practitioner had handed me with complete confidence, the plan that was supposed to give me everything, Sera beside me, the bond intact, my authority undisturbed, and I thought about how completely and humiliatingly it had collapsed in front of five hundred wolves.

If it had worked she would have been mine. That was the part I kept returning to against my will. I had done all of it because I could not figure out how to have her without losing the one thing I had never allowed myself to lose, and instead I had lost her anyway and gained nothing except a Luna I did not want and a pack full of wolves who were very carefully not saying what they were thinking.

And then she looked at me across that clearing.

And said that one word.

Noted. Just like that? No remorse? No pleading or so? She didn't even love me! What the fuck? I thought she had loved me, right from our childhood, all those years of knowing each other, all those years of her just being there, and she had looked at me after everything I said and given me "Noted" like I was something administrative, like I was nothing, like all of it meant nothing to her at all.

Maybe she never loved me. Maybe she had someone else all along. Or maybe she didn't even drink the suppressant? No, that was impossible. Her father accepted it himself. She would have drunk it without question.

So what went wrong?

I need to go and see that doctor. I hope that man never played me, I genuinely hope for his sake that he did not because if I find out that formula was tampered with before it reaches me then he will have his head rolling on the floor and his blood cleaning every surface of that hospital before he finishes his first word of explanation.

I stood and crossed to the door and pulled it open and the guard outside snapped straight immediately.

"Fetch the pack doctor," I said. "Tell him the High Alpha requires him now. Not when he finishes whatever he is doing. Now."

The guard was already moving before I finished speaking.

I stepped back inside and stood in the silence and stared at the wall and felt something cold settle at the bottom of my chest because if that formula was modified, if someone had changed what was given to me before it ever reached Sera, then everything that happened in that clearing was not an accident.