Chapter 3

I'm halfway down the hall with a mug of tea warming my hands when Ronan's voice drifts through the kitchen door, low, careful, not meant to carry.

I stop dead outside the doorway.

"Master, we all know you love her." A servant, hushed. "Seraphine. Everyone in this house knows. So why did you sleep with the Luna?"

I press my back to the wall, the mug going cold against my palm.

"Because everyone in this house knows," Ronan says, flat and quiet, "which is exactly the problem. Seraphine has enemies circling this pack that would gut her the second they knew what she means to me. If I let her get close in the open, I hand them a target with her name on it."

"So you—"

"So the world sees me infatuated with Elara instead. A political marriage, a scandal, whatever story sells. It keeps their eyes off Seraphine." A pause, and something in his voice goes almost gentle when he adds, "Elara doesn't have to know why. She just has to survive being used for it."

I set the mug down on the hall table and walk back the way I came, my face arranged into something that doesn't crack until I'm three rooms away.

Bait. Again.

By the time the banquet starts that evening, I've folded it down small enough to carry. I stand near the edge of the hall in my second-best dress, wine I'm not drinking sweating cold in my hand, watching Damon laugh with men twice his age like Wren's failed ceremony never happened, like the door I didn't open last night never existed.

A hand closes around my wrist.

"Well, look who wandered off her leash." The man reeks of whiskey, his grip too tight, two more men flanking him with the same slack, hungry grins. "The useless Luna, all alone."

"Let go of my wrist," I say, "unless you'd like to keep the hand attached to it."

He laughs, delighted, like I've told a joke. "She's got teeth. I like that." His fingers dig in harder. "Careful, sweetheart. You're an Omega playing dress-up in a Luna's title. You should be grateful we let you breathe the same air as us."

Something in me goes cold and still, precise, waiting.

"Last chance," I tell him.

He backhands me instead.

The hall doesn't go silent so much as it goes careful, dozens of eyes finding somewhere else to look while his friends grab my other arm, wrench it behind my back, and someone produces iron-forged chains from a servant's tray like they'd been waiting for the excuse. The metal bites cold against my wrists, humming with the kind of ward that keeps wolves from shifting through it.

"There," the first man says, stepping back to admire his work. "Much better. A Luna in chains suits a useless one."

I could break them right now. I know exactly how much force it would take, exactly which link is weakest. I let him have this moment—let him think it's over—because I want to watch his face when it isn't.

Footsteps cross the hall fast, cutting through the murmuring crowd.

"Get those off her." Ronan's voice, sharp enough to snap heads around, his hand already closing around the man's collar before he finishes the sentence. "Now."

The man's grin falters, but not enough. "She's nothing to you. Everyone knows where your loyalty—"

"I said now."