Chapter 4

Seraphine's knees buckle the second Ronan turns toward me.

"Ronan—" Her voice cracks perfect and high, and she catches herself against the wall, one hand pressed to her forehead like the room's gone sideways under her. "I feel faint. The wine, the heat—"

He's at her side before she finishes the sentence, an arm around her waist, all the sharpness from a second ago draining out of his face.

"Don't worry about her." Seraphine's eyes flick to me over his shoulder, bright and dry and nowhere near fainting. "The Luna heals fast. Everyone knows Alphas' mates do."

I stand there with chains still biting into my wrists and think, I don't heal fast. I just don't bleed where anyone can see it. A monster doesn't need healing. It just doesn't break.

Ronan hesitates, torn between us, and Seraphine tightens her grip on his arm until he stops hesitating.

He goes. Of course he goes.

I turn back to the man still holding the end of my chain like a leash, and something in me that's been folding smaller and smaller for five years finally runs out of room to fold. I call the magic up through my palms, old and quiet, the kind my father taught me before I traded my crown for a wedding vow, and the iron links snap apart like they were never forged at all.

The man stumbles back, eyes wide. I don't give him room to recover.

I pull the ceremonial sword from the display stand beside the hall doors, decorative, everyone always says, but nobody ever bothered to dull the edge and I close the distance in two strides, swinging for his throat with every intention of finishing it.

He throws himself sideways, and the blade catches his shoulder instead, a thin red line blooming through his shirt. He screams, more shock than pain, scrambling back with both hands raised.

"She's insane…somebody grab her—"

Nobody moves to grab me.

"Touch her again," Ronan says, crossing back into the circle with Seraphine forgotten on his arm, "and I'll let her finish what she started."

The man doesn't need telling twice. He clutches his shoulder and stumbles into the crowd, his friends peeling off after him, and the space around me empties out fast, like fear is contagious and I'm the source of it.

Ronan reaches for my wrist, turning it over to check the raw skin the chains left behind.

"You're hurt."

"I'm fine." I pull my hand back. "Go keep her company. She fainted, remember?"

He doesn't argue. I watch him cross the hall to where Seraphine waits with her hand pressed dramatically to her chest, and I turn away before I have to watch him comfort her.

I spend the rest of the night packing Damon's things for him.

His travel case sits open on our bed, and I fold his shirts out of habit more than devotion at this point, until my hand catches on a folded itinerary tucked into the case's inner pocket. Cruise departure, three weeks out. His parents' names on the passenger list. Seraphine's name on the passenger list.

I read it twice, looking for mine.

It isn't there.

I sigh to myself, it was never there. Wren and I were never a priority when it comes to Damon.

I sit down on the edge of the bed with the itinerary still in my hand, and I think about the last time someone left my name off a list, thirty years ago, my father's voice through a door I slammed shut myself, telling me I was choosing wrong, that love wouldn't feed me once the pack turned its back on me.

I proved him wrong for five years. Tonight I'm not so sure I did.

I find my phone in the drawer where I keep the things Damon doesn't ask about, and I scroll to a number I haven't dialed since the night I walked out of my father's house with nothing but a wedding dress and a promise I believed in.

My thumb hovers over it, shaking.

I press call before I can talk myself out of it.