Chapter 4

Aylin's POV

Kael didn't show up for our wedding.

On the very day we chose for the event, he travelled to Greece with Cersei. Shame rained on me like a storm as the guests left one after the other.

"Why would a common omega aspire to be the bride of the King?"

“Who does it think she is? There are better women out there, women of real royalty and she dares think she has as a chance?”

"Finally the veil over Kael's sensibility has been lifted. Aylin Moondream my foot.”

I stood in the decorated hall and listened to all of it. The mockery, and the pity that was worse than the mockery. Not one person stopped to question why their king had abandoned his Luna for the daughter of a dead sorcerer, the princess of a pack infamous for dark magic and treachery. Not one person found it strange. To them I was the problem. The presumptuous omega who had climbed too high and was now falling where she belonged.

But I kept this alive. I gave up everything I was to keep that man breathing. And I stood in that hall in a dress made from the now tattered silk I brought from Olympus and I let the flowers wither around me.

Kael and Cersei arrived 3 days later. And in contrast to my plight, it rained gifts and celebrations. Kael bought Cersei a new vehicle, the latest model of a very popular brand. He didn't stop there. A live, ready to install designer dresses wardrobe came in meant for the bedroom he had moved me out of. Expensive things, loudly given, meant to show everyone who mattered in that palace.

I waited until Cersei was out of sight before I approached him.

"You didn't send word of your departure," I said. "You made me worried."

He didn't answer.

"The flowers I purchased for the wedding have withered. Quite a lot of them, and I included your favourite."

I reached for his jacket, wanting to help with the zipper the way I always had. He stepped back.

I turned toward the door.

"You will never be half the woman she is," he said.

I stopped. "What?"

"Cersei. The woman I love." He said it without looking at me. Flat, final, like he was closing a cupboard.

"Tomorrow is my birthday."

"What? I thought it was still a few months away," I

"Just get out." He pulled the door and slammed it behind him.

I sat in the dark for a long time after that.

The next morning I dressed in the plainest things I could find because everything else had already been moved into Cersei's wardrobe. I stood in the courtyard among the nobles and the invited guests and the decorations and I watched Cersei arrive beside Kael in a gown that was dripped with jewels, her dark hair pinned high, her smile wide and practiced.

People turned to look at her the way they used to look at me. I went to supervise the maids. It was the only thing left that was mine to do.

The party went on around me, loud and bright. Cersei sat beside Kael at the high table, receiving compliments like she was already crowned. I carried instructions from one end of the courtyard to the other and told myself it was fine, it was temporary, that something was about to shift.

Then Kael stepped to the podium, the crowd settled instantly. He thanked them for coming. His voice was warm, easy, the voice I had fallen in love with watching through a portal from another world. Then he said my name.

"Aylin."

My heart moved before I did, excitement flowing through me. This was it, he was going to say it in front of everyone. Acknowledge what I was to him, set a new wedding date. Reach for me in front of all these people and kiss me passionately.

He took my hand and looked into my eyes.

I smiled, I could not help it. This was Kael. The man I had watched from Olympus with my hand pressed to a portal. The man I had fought guards and and fallen through the sky for. The man I had poured my divinity into. He was going to kiss me and claim me and I was going to let him because even now, even after everything, I still loved him more than I had ever loved being a god.

But the next thing he said was a bomb

"I, Kael Michaelson of the

RegalWolf Kingdom,", "reject you, Aylin Isadora Moondream, as my mate and bride."

The ground came up to meet me. My knees just stopped working and then I was on the floor. The bond snapped and the pain of it was nothing like anything I had ever felt on Olympus or on earth.

I looked up, but Kael had already turned away.

"Cersei."

She walked to the podium in her jewels and her dark smile and he kissed her in front of everyone. The crowd cheered and just as that was happening Kael dropped to one knee and held out a ring.

“Marry me Cersei, you are the piece to complete me.”

She said yes and they kissed again, the crowd erupting.

I got up off the floor and dashed towards him.

"Kael." My voice came out wrong, too small, too exposed. "Kael, please. Just talk to me. Tell me what I did, I can fix it, just.."

He turned to the crowd, his eyes moving over me like the tiniest detail.

"People of the RegalWolf," he began. “This woman has been plotting treason against the kingdom.”

Loud gasps filled the area.

“She has been seen moving through restricted areas, making contact with criminals and conspiring against the crown. She was last seen at the Sovereign Howl Colony."

"That is not true." My voice steadied. "I have never…” he called.

"Landon."

His beta stepped forward, holding a photograph and he thrust it toward the crowd so they could all see. It showed a woman walking through the gates of some colony. The image was clean, convincing, and completely fabricated.

The blood drained from my face.

"I have never been to that place," I said. "I don't even know where that is."

But nobody was listening. I looked at Kael's face and I saw it clearly for the first time, not anger, not even cruelty. Calculation. This was planned. Every piece of it, the rejection, the accusation, the photograph. He had been building this for weeks and I had been standing in his palace being grateful for the scraps of his attention and never once seeing it coming.

He was going to do to me exactly what he had done to everyone else. Destroy me, discard me and move on.

And for one bright furious moment I wished for it. I wished I could reach into his chest and take back every drop of essence I had poured into him. Take it all back and let him finish dying the way my mother always said he should. Let him rot in that sickbed. Let his kingdom mourn. I wished it so hard it burned in my throat like something swallowed wrong.

"Take her to the dungeons," Kael said.

The guards moved, but never would it happen. I am the daughter of the most powerful goddess in the world, never a prisoner!

I kicked off my shoe and raised it above my head.

“Don't move any inch towards me," I said to the guards. “If you won't accept my truth, you can go to hell."

“Shut up, you traitor."

Landon, the beta, bawled. Then he grabbed a mace and charged towards me. I moved faster than any of them expected. The heel of my shoe connected with Landon's eye and he screamed, blood pouring through his fingers as he grabbed his face. The shock of it bought me three seconds and I ran.

I burst into the courtyard, through the gate, and into the open. The soldiers were behind me immediately, their boots thundering on the ground.

I made for the unguarded exit but an arrow found my shoulder and the force of it threw me forward. I cried out in pain but I didn't stop. I changed course and headed into the forest. My gown ripping through the hem as it caught on branches, and thorn bushes.

“You have committed treason, stop in the name of the law. Stop before we fire.”

My blood went cold at this. The soldiers had guns, wolfsbane guns!

But I ran faster.

Deeper into the forest, further from Kael's echoing verdict, his guards, and his palace.

But some minutes into the forest my foot came down on something metal. A trap. Before I could blink, the metal clamp tightened around my leg and I was hoisted into the air and contained into an iron sack.

“Help," I screamed, banging on the trap. “Let me out. Please." I peered down and my heart froze up in fear.

I had one second to register something released into the air, a sharp chemical, odour attacking my nose and my throat and the back of my eyes all at once.

My legs stopped, and the forest danced in circles

I saw my mother's face. Her silver hair loose around her shoulders, and where tears should have been, blood ran down her cheeks in thin dark lines.

"Mother," I tried to say.

Then the darkness came, and with it, a deep , unbothered voice.

"A dazzling beauty indeed, worth all the stress." The voice paused. "Now let's go get my money."