Chapter 3

CHAPTER 3

RHYANNE

"Are you insane?" Cassian's voice cracked through the silence like a whip, his hand still hanging in the air. "Do you have any idea what you just did?"

I did. I knew exactly what I'd done.

I didn't answer him, there was nothing left to say that wouldn't make this worse, it's best I kept my mouth shut at this point.

The hall still hadn't found its voice, but it was coming back in pieces— whispers here, a scandalized breath there, building like a storm: slowly and then all at once.

"Did you see that?"

"She struck him. Struck the crown prince, in front of the entire court—"

"The nerve of her. The absolute nerve—"

"An omega, no less. A servant—"

I kept my eyes down, and let the words roll over me. I'd been called worse, I'd survive being called worse again. What I hadn't expected was the sound of boots against marble— two palace guards moving toward me.

"Seize her," a wolf yelled from the crowd, gleeful, and eager for a spectacle, my pulse spiked, and my wolf stirred faint and useless beneath my ribs, was too weak to be any comfort at all.

"Stop."

Cassian's voice again, it cut through the guards' momentum before they reached me. They froze mid-step, caught between the crowd's bloodlust and their prince's command, and for one strange, suspended moment the entire hall seemed to be holding its breath along with me.

Cassian turned to face me fully, and the fury that had been building in him a moment ago shifted into something colder.

"I'll give you one more chance," he said, very quietly. "Reconsider what you're doing, and apologize for what you have done. And… if you accept the bond, none of these needs to go any further."

That was tempting. Every part of me that valued survival was screaming to take it, just bow my head, murmur an apology, let him have his easy victory in front of the whole court, and figure out the rest of my life later, on my own terms.

"No," I said instead. I didn't even realize when I blurted it out.

It came out steadier than I felt, and I saw it land on him like a physical blow. His mouth parted slightly— he was in genuine shock this time, his face had the expression of a wolf who had never once in his golden life had his authority questioned twice in the same evening, let alone by the same person.

The crowd erupted.

"She said no again—"

"To the prince himself—"

"Someone should teach that omega her place—"

What am I doing…? I thought looking down, my hands involuntarily squeezing my dress already.

Cassian's jaw tightened, and the restraint that had been holding him together snapped in half. "Seize her." Without hesitation in his voice at all. "Take her to the west hall, immediately."

The guards moved fast. Their hands were already closed around mine before I could brace for it, rough enough to bruise, dragging me a step back from where I'd been standing my ground.

"Please, wait—" Fenna's voice broke through the crowd, shoving past nobles who barely bothered to move out of her way. She reached the guards and grabbed at one of their arms with both hands, her composure from earlier in the evening completely gone. "Lord Cassian, please, she didn't mean— she's tired, she wasn't thinking clearly, please, I'm begging you—"

"Fenna, don't—" I tried, humiliation crawling hot up my neck at the sight of her on her knees in front of him, but she wasn't listening, and neither was he.

"This doesn't concern you." Cassian said to her, not really unkindly, but with a flat finality of someone who'd already made up his mind and resented being asked to reconsider it.

Then I saw my father approaching. He came through the crowd like the sea parting, his face pale and drawn, for one desperate second I hoped he might do what Fenna couldn't— that his years of quiet, careful service might buy me some grace the rest of us didn't have.

Instead, when he reached us, his voice came out with something closer to fury than fear.

"Rhyanne." He called my name, but it landed harder than a shout. "Do you have any idea what you've done? Do you understand the gravity of what you're doing to this family?"

"Father—"

"No." He cut me off, and I watched something in him break in real time— not for me, but for the humiliation of it, the weight of decades spent keeping his head down finally cracking under the eyes of the entire court. "We serve this house, we have always served this house. And you—" His voice caught, raw. "You've embarrassed us. Embarrassed yourself, embarrassed everything I've built keeping us safe here."

He wasn't hearing me, he didn't hear any of it— the insult, the pity dressed as an offer, the hand I'd have had to shake to accept it. All he could see was the wreckage of a life he'd spent years protecting, unraveling in front of a hall full of people who could talk about this for months.

I stood there between the two people I loved most— Fenna on her knees, my father shaking with a fury. It wasn't even entirely fury, just grief— and I felt something in my chest go unbearably tight. My wolf pressed weak and frantic against me, useless as always, while every set of eyes in that hall drank in the spectacle of my family begging for a mercy I hadn't even asked for yet and couldn't take back now even if I wanted to.

I just wanted to disappear, I wanted the marble floor to open beneath me and swallow the humiliating scene whole.

"Enough."

King Aldric's voice didn't rise, didn't need to. It moved through the hall like true authorities always did, and every sound fell silent beneath it, guards, nobles and servants alike turning toward the dais where he'd risen from his seat for the first time all evening.

He looked at my father first, he had a look… almost like regret in his expression. "Kaelen has served this house faithfully for about twenty years, he's a good man, no one here disputes that." Then his gaze shifted to me, and all the softness that had been in his voice a moment ago drained out of it entirely. I visibly shook as his gaze turned to me. "But striking a member of the royal family— striking my son— is not a matter of pride, temper, or even misunderstanding. It is a crime this court cannot simply overlook, no matter the circumstances that led to it." The king continued.

My stomach dropped. I already knew what came next, I could feel it coming already.

"The law is clear," the king said, and the hall went utterly still around him. "For this, you will be banished from Ashenfall.”