Chapter 2

A Name That Wasn't Mine

"Aurora."

Kael said her name like a word he had forgotten how to pronounce, the kind of stunned disbelief that needed no further explanation. I felt his hand tighten around mine before it went slack entirely, and something in my chest understood, before my mind caught up, that the worst day of my life had just begun.

She collapsed before she reached us, dropping to her knees on the stone floor as if her legs had given out from exhaustion rather than performance. Bruises mapped her arms in shades of purple and yellow. Her hair, once perfectly kept, hung in matted clumps around her face.

"Someone help her," an elder called, and three warriors rushed forward.

Kael was already moving, releasing me without a second glance, and I told myself it was instinct, the same instinct that made him stop bullies from hurting me when we were children. I told myself it meant nothing.

"Aurora, what happened to you?" Kael knelt beside her, his voice rough with something I recognized too well. Guilt. The same guilt I had watched eat at him for years after she left him for another Alpha's promises.

"I didn't think I would survive long enough to tell anyone," she whispered, loud enough for the entire hall to hear despite the apparent weakness of her voice. "I thought I was going to die in that cell."

"What cell? Aurora, who did this to you?"

Her eyes lifted, found mine across the hall, and filled with tears so perfectly timed I almost admired the craft of it before I understood what she intended.

"She did," Aurora said.

The hall did not gasp. It went silent in a way that felt heavier than any sound could have been.

"That's a lie," I said, and my voice came out steadier than I expected, though my pulse was roaring in my ears.

"I would know my own kidnapper, Selene." Aurora's voice cracked beautifully. "I have had months alone in the dark to memorize every detail of your face."

"I haven't seen you in two years."

"You arranged it so you wouldn't have to."

"Enough," Kael said, though I couldn't tell which of us he was addressing. He stood, putting himself between Aurora and the gathered Alphas as though shielding her from a threat that didn't exist. "Aurora, you need to rest. We'll discuss this once you've recovered."

"There is nothing to discuss," Magnus Thorne's voice rang out from among the elders, deep and certain in a way that made several Alphas straighten where they sat. "If accusations of this severity have been raised against the future Luna, the council must investigate before this binding can be permitted to continue."

"This is absurd," I said. "She has no proof, only a story."

"I have witnesses," Aurora said quickly.

Three guards I barely recognized stepped forward, men I had passed in the corridors but never spoken with. One described seeing someone matching my description near the abandoned northern cabin weeks earlier. Another claimed I had threatened Aurora before her disappearance, in a conversation I had never had. The third said nothing at all, only nodded when Magnus asked if he agreed.

"Ask him what color my cloak was supposed to be," I said, pointing at the second guard. "Ask him what time of day he claims to have seen me. Ask him anything specific, and watch how quickly his story changes."

The guard's eyes flicked toward Magnus before he answered, and that single glance told me everything I needed to know about who had coached him.

"That is enough," Magnus said smoothly. "The council will examine every detail in due course."

"In due course," I repeated. "How convenient, that the details only need to hold together long enough to ruin me today."

"Kael." I turned to him, searching his face for the boy who used to defend me without hesitation. "You know me. You've known me since we were children. Do you actually believe I would do this?"

He didn't answer immediately, and that silence told me more than any accusation in the room.

"I don't know what to believe," he said finally, and I watched something break behind his eyes even as he said it. "I need to know the truth before I bind myself to you in front of every Alpha in the Northern Territories. I owe that much to my pack."

"You owe me the truth too."

"I'm trying to find it."

Magnus stepped forward, his expression carved from the same patience he always wore in council meetings, the patience that made people trust him without question. "Until this matter is settled, the binding cannot proceed. For the safety of the investigation, Selene Ashwood will be held under guard."

"You cannot be serious," I said, looking around the hall at faces that, twenty minutes earlier, had been smiling at me. 

Most looked away. A few looked satisfied, as though this was the conclusion they had expected from the daughter of a traitor all along.

"Kael." My voice broke on his name, the first time it had broken all day. "Tell them this is wrong."

He looked at me, and for one moment I saw the boy who used to walk the long way home just so I wouldn't have to walk it alone. For one moment, I thought he would choose me anyway.

Somewhere behind me, I heard Lyra's voice rise above the murmuring crowd, sharp with disbelief. "This is wrong, and every one of you standing here knows it."

No one answered her. No one ever did, when speaking up meant standing against the council.

"Take her to the holding cells," he said to the guards, his voice barely above a whisper. "Treat her gently."

As if there was anything gentle about chains closing around the wrists of a woman who, ten minutes earlier, had been promised forever.

I did not fight them. I told myself that struggling would only convince the watching Alphas of exactly what they already suspected, that I was capable of violence, that I was my father's daughter in every sense they feared. So I walked between the guards with my spine straight and my eyes forward, refusing to give the hall the satisfaction of watching me break.

Only once did I look back, searching the crowd for Kael's face among the Alphas and elders who had come to celebrate a binding that would now never happen.

He was already looking away.