༄Chapter 5

The relief that moved through me when it became clear the King wasn't going to do anything about the stumbling incident was significant enough that I had to actively stop it from showing on my face.

I smoothed my dress, lifted my chin, and walked back to the dining table with Andrew like nothing had happened at all, though the heat from the King never left my body.

We sat down. And then we proceeded to do absolutely nothing for what felt like a very long time.

I had never in my life sat so still at a dinner table. Nobody around us was speaking above a murmur. Nobody was reaching too quickly for their wine or laughing too loudly or doing anything that might draw attention from the head of the table where the Lycan King sat like the weather. Present, unpredictable, and capable of ruining everything without warning.

I kept my breathing even and let my eyes move around the table carefully.

That was when I saw the mark behind Andrew's ear.

I hadn't noticed it before, or maybe I hadn't been looking. A crescent shape, sitting below just behind his left ear, small and deliberate. I knew what it was. Every wolf knew what it was. It wasn't new either, the skin around it had fully settled, no redness, nothing recent about it at all. That mark had been there for months.

So while he was coming home to me, while he was sharing my bed four nights ago and every night before that, he and Hailey had already been marking each other. This had been going on for a long time before he brought her to the pack house.

I stared at the side of his face and felt something cold and clarifying move through me.

I looked away from the mark and back at my plate and made a decision. I was done waiting for Andrew to bring up the divorce. He had made it very clear he wasn't going to. So I would take it directly to the King myself, tonight, while we were already here. It was the logical move. Straightforward, clean, no more going in circles with a man who answered every reasonable request with accusations of scheming.

I set my shoulders and opened my mouth.

Andrew beat me to it.

“Your Majesty.” His voice was measured, respectful, carrying just far enough to reach the head of the table. “If I may.”

The King looked at him.

Andrew straightened in his seat and I watched his expression arrange itself into something carefully constructed, humble, sincere, the face of a reasonable man with a difficult situation and no good options.

“Bella and I have been married for two years,” he began. “In that time, despite your wisdom in arranging this union, and I want to be clear that I have never once questioned your wisdom…” he paused to let that land, picking his words wisely… “Bella has struggled to fulfill her responsibilities as Luna of Blood Moon. She is, by nature, spoiled. Unreasonable. The servants have not been treated well under her hand. I have tried to be patient.”

I looked at him, my jaw dropping but he didn't even glance at me for a second. 

“Some months ago,” he continued, “I was injured on patrol. Wolfsbane poisoning. It was severe, I was unconscious for three days with a high fever, my pack was managing without me, and it was Hailey who found me.” He paused again, and this time the pause did a lot of work. “She stayed with me for three days and three nights. She didn't leave my side. She brought me back.” Another pause, and I'm beginning to believe he's pausing intentionally. “It was during my recovery that I discovered she is my fated mate.”

Around the table people were listening. Not obviously, nobody was staring but I could feel the attention, the slight stillness that meant ears were open.

“Hailey is genuinely kind,” Andrew said. “Patient. The kind of person who makes a pack better just by being in it. I believe with everything I have that she would be an extraordinary Luna for Blood Moon. I would never presume to disobey your orders, Your Majesty, and I say this with the deepest respect, but I am asking your permission to marry Hailey and give Blood Moon the Luna it deserves.”

He finished. He folded his hands on the table and sat there looking earnest and long-suffering and I genuinely had to remind myself that we were sitting in front of the Lycan King because if we hadn't been I would have slapped him. Twice. Three constructive slaps even.

How dare he?

He wanted permission to marry Hailey.

Not to divorce me first. Not to dissolve the current marriage cleanly and start fresh. He wanted to marry Hailey while I was still his wife and somehow produce two Lunas for one pack simultaneously. In the entire history of wolf packs, across every story and record and piece of lore I had ever encountered, I could not think of a single Alpha who had attempted something this brazenly ridiculous and dressed it up as a reasonable request.

Only Andrew. Only this specific man who I had apparently looked at across a gathering and decided was worth involving the Lycan King over.

I looked down at my plate and I thought about the mark behind his ear that had been sitting there for months while he was sleeping in my bed and telling me this marriage was forced and he'd never loved me. The audacity required to sit in front of the King of all Lycans and paint himself as a patient man driven to difficult choices by a spoiled wife was honestly breathtaking. It was almost impressive. In the way that a disaster was impressive, you couldn't look away from the scale of it.

I glanced toward the head of the table without turning my head fully.

The King's expression had not changed. He was watching Andrew with that same unreadable stillness he'd carried since he walked in, the kind of face that gave you nothing and made you very aware that it was giving you nothing deliberately.

I needed to say something. Andrew had just stood in front of the most powerful man in the territory and handed him a version of events in which I was the problem, spoiled, negligent, unkind to servants, the obstacle standing between Blood Moon and the Luna it deserved. If I sat here quietly and let that be the only version the King heard then I had already lost.

But I also needed to be careful. Very careful. Because the King had thrown a crystal glass at a guard's head earlier this evening and the guard had not made a sound and I still didn't know exactly what that meant for the guard.

I smoothed my expression, kept my hands still in my lap, and waited to see what the King would say.

I could feel Andrew beside me, composed and patient, completely confident that he had just handled this well.

I looked at the crescent mark behind his ear one more time. It had been there for months. I turned back to my plate and smiled to myself very quietly where nobody could see it.

Andrew thought he had just made a smart move. He thought he had just taken the board and left me with nothing to work with, no position, no argument, no ground to stand on. He'd gone over my head, around me, straight to the highest authority available, and laid out his case with just enough humility to make it land.

Well, two can play that game.