**Chapter 6** **Selene's Lie**

For a moment nobody in the whole square moved.

Kael held my sister by the collar of my coat. His knuckles were white. His gold eyes burned down into her face, and the growl was still rumbling deep in his chest, low and steady, like a storm far away.

I had known Selene my whole life. I had seen her lie to teachers, to our father, to boys, to the whole pack. I had never once seen her afraid.

She was afraid now. I saw it. Her lips shook. Her hands came up and held his wrist, not to push him away, but because her legs were going weak.

Then something changed in her face. I watched it happen. The fear went down, and the act came up, like a mask sliding into place.

Her eyes filled with tears.

"You gave it to me," she whispered.

Kael's grip didn't move. "What?"

"The night…" Selene's voice cracked, soft and broken. "Last night. At the Weeping Spring. It's my coat. I was wearing it when they came."

My hands closed around the iron bars of the grate. The cold metal bit into my fingers.

*No,* I thought. *No, Selene. Not that. Anything but that.*

But she kept going.

"I went to the spring because I was sad," she said. "I wanted to be alone. And then those men came out of the trees. Rogues. Seven of them. They had ropes and knives." She shivered, and a tear rolled down her cheek. "One of them grabbed me. He dragged me across the moss. I screamed and screamed, and nobody came. And then…"

She looked up at him through her wet black lashes.

"Then you came."

The whole square gasped. Behind the line, an old woman pressed her hand to her heart. The Hartley twins grabbed each other's arms.

I could not breathe.

They were my words. My story. The worst night and the best night of my life, and she was wearing it like a dress she had stolen from my wardrobe. I had told it to Vivienne last night with a burning face and a stinging cheek, and now my sister was standing in the sun telling it to the whole pack.

And she was telling it so well.

Kael let go of the coat.

He did not step back. He stood very close to her, looking down. The growl in his chest had stopped. Something else had come into his face now. Something I had not seen there before.

Hope.

It hurt me more than any slap Vivienne had ever given me.

"Look at me," he said quietly.

Selene lifted her chin.

"After they ran," he said, "what was the first thing I said to you?"

My heart stopped. He was testing her. He was not a fool. Of course he was testing her.

For half a second Selene did not answer. I saw her eyes move, just a tiny bit, toward the side of the square where Vivienne was standing. Then she looked back at him.

"You asked me if I was hurt," she whispered.

I pressed my forehead against the bars and closed my eyes.

It was true. It was exactly what he had said. *Are you hurt?* But Selene hadn't been there. She had only guessed, because it was the thing any man would say. And she had guessed right.

When I opened my eyes, Kael's jaw was tight.

"And what did you say?"

"I said I was fine." She gave a small, sad laugh, the kind that sounds like a sob. "I wasn't fine. I was shaking all over. But I didn't want you to leave."

Another lucky guess. Another knife in my chest.

*Don't leave,* I had said to him. *Don't leave.* Those were the only words that were truly mine, and she had come so close to them that I wanted to scream.

Kael said nothing for a long moment. The wind blew across the square. A dog barked somewhere far away.

"Show me," he said at last.

Selene's hands went to the top button of my coat. Slowly, like she was shy, she opened it. Then she pulled her long black hair over one shoulder and turned her head to the side, showing him her neck.

The crowd leaned forward.

There, on the side of her neck, was a bite mark. It was red and fresh, with the skin still puffy around it.

The women in the square whispered. My father's grey face went pink with hope. Vivienne lifted her chin even higher.

But I was looking at the mark, and I saw something that nobody else in that square saw.

It was wrong.

It was too small. Much too small. I remembered the size of his mouth on my neck. I remembered how deep the mark had been when I saw it in the bathroom mirror, so big and so dark. This mark was neat and pretty, like a picture someone had painted. And it was on the wrong side. He had bitten my left side. I was sure of it. I had felt the sting there, and in the mirror the mark had been on the left.

Selene's mark was on the right.

Somebody had made it last night. Maybe Vivienne. Maybe one of her friends. Somebody had bitten my sister on purpose, carefully, and then sent her out in my coat.

I wanted to scream it through the bars. *It's fake! It's on the wrong side! Look closer!*

But I said nothing. If I shouted, they would drag me out of this cellar and pull up my hair, and they would find nothing. My mark was gone. Hidden under my skin where no one could see it. It would be my word against Selene's, the wolfless liar against the Gamma's beautiful daughter.

I already knew who they would believe. I had known it since I was thirteen years old.

So I held on to the bars and watched.

Kael bent his head over my sister's neck. He breathed in slowly, the way he had with the other girls. He stayed there for a long time. Longer than with anyone else.

Then he straightened up, and his face had gone dark.

"I don't feel it," he said.

Selene's tears stopped for a moment. "What?"

"Your mark is silent." His voice was low and flat. "I put my teeth in my mate's neck last night. I felt her in my blood. I felt her in my bones. And this morning she was gone, and so was the feeling." He looked at her neck again. "Your mark is silent. And so is mine."

The crowd started to murmur. Selene's face went red.

Rowan stepped up beside his Alpha. He spoke quietly, but the square was so silent that I could hear every word.

"Alpha. It happens sometimes. You know it does. A bond made in fear, in danger… The girl was nearly taken by rogues. A shock like that can quiet a bond for a while. Days. Maybe weeks."

"Or maybe," Kael said, "this is not my mate."

Selene's lip trembled. "You think I'm lying?"

He didn't answer. That was worse than if he had said yes.

Vivienne stepped forward. "Alpha Kael, please forgive me for speaking. I'm her mother." She put her hand on her heart. "She came home this morning shaking and crying, with leaves in her hair. She could barely speak. I put her to bed myself. Whatever the Moon Goddess has done between you, my daughter did not lie to you."

I nearly laughed out loud in the dark. Leaves in her hair. That was me. She had put me in my room, not Selene. She had slapped me, not put me to bed.

Kael looked at Vivienne for a long time. Then he looked back at Selene, and I could see him fighting with himself. He wanted to believe. I could see that too. He had lost something last night, and here it was, standing in front of him, wearing the coat that smelled of the spring.

"The coat," he said slowly. "The coat smells right."

"Because it's mine," Selene whispered.

"But you don't."

Before she could answer, a shout cut across the square.

"Selene!"

Every head turned.

Dorian was pushing his way through the crowd. His golden brown hair was wild and messy. His shirt was buttoned wrong, like he had dressed in a hurry. His face was white, and his blue eyes were wide and wet.

My heart squeezed in a way I hated.

Twelve hours ago I had walked into his room to give myself to him. Twelve hours ago he had let my sister push him down with one finger and told me to go home. And still, when I saw his face, some small, stupid part of me wanted to run to him.

He broke through the front of the crowd and stopped. He looked at Selene, standing in the open coat with her neck bare. He looked at the huge man beside her.

"What is this?" he said. His voice was shaking. "Selene, what are you doing? Get away from him!"

Kael turned his head slowly. "And who are you?"

"Dorian Ashe. Heir of Ashfall." Dorian lifted his chin. I had to give him that. He was shaking like a leaf, but he stood up straight in front of the Butcher of Nine Packs. "And that girl is my fated mate. We found each other last night. Ask anyone. Ask her!"

The crowd went wild. Everyone started talking at once. Kael's eyes went narrow and cold. Rowan put his hand on his Alpha's arm.

And Selene looked at Dorian the way I would look at a rat in the cellar.

"Last night was a mistake," she said.

Dorian's face fell. "What?"

"The Moon Goddess made a mistake. Or maybe she was testing me." She pulled my coat closed again and stood a little closer to Kael. "I was confused. I didn't know what I felt. But I know now."

"Selene…" Dorian took a step toward her. "Selene, you can't. You felt it too. I know you felt it."

She looked him straight in the eye, and she said the words. The words every wolf is afraid to hear.

"I, Selene Hale, reject you, Dorian Ashe, as my mate."

The sound Dorian made was not human.

He fell to his knees in the dirt like someone had cut his legs off. He grabbed his chest with both hands. His back bent, and a scream ripped out of him. It was high and terrible, the scream of a wolf whose bond has just been torn in half. Women in the crowd covered their ears. A little child started to wail.

Selene didn't even look at him.

And down in the dark cellar, something terrible happened to me.

Maybe it was the scream. Maybe it was the bond tearing so close by, pouring pain into the air like smoke. Maybe it was Kael. His wolf rose up at that awful sound, and his anger came rolling across the square in a wave I could feel on my skin.

My mark caught fire.

It did not tingle. It did not pulse. It burned. It was like someone had pressed a hot iron to the side of my neck. The pain shot down my shoulder and into my chest. My whole body jerked. I bit down hard on the side of my hand to stop myself from screaming, so hard that I tasted blood.

I nearly fell off the barrel. My foot slipped. The barrel rocked under me and scraped against the stone floor.

It was a very small sound.

Out in the square, Dorian was still screaming, and the crowd was shouting, and the Blackfang wolves were growling. It should have been impossible to hear anything over all that.

But Kael heard it.

I saw his whole body go still. His head snapped around. Not toward Dorian. Not toward Selene. Toward our house. Toward the kitchen wall.

Toward the small iron grate near the ground, where a girl with a bleeding hand was holding her breath in the dark.

His gold eyes went bright, and he took one step toward me.

"What," Kael Draven said, "is that?"